Human Trafficking in [Tajikistan] [other countries]Street Children in [Tajikistan Child Prostitution in [Tajikistan] [other countries] |
Prevalence, Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children In the
early years of the 21st Century - 2000 to 2010 gvnet.com/streetchildren/Tajikistan.htm
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CAUTION: The following links and accompanying text have been culled
from the web to illuminate the situation in *** FEATURED
ARTICLE *** Tajik Street Children Face Daily Struggle Institute for War & Peace Reporting IWPR Central Asia
- Central Asia, RCA Issue 349, 20 Nov 05 iwpr.net/report-news/tajik-street-children-face-daily-struggle [accessed 28 July 2011] Hamza sleeps in his ragged and
dirt-encrusted clothes in a bid to keep the cold at bay. His arms are thin
and covered with new sores and old scars. He has never been to school and
cannot remember a day without work or responsibility. But he is the
sole breadwinner in his family, and even if he is caught by the authorities
and sent to a state boarding school, he will have no choice but to run away
and start working again. ***
ARCHIVES *** UNICEF www.unicef.org/infobycountry/Tajikistan.html [accessed 28 July 2011] Human Rights Reports » 2005
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61679.htm [accessed 28 December 2010] CHILDREN - Education is compulsory until age
16 and public education was free and universal. The law was not enforced and,
while most children were enrolled in school up to the mandatory secondary
level, actual attendance was estimated to be lower because children
supplemented family income by working in the home or in informal activities. SECTION 6
WORKER RIGHTS [d]
Child labor remained a problem, and the government neither effectively
enforced child labor laws nor strengthened existing regulations on acceptable
working conditions for children. The minimum age for children to
work is 16, although children may work at age 15 with local trade union
permission. By law children under the age of 18 may work no more than 6 hours
a day and 36 hours per week. Children as young as seven may participate in
household labor and agricultural work, which are separately classified as
family assistance. Many children under 10 worked in bazaars or sold goods on
the street. Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of
the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 6 October 2000 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/tajikistan2000.html [accessed 28 December 2010] [28] The Committee is concerned at
numerous and continuing reports of ill-treatment of persons under the age of
18 by the militia, including psychological intimidation, corporal punishment
and torture. The Committee is also concerned that victims of such treatment
are largely from vulnerable groups, such as children living and/or working on
the streets; and that fear of reprisals and inadequate complaints procedures
discourage children and their parents from filing complaints. [30] The Committee is concerned
about the large number of children, especially children with disabilities,
who are abandoned or are otherwise deprived of a family environment. It is
also concerned that foster care, or other forms of family-based alternative
care, are not sufficiently developed and available, and that, as a result,
children are placed in institutions which, owing to lack of resources,
provide children with very low quality housing and care. Further, the
Committee is concerned at the absence of effective mechanisms for children to
communicate concerns and complaints about their placement. Moreover, in the
light of article 25 of the Convention, the Committee is concerned at the
inadequate system to review placement, monitoring or follow-up of the
situation of children in institutions. [42] The Committee is seriously
concerned at the deterioration in the quality of education, especially
infrastructure, teaching and curricula. The Committee is concerned at
declining pre-school enrolment and the persistence of high drop-out,
repetition, and absenteeism rates in primary and secondary schools. [48] The Committee is concerned
that the negative effects of the current economic crisis have resulted in an
increasing number of children dropping out of school and taking up work. Tajik Children Labour to Feed Families Aslibegim Manzarshoeva
- iwpr.net/report-news/tajik-children-labour-feed-families [accessed 28 July 2011] Rustam has to get up at dawn to drive
the hundreds of animals under his care out to pasture. At the age of 14, he
should be in school, but he has little other choice he is one of the main
breadwinners for a family of nine. It
is a familiar story in Tajikistan, where children in rural areas routinely
have to work alongside adults to keep their households afloat. Increasingly,
urban children from poor families are also doing manual jobs instead of going
to school, raising concerns about what future these uneducated adolescents
will have in a grim employment situation.
The young shepherd lives in Faizabad, a
district some 50 kilometres east of the Tajik
capital Dushanbe, and looks after the sheep, goats and cattle belonging to
all 160 households in the village of Dubeda. It is a long trek up to the mountain pastures
one-and-a-half hours each way and Rustam stays
there with the herd until seven in the evening. To sustain him through the
day, he usually only has some bread, tea and chakka,
the local soured milk, and occasionally cooks some potatoes or rice. He earns
a few pennies a month for each animal in the herd, but if one of them dies
the owner will demand around 100 dollars in compensation. RISE IN URBAN CHILD LABOUR - Even so, children at work are a
common sight in Tajikistan. While children of both sexes help their families
out in the countryside, the emergence of urban workers most of them boys
is a more recent phenomenon. Young lads, some of them street children, can be
seen pushing heavy barrows around the markets, washing cars by the roadside,
changing banknotes into smaller denominations, and corralling passengers into
the shared minibus taxis which have all but replaced other forms of public
transport. Many of the kids hanging around markets to earn tiny sums of money
have come into town from the surrounding countryside, where their fathers may
have joined the exodus to Russia. They live on the street and are often
near-illiterate because they have missed so much school time. Just 14, Anvar
has not been to school in the last two years. Instead, he is a conductor on a
minibus taxi, collecting fares for the driver. He explains that he has no
time for studying as he has to support his mother, elder sister and two
younger brothers. His father went off to Russia three years ago. The first
year he sent money home regularly but that has dried up since then and
returning migrants say the man has a new wife and a baby. Like many boys forced to take jobs, Anvar has a strong sense of his responsibilities as the
senior male breadwinner in the household. Roxana Saberi, BBC news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6183331.stm [accessed 28 July 2011] BACK TO SCHOOL - Members of the youth committee
reach out to these children by telling them they do not have to work and live
on the streets, and that going back to school is the key to a better
future. Their efforts seem to be
working. Many street children have left
their jobs washing cars or peddling goods in the bazaar and have gone back to
school. Several have joined the youth
committee, where they receive $20 a month and learn about computers,
languages and leadership skills. The
committee has expanded from 20 children two years ago to around 60 today, organiser Sukhrob Kurbonov says. "Street kids have their own
rules and don't allow just anyone close to them," he says. "Because these kids we work with were
from that group, they can speak to them more easily and get information from
them. We wanted to know why these kids start stealing and begging and what
problems they face." Institute for War & Peace Reporting IWPR Central Asia
- Central Asia, RCA Issue 349, 20 Nov 05 iwpr.net/report-news/tajik-street-children-face-daily-struggle [accessed 28 July 2011] Hamza sleeps in his ragged and
dirt-encrusted clothes in a bid to keep the cold at bay. His arms are thin
and covered with new sores and old scars. He has never been to school and
cannot remember a day without work or responsibility. But he is the sole breadwinner in his
family, and even if he is caught by the authorities and sent to a state
boarding school, he will have no choice but to run away and start working
again. Protecting and Assisting Street Children UN Integrated Regional Information Networks IRIN, Kurgan-Tyube, 20 July 2005 www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=28748 [accessed 28 July 2011] Ten-year-old Parvina
can neither read nor write, because she has never attended school. "I can count up to 500," she said
proudly, adding that she learnt to do so when she started working, selling
plastic bags in the city's main market.
She was making around US $ 1 a day.
Her younger brother Akram earns about $ 3 a
day.. Parvina
gives most of the money to her mother.
"We live on the money they make. Interview with Head Of UNICEF UN Integrated Regional Information Networks IRIN, www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=20462 [accessed 28 July 2011] Q: There are a lot of street
children in A: Some of the figures show that
some of the street children are not living in the street. They are with families, but because of
poverty they are often sent to the streets to either work or beg. So the street children are not abandoned as
such and are supporting their families.
The problem is that children in the streets are more vulnerable and at
risk of being abused and exploited.
Especially, they are at more risk of being in conflict with the law, starting
with petty crimes, drug abuse and trafficking. World
Food Program - Foreign Agricultural Service FAS, www.fas.usda.gov/excredits/FoodAid/FFE/gfe/2004/asia/tajikistan.htm [accessed 28 July 2011] COUNTRY OVERVIEW - Many families are unable to
provide their school-age children with clothing and shoes. This is creating increasing numbers of
street children, who are easy prey for criminals, drugs, and child-labor
abuse scams. Nasiba's Wedding
Song Firuz Barotov,
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL -- broadcast on 29 and 30 April, 2005 www.rferl.org/content/article/1059158.html [accessed 28 July 2011] According to UNICEF, 18 % of Tajik
children between the ages of five and 14 are working. Many of them are homeless. The number of children grows in the
summer. They come to the capital from
different villages [around British Embassy Opens Its Doors
- Personal
Testimony of Children [access information unavailable] KHURSHEDS STORY - Khurshed
is 12 years old and is from A Community Response to HIV/AIDS [DOC] [access information unavailable] Estimates of international and
national experts indicate that there are in all about 10 000 street children
in the country. Many of these use
drugs and some of them are engaged in prostitution. The majority of them has no idea about safe
sexual behaviors and consequently is especially vulnerable to sexually
transmitted diseases, including HIV. 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, "Street Children - |
Human Trafficking in [Tajikistan] [other countries]Street Children in [Tajikistan Child Prostitution in [Tajikistan] [other countries]