Gorilla’s Guides

Karbala, May 14, (VOI)- 12-year-old Waad was not the only child selling cloth rugs for drivers at a traffic light in the Shiite sacred city of Karbala. Scores of boys and girls his age stand near traffic lights areas all over Iraq to do same.

No sooner had the traffic policeman stopped the traffic movement than Waad rushed to offer drivers his goods for sale.

“My father died in an explosion a year ago, and I was forced to go out for work to earn living for my five-member-family,” Waad told Aswat al-Iraq- Voices of Iraq- (VOI).

The boy who knew no entertainment bitterly adds, “I come out everyday in the early morning and will not be able to return home before I earn money enough to keep our life rolling.”

Waad says that “work conditions” and supporting his family pushed him to leave school that requires expenses like clothes, books, stationery, and others. Little boys are not the only suffering people; little girls share them the same tragedy.

On the other side of the same intersection where Waad was standing, a girl wearing an old cloak was selling tissues for drivers and passers-by.

Due to tradition and custom, girls seem shyer than boys. Whenever she saw someone she knew or suspected a journalist, she would escape the scene and snake into back streets. Other children do prefer a peddle-like work by roaming main markets to sell candies. It might give them some pleasure that they lost.

Qassem, 14, expects to earn as low as 5,000 Iraqi Dinars ($3.5) if he sold all his goods. “My father injured in an explosion and became paralyzed and therefore I found myself obliged to abandon school to earn living,” Qassem explained.

With tears in his eyes, the child continued “I had to forget about my dream – to be an engineer- but I left with no alternate.” Some people buy Qassem’s goods, as he admits, for feeling pity for him not because they “need my candies.”

Children, particularly girls, also serve in home-based-jobs. Amina, a little girl, tells VOI “when my father died two years ago, we had to live in dignity as we are all girls and unwilling to accept charity.

My mother has some agreement with a small factory owner to finalize products at home and we all help her with that,” Amina explains.

Some little girls started work as early as nine and they have become “masters”. “I learned sewing two years ago while I was only nine, but now most women in my neighborhood would seek me for making garments.

I earn money enough to afford my family’s expenses,” Nahida says.

Work seems turning those little creatures to be wise, a matter might reflect a childhood lost under poverty.

Working at home, according to Nahida, “taught me endurance, self-dependency and saving.”

Child labor is the employment of children under an age determined by law or custom. This practice is considered exploitative by many countries and international organizations Child labor is not confined to Karbala, Iraq, rather it is a global phenomenon dictated by circumstances, according to teacher Nahla Abdul Wahid, adding that “she personally does not oppose that children may help their families but they should continue schooling.”

So far there has been no official survey on the child labor phenomenon in Iraqi governorates, but the latest report published in 2004 showed that about 1.3 million children (representing 6.1 percent of the population) aged between 8 and 16 years are working.

The report attributed child labor to the “the death, disability, or unemployment breadwinners turning these children to money-makers for their families.”

Nahla, who also a human rights activist, believes that school should be more active in the field of human rights, urging “civil society organizations to invest summer vacation by teaching girls and boys range of occupations and trades that might help them earning living.”

“Teaching children skills like knitting, sewing, embroidery, flower industry, carpentry and blacksmithing would help them a lot,” Nahla explains.

Sociologists, physicians and psychiatrists warns against child labor urging for enforcing laws prohibiting the phenomenon.

Dr. Abdul Aziz Al-Ghanmi, a physician, argues “the work of children at an early age exposes them to infection with many diseases, especially in winter days while in Summer they will be vulnerable sun stroke, typhoid and other diseases.”

Al-Ghanmi went on to say “Childhood has privileges of which child workers will be deprived.” “Working children deprived of play, fun and movement surely will suffer from psychological problems and thus yearning to compensate for this disadvantage even after they would become mature.”

Director of social welfare department Adnan al-Aamri demanded enforcing Iraqi laws prohibiting child labor.

“The Iraqi law on safeguarding the rights of children, based on international law, prohibits the employment of children under the age of 15,” al-Aamri notes.

He added “Most families sending their children for work are poor and thus they should be supported with subsidiaries through the social welfare departments to help solving the problem of child labor in Iraq.”

Aswat Aliraq