Amman, Amidst hard living conditions and bleak future prospects, many underage children find themselves in a situation where they have no choice but to accept their lot in life and work for a fistful of dinars every day to aid their impoverished families.
The Jordan News Agency (Petra) spoke with Salem (a pseudonym) who is nine years old. Every time he spoke, it was as if his words were borne of the wisdom that can only come from a lifetime of experience.
Salem, who once worked in markets helping shoppers and now collects scrap, has countless bleak memories etched into his mind, including that of a friend who was killed when he was struck by a car while crossing the street with a box of scrap on his back.
Nevertheless, the orphaned nine-year-old lets loose his dreams, freed from the clutch of need and misery and says he will do whatever it takes to make his family happy and lift them out of their plight.
Salem collects scrap copper and iron and hunts for the heaviest pieces like many other people do because the more metal there is, the more money it will make. The child and his peers who do this work are made to carry loads that are too heavy for their frail bodies in order to earn a pitiful 30 dinars a month.
The ten-year-old Majed shares Salem’s emotions. He and his younger brother go out every day to collect scrap copper, and over time, he has developed asthma because of the gases he’s been exposed to from metal smelting. He also suffers from heart pain and a herniated disc. Majed says he is left with no choice but to put up with these pains after his father, who used to do the same work, was rendered bedridden due to an illness.
Jaber, 13, used to work in a grocery store. Despondently, he says, “I was forced to work, and I lost three years of my life. The three dinars I earned each day were hardly worth the eleven hours I put in. I finally left this work and returned to school, but because of all the time I had missed, I had to start over in the fifth grade instead of the eighth.”
“The Grave Digger Child”
Hamed, age 11, digs graves for a living. He says that he overcame the shock and terror he felt at first by doing this work, adding that he had to get used to the job because “life is difficult.” “I have nothing else to do. For a while, my home was a cemetery. The sight of children at play makes me long to join in on the fun, or at least to join a pickup game of football or some other sport.”
According to working children, there are numerous jobs in Zarqa, Sahab, and Rusaifa that do not call for experience, skills, or certifications. Some of them find employment in factories while others collect dry bread, scavenge for scrap metal and iron, and rummage through containers in the hopes of finding food.
Perhaps a number of long-term factors, most recently the Corona pandemic, have cast a dark shadow over the state of the economy and living standards. According to the Department of Statistics, the unemployment rate was 22.6% in the second quarter of 2022. Experts also warn of an increase in child labor as a result of deteriorating economic conditions, calling for economic and social protection policies to be considered.
160 Million Child Laborers in the World
The United Nations General Assembly states on its website that 160 million children, some as young as five, are engaged in child labor around the world today, and that government-sponsored social protection systems are necessary to combat poverty and vulnerability and to eliminate and prevent child labor.
This international platform affirms that social protection is a human right and a powerful policy tool for preventing families from resorting to child labor during times of crisis. However, prior to the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, only 46.9 percent of the world’s population was effectively covered by at least one social protection intervention, leaving the remaining 53.1 percent unprotected. This percentage leaves 1.5 billion people without social protection.
Globally, national spending on social protection for children accounts for only 1.1 percent of the Gross domestic product (GDP), and it is estimated that if no protection strategies are implemented, child labor will increase by 8.9 million by the end of 2022 due to high poverty rates.
In Jordan, the 2022–2030 National Anti–Child Labor Strategy places a strong emphasis on preventive programs to curtail child labor by establishing proactive measures like support programs for families, economic empowerment programs, and funding for small and household projects.
The strategy recognizes that child labor has numerous root causes and intersects with economic, social, and cultural factors. One of the major factors that lead to children working is poverty. Nonetheless, UNICEF found that 20% of children live in multidimensional poverty in a 2017 study.
Yes to Work, No to Education A Delusion of Social Expansion
According to experts, for some families, the advantages of employment outweigh those of education, either because education is of poor quality or because parents choose to make children work rather than keep them in school, which has an impact on the child. On the other hand, there are businesses that actively seek out young workers in order to avoid paying them the legally mandated minimum wage.
According to Linda Kalash, director of the Tamkeen Association for Legal Aid and Human Rights, the rise in child labor can be attributed to a number of factors, including rising unemployment, weak development, and poverty.
She goes on to say that many businesses use child labor unethically because they aren’t required to report them to social security and don’t pay the child an appropriate wage for his efforts. But the breakdown of families, she adds, has been linked to an increase in child labor.
Asthma: A Condition Shared By Kids in the Workforce
According to Dr. Muhammad Tarawneh, a pulmonologist and critical care consultant, children who work in auto repair shops are particularly at risk for developing asthma and other respiratory illnesses due to their prolonged exposure to oil fumes while performing their duties under vehicles.
Prior to the age of 18, he indicated, the respiratory system is most susceptible to chronic diseases, which increases the risk of developing asthma, bronchial obstruction, pulmonary fibrosis, pneumonia, and aspiration pneumonia. He also noted that the cost of treating these conditions places a strain on the healthcare system.
Regular Government Crackdown on Rising Child Labor Rates
The Ministry of Labor asserts that quarterly targeted campaigns are being conducted to eradicate child labor across all governorates and industries, with a particular focus on those that employ the greatest number of children, and that child labor is subject to daily inspections during the regular visits of labor inspectors.
According to the findings of a child labor evaluation conducted this year by Save the Children – Jordan as part of a program to reduce child labor implemented in collaboration with UNICEF, poverty, along with the absence of a breadwinner, is a major reason for male dropout and child labor, as well as some social norms that require male sons to provide for their families, even if they are children.
Child labor: A Serious Threat to Society’s Structure
Child labor, according to the head of the House of Workers for Studies, Hamada Abu Najma, poses a clear and explicit threat to the social structure, given the record-high unemployment rate.
To gauge the full extent of the pandemic’s effects, he says, new statistics on child labor are urgently needed.
He claims that the only data available comes from the 2016 National Child Labor Survey, which placed the number of working children in the age range (5-17) at around 76,000. Approximately 45,000 of the estimated 70,000 children whose employment is illegal are engaged in activities that are considered hazardous by international labor standards and labor law.
Jordan Committed to Combating Child Labor
According to Abu Najma, Jordan ratified the United Nations General Assembly’s Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 as well as two international labor conventions, No. (138) concerning the “minimum age for employment” in 1997 and No. (182) concerning the “prohibition of the worst forms of child labor” in 2000.
These conventions demand that states work to safeguard children from exploitation, immediately outlaw the worst types of child labor, offer free basic education, rehabilitate working children, and integrate them into society while also taking care of their families’ needs.
The Jordanian Labor Law reflects these values by outlawing any form of employment for anyone under the age of sixteen. Furthermore, it forbids the employment of minors between the ages of 16 and 18 in hazardous, exhausting, or otherwise harmful occupations, with the exception that a minor – in this age group – may work no more than six hours a day and be given at least one hour off.
SOURCE: JORDAN NEWS AGENCY