IRIN
AFGHANISTAN: Poverty forces children to quit school to work
28 June 2004


[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

KABUL, 28 June (IRIN) - While millions of Afghan children have returned to 
school following the collapse of the Taliban regime in late 2001, tens of 
thousands of school-age youngsters, restricted by economic hardship, must 
still work on the streets of the Afghan capital, Kabul, to sustain their 
families.

"I would love to go to school, but I can't. There is no one else in my 
family to work except me," Zabi, a 10-year-old boy selling shopping bags 
in a crowded market told IRIN.

"I was in school, but last year I failed because I was working on the 
streets all day," Baryalai, a 12-year-old shoe shiner told IRIN, 
explaining that, with a disabled father and two sisters and a younger 
brother to feed, his priority was his family.

Such cases are not unusual. "In urban areas more children work openly on 
the streets," Edward Carwardine, a spokesman for the United Nations' 
Children's Fund (UNICEF), told IRIN in Kabul, noting that an estimated 
40,000 children were now working on the city's streets.

According to a 1996 survey conducted by the Afghan NGO Aschiana, the 
German aid group Terre des hommes and the office of the United Nations 
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), about 28,000 children were 
identified as "street-working children" in 10 populous districts of Kabul.

Many of the children lost the breadwinners in their homes or were put on 
the street to work, most of them as shoeshine boys or porters, washing 
cars, burning incense, selling small items or collecting metal. Others 
still resort to begging, but rarely admit it, considering such acts 
shameful.

But such street children are hardly new in the war-ravaged city of some 
three million. The children, both male and female, often assume the duty 
or responsibility of earning income for their families after the main 
breadwinners are killed or disabled.

For many children in Kabul, the families are unable to provide even the 
basics. To support the family, the children have to work to earn something 
for food, often under particularly dire conditions.

And while hazardous child labour had not been as commonplace as in other 
countries in the region, UNICEF remained concerned that children who have 
to work in some way to assist their families did not have access to 
education and health care, Carwardine explained.

It is precisely such issues that Aschiana is working to address. "We are 
trying hard to cut the number of poor children working on the streets, and 
fortunately we have had some success," Mohammad Yousuf, the director of 
the NGO's street-working children centre, told IRIN.

Since 1995, they have trained 2,600 street children in a variety of 
vocational fields including carpentry, painting and mechanics, he said, 
noting they were still working with close to 3,000 children in such areas.

According to UNICEF, in order to better assist children who do work, or 
who live in vulnerable families, Afghanistan needed a strong social care 
system. "The fact that so many children have to work in the first place is 
an indication of the economic hardship and stress faced by many Afghan 
families," the UNICEF official said.

Carwardine said the country needed more long-term support to tackle the 
issue of child labour in the war-affected country. "It would be naive to 
think that the issue of working children can be solved in a short period 
of time," he noted.


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004


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