Human Trafficking in [Egypt Street Children in [Egypt] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Egypt] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the
first ten years of the 21st
Century - 2000 to 2009
Egypt is a source, transit, and destination
country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor
and sexual exploitation. Some of Egypt’s estimated one million street
children – both boys and girls – are exploited in prostitution and forced
begging. Local gangs are, at times, involved in this exploitation. Egyptian
children are recruited for domestic and agricultural labor; some of these
children face conditions indicative of involuntary servitude, such as
restrictions on movement, non-payment of wages, threats, and physical or
sexual abuse. - U.S. State Dept
Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2009 [full country report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been culled
from the web to illuminate the situation in *** FEATURED
ARTICLE *** Egypt - Underage
And Unprotected: Child Labor In Egypt's Cotton Fields SUMMARY - Each year over one million children
between the ages of seven and twelve are hired by Egypt's agricultural
cooperatives to take part in cotton pest management. Employed under the
authority of Egypt's agriculture ministry, most are well below Egypt's
minimum age of twelve for seasonal agricultural work. They work eleven hours
a day, including a one to two hour break, seven days a week-far in excess of
limits set by the Egyptian Child Law.1
They also face routine beatings by their foremen, as well as exposure to heat
and pesticides. These conditions violate Egypt's obligations under the
Convention on the Rights of the Child to protect children from ill-treatment
and hazardous employment. They are also tantamount to the worst forms of
child labor, as defined in the International Labour
Organization's Convention 182, which Egypt has not yet ratified. Children
were forcibly recruited to take part in pest management as recently as ten
years ago, and some farmers continue to believe that they will be fined if
they resist their children's recruitment. However, most children today are
compelled to work by the driving force of poverty. ***
ARCHIVES *** U.S. Dept
of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Reports indicate a widespread practice of poor rural families
making arrangements to send daughters to cities to work as domestic servants
in the homes of wealthy citizens. Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – There
were anecdotal and press reports of trafficking of persons from sub-Saharan
Africa and Eastern Europe through the country to Europe and Child
maids now being exported to US www.zimbio.com/AP+News/articles/7537/Child+maids+now+being+exported
www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-slavery8-2009jan08,0,1440842.story
Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian
couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their
California home. She awoke before dawn and often worked past midnight to iron
their clothes, mop the marble floors and dust the family's crystal. She
earned $45 a month working up to 20 hours a day. She had no breaks during the
day and no days off. Once behind the walls of gated
communities like this one, these children never go to school. Unbeknownst to
their neighbors, they live as modern-day slaves, just like Shyima, whose story is pieced together through court
records, police transcripts and interviews. Shyima cried when she found out she was
going to America in 2000. Her father, a bricklayer, had fallen ill a few
years earlier, so her mother found a maid recruiter, signed a contract effectively
leasing her daughter to the couple for 10 years and told Shyima
to be strong. She arrived at Los Angeles
International Airport on Aug. 3, 2000, according to court documents. The
family brought her back to their spacious five-bedroom, two-story home,
decorated in the style of a Tuscan villa with a fountain of two angels
spouting water through a conch. She was told to sleep in the garage. It had no windows and was neither heated
nor air-conditioned. Soon after she arrived, the garage's only light bulb
went out. The Ibrahims didn't replace it. From then
on, Shyima lived in the dark. She was told to call them Madame Amal and Hajj Nasser, terms of respect. They called her
"shaghala," or servant. Their five
children called her "stupid." Human
trafficking: the case of Egypt www.thedailynewsegypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=15456 THE
SITUATION IN EGYPT - The local dimension of human trafficking includes child
labor, the sexual exploitation of children, the sale of human organs as well
as various forms of prostitution. The issue has now become a major topic of
concern for social scientists, police and law-enforcement authorities as well
as rehabilitation centers. Not only do landless peasants earn
a pittance working the land, but they are subjected to abuse, and no group
more so than the children, the most vulnerable members of society. Foremen in
the fields subject the children to violent beatings. Gangmasters
recruit the children, invariably the offspring of landless peasants and
impoverished peasant families. The parents of the child labourers
are desperately poor and are often all too relieved to part with their
children. In the final analysis, farming out one's children as indentured labourers mean fewer mouths to feed. In www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/03/africa/ME-GEN-Egypt-Child-Labor.php Each day, 14-year-old Ali Abdel-Nasser works at a brick factory on the outskirts of
Several of the child workers in
the area, interviewed by an Associated Press reporter on a recent trip, said
they had sometimes been beaten with wooden switches by foremen at the
factories, if the foremen thought the children were going too slowly in their
work. No foremen would agree to be
interviewed. But human rights groups and outside experts say conditions for
working children can vary greatly across Egypt — from factories that provide
meals and some basic schooling, to those that work children long hours, often
in scorching heat, and abuse or beat them. Organ trafficking:
a fast-expanding black market China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Brazil, the Philippines,
Moldova, and Romania are among the world's leading providers of trafficked
organs. If China is known for harvesting and selling organs from executed
prisoners, the other countries have been dealing essentially with living
donors, becoming stakeholders in the fast-growing human trafficking web. NGOs warn against plan to increase Russian visas www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380635370&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] However, Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 6 Civil Liberties: 5 Status: Not Free Human Rights Overview
by Human Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide U.S. Library of Congress
- Country Study Egyptian Journalists Trained to Report on Child Labor
Issues www.internews.org/news/2004/20040414_egypt.html At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] Internews Arabic Network held a training session
in Liberian court tries Egyptian woman for child trafficking www.angolapress-angop.ao/noticia-e.asp?ID=262519 At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
The Criminal Court in Egypt - Underage
And Unprotected: Child Labor In Egypt's Cotton Fields SUMMARY - Each year over one million
children between the ages of seven and twelve are hired by Egypt's
agricultural cooperatives to take part in cotton pest management. Employed
under the authority of Egypt's agriculture ministry, most are well below
Egypt's minimum age of twelve for seasonal agricultural work. They work
eleven hours a day, including a one to two hour break, seven days a week-far
in excess of limits set by the Egyptian Child Law.1 They also face routine beatings
by their foremen, as well as exposure to heat and pesticides. These
conditions violate Egypt's obligations under the Convention on the Rights of
the Child to protect children from ill-treatment and hazardous employment.
They are also tantamount to the worst forms of child labor, as defined in the
International Labour Organization's Convention 182,
which Egypt has not yet ratified. Children were forcibly recruited to take
part in pest management as recently as ten years ago, and some farmers
continue to believe that they will be fined if they resist their children's
recruitment. However, most children today are compelled to work by the
driving force of poverty. Little Hands Do Neat Work www.islamonline.net/english/Society/2001/06/article6.shtml At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] It is estimated that around 1.2
million children swarm the Egyptian cotton fields in early summer (Schemm, p.8). Most of them are below 12 years of age and
work up to 11 hours each day, thus impeaching Egypt's laws that state that a
child of 12 (the minimum working age) can only participate in a six hour work
day of seasonal agricultural work. Children not only toil under the hot sun,
but are beaten by the foreman and forced to work in fields that have been
sprayed with pesticides only pesticides only 24 - 48 hours earlier. Yet these
children play an important role in the labor intensive cotton fields…being
ideal in height and plentiful in number. Laws:
October, 1997 - Number #17 CHILD LABOR - In Egypt, education is supposed
to be compulsory to the age of 15, but thousands of children as young as age
six pick cotton by hand in September for about $1.50 for an eight-hour day.
In September 1997, 31 children were killed when the flatbed government truck
taking them to a government-owned cotton field overturned. Egyptian law
prohibits employment under 12 in agriculture, and under 14 in nonfarm jobs. However, these age limits are routinely
violated, including by the Agriculture Ministry, which owns 10 percent of the
cotton fields in Egypt. The Egyptian
Center for Social Research estimates that 1.5 million children in Egypt under
the age of 14 work, and that most work in agriculture. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE
RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT ARTICLES.
Cite this webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin,
"Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery - |
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Human Trafficking in [Egypt Street Children in [Egypt] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Egypt] [other countries]