Human Trafficking in [Yemen] [other countries]Street Children in [Yemen Child Prostitution in [Yemen] [other countries] |
Prevalence, Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children The |
|
CAUTION: The following links and accompanying
text have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in UNICEF - The Big Picture U.S. Dept
of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Children also work as street vendors, beggars, domestic servants,
and in the fishing, leather, construction, and automobile repair sectors. CURRENT
GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND PROGRAMS TO ELIMINATE THE WORST FORMS OF CHILD LABOR - In collaboration with the Mayor of Sana’a, ILO-IPEC
began providing remedial education and vocational training in 2003 in a
rehabilitation center for street children who are victims of child labor. Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 CHILDREN - Child labor was a problem. The
Child Rights Law prohibits child labor; however, the law has not been
implemented, and children as young as four years of age worked in workshops,
agriculture, or as street vendors. SECTION 6 WORKER RIGHTS – [d] The Child Rights Law
prohibits child labor; however, it has not been effectively implemented. The established minimum age for employment was 15 years in
the private sector and 18 years in the public sector. By special permit,
children between the ages of 12 and 15 years could work. The government
rarely enforced these provisions, especially in rural and remote areas. The
government also did not enforce laws requiring nine years of compulsory
education for children. Child labor was common, especially in rural areas. Many
children were required to work in subsistence farming due to family poverty.
Even in urban areas, children worked in stores and workshops, sold goods and
begged on the streets. Many children of school age worked instead of
attending school, particularly in areas in which schools were not easily
accessible. The Child Labor Unit at the Ministry of Labor was
responsible for implementing and enforcing child labor laws and regulations;
however, the unit's lack of resources hampered enforcement. The Ministry of Labor estimated that there were close to
half a million working children, ages 6 to 14 years, and that working children
equaled 10 to 15 percent of the total work force. The government was an
active partner with the ILO's International Program to Eliminate Child Labor.
During the year, this program offered remedial education, vocational
training, counseling, and reintegration of child laborers into schools. In
September 2004 the government entered into a grant agreement with a foreign
government aimed at combating the worst forms of child labor in the country Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2005 [70] The Committee is deeply
concerned at the information that many children are trafficked to [72] While welcoming the Program
and Rehabilitation of Street children and the construction of the safe
Childhood Centre, in the capital municipality also extended to the
governorate of Aden, the Committee expresses its concern at the increasing
number of street children and the vulnerability of these children to sexual
abuse and exploitation and at the lack of a systematic and comprehensive
strategy to address the situation and protect these children. YEMEN: New study
highlights plight of street children Ahmed (not his real name) has been
sleeping near a secondary school in the centre of Sanaa
city, Yemen's capital, for almost a year. He said he had come from the
northern governorate of Amran to work and support
his family back home. The 14-year-old
sells cigarettes and sweets in the city. "My father went to Saudi
Arabia three years ago to find a job but didn't come back. I have three
brothers and one sister and my mother asked me to find any job here in Sanaa to sustain them," he said. The boy makes 400-800 Yemeni riyals (about
US$2-4) a day and did not want to rent a room, in order to save money. Ahmed is among an estimated 30,000
street children in Yemen, of whom 60 percent work and sleep on the streets
and tend to be separated from their families, according to a new study. The
remaining 40 percent work the streets but return to some kind of makeshift
home at night. Fears
over possibly rising number of child labourers "The situation [in the
country] is miserable. Child labour is on the rise
due to the deteriorated economic situation of most families," Jamal al-Shami, chairman of Democracy School, a local
non-governmental organisation (NGO), told
IRIN. Al-Shami
said children now believe they have to work because by so doing they
contribute to the family income. Child labour
has also increased the school dropout rate. "There are about two million
children out of school," al-Shami said, adding
that most of them will end up illiterate. Street
children at increased risk of sexual abuse INCREASED NUMBER OF STREET CHILDREN - "If they have been on the
street for a long time, the chances of them being sexually
abused is around 90 percent," Shugaa
said. According to reports, boys as young
as eight have been lured into the cars of strangers for as little as US$1,
while others are sexually abused by older boys living rough on the street - a
dire reminder of the vicious circle of abuse found throughout the world
involving street children. Yet the boys, generally brought
into the center by police or the center's own outreach programme,
rarely divulge the abuse they have suffered.
"I never did those kinds of bad things, but I know others who
have," one 13-year-old boy at the center whispered, glancing away from
the peering eyes of other boys. "When you are hungry you do what you
have to do," he said, adding he knew of several occasions when a boy
would be brought to a man's home for a few days and routinely abused, before
being let go. "Yes, there are some bad boys
doing bad things," said another child at the centre who did not know his
own age and who had been left on the streets by his mother to fend for
himself after the death of his father in 1995. Thus, the streets become the sole
place for such children where they spend both their working hours and their
resting times. Lying on cartons with only the sky as their roof, Mukalla street children spend their days and nights
there, not resorting to blankets due to the hot weather. When they want to
use a toilet, they must wait for mosque bathrooms to open at prayer times. “Poverty, want and extremely low
income are the main reasons for the phenomenon,” agrees Hassan
Al-Odaini, a child street vendor who sells kitchen
equipment in Mukalla’s women’s market, “What causes
a father send his child to such a faraway city to work are dire
circumstances, poverty and low income.” He also mentioned blackmail
practiced against street children by their bosses. “They quite often deduct
sums from our salary without any apparent reason, except that we are
children,” Ali lamented, “They don’t consider our hard living conditions,
together with our families; rather, they treat us as if they have neither
families nor children of their own.” Working
toward a better future for Yemeni children According to poverty surveys in
1999, the number of al-Akhdam children, perhaps the
poorest and most disadvantaged in Yemen, amounts to
129,115. These children remain on society’s margin as a result of the passive
public attitude, as well as poverty. It is a difficult thing to give figures
on the street children because of the absence of analytical studies or
surveys. About 53 percent of poor people in Yemen are children under 15 years
old. The teen and young adult years, from 15 to 24 years old, are also
targeted by the strategy. The illiteracy rate of this group
is about 50 percent, while the ones who can read and write are just 33
percent. The young females in this age group have the lowest enrollment
in secondary education and universities, about 16.3 percent, compared with
40.8 percent of the young males. Of all female workers, between15 to 24
years old, only 14 percent of them go to schools, compared with 59 percent of
male workers. The small number of teachers in schools is another reason
for the deterioration of education in this age group. A
study of street children in Yemen About 5,000 children are forced to
live on the streets in four Yemeni governorates, according to the results of
the first stage of a new comprehensive survey of street children. Stray
animals are the most abused and unwanted in Yemen You said in your
proposal that this project will provide beggars and street children with
opportunities to work in the shelter, but you don’t give any details of how
that can be applied? Do contact with any street children organizations in
this regard? Our project, if it can
pull all its resources together, hopes to work with YERO,
a street children organization. Its initiator has already agreed to
coordinate with our project so we can both benefit from each other. Yemeni
children narrate their sufferings on the street They shoulder the responsibility for others
before themselves. Such is their fate and their family circumstances, whether
social or economic. They must spend long hours on the streets under the sun’s
blazing heat. What they receive from their work is nothing as compared to the
exploitation of their childhood, which is subject to various sorts of
violence. Factors
affecting Yemeni street children Aged between 6 and 18,
Street children can be categorized according to their type of work, the time
of day they work and their living situation.
Most children working or begging part of the day or night
are enrolled in school. They study in the morning and work or beg at
night, returning home to spend the night with their family. Children who work during the day usually
are school dropouts or those who didn’t attend school at all. Most are from
rural areas and live away from their family. They either come to cities with
relatives or alone and spend the night in inns or living in groups in
apartments. Government
is losing street children The number of street children in
Sana'a governorate, according to a previous study conducted by MSAL, there were 15,000 children on the streets. In the
mean time, this phenomenon is on increase due to the spread of poverty and
more drop-outs from school. Women complain of the rise of street harassment1 Another girl blamed poverty and
social fragmentation- “They have no goals, no jobs, and too much free time”
she said. “Poverty is part of the problem because it means there are a lot of
street children, and they soon learn how to bother girls on the street.” The
economic and social situation of street children: A study Most street children stated that a
large part of their income contributes to their families’ needs. It’s
indicated that 92.9 percent of children whose families live in Sana’a city
assist their families financially; whereas 85 percent of children whose
families live outside Sana’a assist their families financially. Some fathers believe the street
children phenomenon isn’t caused by family problems, but rather by poverty.
During a focus group discussion, one father explained, “I was married to four
wives. We had no problems, although each wife gave birth to a child per year.
After my economic situation worsened, I divorced three of them. Now I don’t
know where my kids are. I only have the kids from the fourth wife and they
dropped out of school. They work and beg and the reason is poverty.” Leprosy,
sexual and skin diseases Yemeni street children at risk MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO
DISEASE -
Due to the absence of
personal cleanliness and prevailing unsanitary conditions, most street
children suffer scabies, chicken pox, measles and other infectious illnesses
transmitted by direct and indirect contact, according to Kashnoon.
“These children also are subjected to respiratory diseases like sore throat,
pneumonia, bronchitis and tonsillitis, which may lead to meningitis,” he
confirmed. Factors affecting Yemeni street children Yemeni street children work in the
following professions: Street vendors
selling clothes, home appliances and other commodities on streets and at
traffic lights/intersections; Car
washers in street intersections and car parks; Porters carrying commodities on their
shoulders or on carts working in general open markets and fruit and vegetable
markets; Workers in restaurants and
cafés; Fare collectors on buses. Information
about Street Children - Yemen [DOC] The phenomenon of street children
in Yemen's
Street Children Vulnerable to Numerous Abuses Available information indicates
that 30,000
street children in Yemen More than 30.000
children are living as vagrants in the streets of Juveniles
Between The Reality And Ambition PAINFUL SCENES - Gamil Massoud
al-Wasabi, 12-year-old, loiters bare-footed in Committee On Rights Of Child Concludes Review Of Yemeni Report On Measures To Implement Convention DISCUSSION - Concerning street children and
beggars, the delegation said that the problem of poverty had increased the
rate of street children and those making a living through begging. The Government had taken steps to combat
the phenomenon of street children, particularly child beggars. The authorities were also undertaking a
study of the situation in order to find alternative means to keep away
children from the streets. UNICEF discovered child
trafficking in Parents, children complicit in human trafficking?Report The report found that most
children started the journey accompanied by a direct relation, although some
children traveled with other children instead. According to the study, just over 50% fell
within the age range 13-16 years old, and of the 59 cases, only two were
girls. On arrival in 1.
The linked article has been taken down, moved or restricted All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC §
107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use |
Human Trafficking in [Yemen] [other countries]Street Children in [Yemen Child Prostitution in [Yemen] [other countries]