More than 500 thousand children working in the streets

More than 500 thousand children are working in the streets, according to new statistics from the Central Bureau for Statistics. This number has been documented to the Social Affairs Ministry through several implemented surveys.

Yemen is witnessing one of the highest population growth rates in the world 3.02%, while 41.8% of them living below national poverty line and 45.9 percent of them is under the age of 15 years, according to the United Nations Development Program.

“Poverty forces families to make their children work, but many of them go to the labor market because of their failure in the study,” said Muna Ali Salem, responsible of child labor department of in the Ministry of Social Affairs.

In 2002, the Child Rights Act in Yemen was adopted, which determines the minimum legal working age is 14 years. However, at a time when the law prohibits the employment of children under the age of 15 years in industrial action, did not put any restrictions on child labor in family enterprises, regardless of age.

According to a report of child labor in Yemen issued in 2009 for the Cooperative Housing Foundation International that most children work to help improve the income of their families, but some of them joined the workforce because of his failure in the study. The school system suffers from many problems, sometimes the range number of students per class between 100 and 150 students, so when the child fails in school, he goes to the labor market in search of a job, says the report.

The report came as part of a three-year program called “alternatives to combat child labor through education and sustainable services” and funded by the U.S. Department of Labor and implemented in the governorates of Aden, Hodeidah, Taiz and Hajah.

More than 20% of children surveyed that have reported “they can not afford school expenses,» or that their school results «were not good enough» or that «the school does not mean anything to them.”

Yemen still so far away from achieving the goal of eliminating the worst forms of child labor by 2016, despite being one of the states signatory to the ILO Convention 182 on worst forms of child labor, a target set by the International Labour Organization in the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour.

17 inspectors trained in the area of child labor in Yemen to prevent the worst forms of child labor in the country, but their number is not enough, said Salem. “So we called 25 new inspectors to the staff,” she added.

«We get money from the government but it is not enough», she said. “This allocation is YR200000 (about $ 8,900) a year to combat child labor,” she noted.

1.8 million children out of school, according to official and international statistics that is mean that the problem of child labor appears to be increasing.

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