Funds for irrational reports

Many international organizations and donors have been spending millions of Dollars to support Yemen. However large portions of these funds are spent for studies, researches and reports that do not benefit Yemen or Yemeni people at all.

Many News agencies and media outlets published a report this week made by CHF international claiming that 5 million Yemeni children are employed. The report also stated that 40 percent of Yemeni children aged 7 to 13 are drawn to the labor market.

Moreover according to the report 10 percent of them are sexually abused and 40 percent are physically abused.

These findings are totally irrational and false. According to the 2004 census the number of Yemeni children 7 to 13 years old in the category is only 4.8 million. As mentioned above the report said that 40 percent of the Yemeni children aged 7 to 13 are employed. By making a simple calculation 40 percent of 4.8 million can never be 5 million!

This proves that the whole report was irrational and 100 percent fabricated. One of my friends after reading the report asked his 13 years old sister why she goes to work without telling him. He was kidding of course. She answered him saying who. He told her the CFI report that was published in most local and international news agencies  including Yemen's official news agency (Saba) said that 5 million Yemeni children are employed. "You’re supposed to be one of them because that is the total number of all Yemeni children aged 7 to 13," my friend told his sister that laughed at his joke. 

My friend wondered about the study made by CHF, particularly at the statement that said 10 percent of the 5 million employed Yemeni children are sexually abused.

My friend found out that most kids that work in Yemen are working with their parents in farms in rural areas. This is a fact so how can they  be sexually abused? By their parents?

The only Yemeni children that were proved to be exposed to sexual abuse were those being trafficked to Saudi Arabia and that percentage never exceeds 1 percent of the total number of Yemeni children aged 7 to 18.

The problem is that many of these organizations allocate substantial amounts of money in making such studies which prove to be less than reliable.

They rely on irresponsible people to perform critical and important studies.

This reminded me to a professor who was assigned to do research on violence in schools. This irresponsible Professor did not have time to make a field research so all he did was search the net googling the phrase "violence in schools". Luckily he found a field study made in an Arab country so all he did was replacing the name of the country with Yemen in every sentence that had the name of the Arab country where the actual research was made in. Oh to not forget before he submitted the research he also changed the names of schools and provinces with Yemeni ones.

We really don’t need irrational or fabricated studies and we really don’t need to spend donor’s funds for making such careless studies.

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