Domestic servants in Morocco
Fawaz Turki
4 Jan 2006
In a 60-page report titled “Inside the Home, Outside the Law: Domestic workers in Morocco,” released the last week of December, Human Rights Watch revealed that tens of thousands of Moroccan girls, trapped by family poverty and lack of schooling, endure widespread abuse as maids toiling out of sight in the privacy of their employers’ homes.
The girls, many as young as five, work as long as 100 hours a week with no rest or days off, for as little as 70 cents a day. Current and former child domestics have described to the New York-based organization’s field researchers how they have had to face frequent physical and verbal abuse, denial of adequate food and medical care, as well as sexual harassment by employers and their families.
Most do not attend school, rarely go out except for brief errands and rarely get to see their families. These girls, often illiterate, lack the know-how to seek help in leaving abusive workplaces, and end up having to endure the abuse because they fear getting lost or attacked if they run away on their own.
Morocco has, on the books, a Labor Code that bans employment of children under 15. But the code does not regulate domestic work, and labor inspectors are not authorized to enter private homes to check for violations.
“There is a myth that these girls are improving themselves by working,” said Clarisa Bencomo, children’s rights researcher at HRW. “The reality is that too many girls end up suffering lasting physical and psychological harm.” The report details several testimonies from these child laborers — all of them gut-wrenching. I choose one at random: “If something happened — if I broke something or did something badly — they would beat me with a shoe or a belt on any part of my body. I couldn’t leave the house — they would lock the door when they left. Both the husband and the wife hit me.
“My family saw me twice in the year that I worked there. They came to visit me at the house but the employer sat with us during the visit and had told me not to say anything bad or she would beat me more.
“When my mother came the last time to visit, I told her I wouldn’t stay at that house anymore. I said, ‘either I go with you or I will run away or kill myself.’”
The Moroccan government does not deny the existence of its child labor problem. In June 1999, it released a report admitting that as many as 600,000 children under the age of 15, more than half of them girls, worked rather then went to school, with many of them employed in rural areas, where they followed the tradition of toiling in the fields. But tens of thousands are sold by their parents as domestic servants in the cities, tied to their jobs in what the BBC correspondent in Morocco, Nick Pelham, said at the time “amounted to near slavery.”
It is a vicious circle. About 60 percent of Moroccans cannot read and write. And as industries try to cut costs by replacing adults with child workers, unemployed parents send their children out to work, and the cycle is repeated. According to the International Labor Organization, Morocco is hardly alone in facing the problem. In Africa as a whole, two in five children under 15 work. And in poor countries around the world, the total is roughly 250 million.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=75730&d=4&m=1&y=2006
Sudanese child camel jockeys return home
Integrated Regional Information Network
3 Jan 2006
Omer and Mazin, two Sudanese boys, were only four and six years old, respectively, when their father sold them to a woman trafficker to work as camel jockeys in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). "We had no money, and I could find no way to work," explained their father, Abdelrazig. The children labored in the UAE in exchange for a salary that was paid to their parents. After two years, they were returned home.
"I didn't understand what was happening at the time," Omer, now 10, said with visible difficulty when talking about his experiences. "But I was scared to be away from my mother and my home." Young children have worked as camel jockeys in the countries of the Persian Gulf for hundreds of years. Their small weight and size allows the camels to run faster.
According to a May 2005 report by Anti Slavery, a British nongovernmental organization, hundreds of children are trafficked to the UAE to work as camel jockeys each year. The majority of the boys, who come from Sudan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Mauritania, are kidnapped or sold by family and friends. Since May 2005, however, more than 150 children who had worked as camel jockeys in the UAE have been returned to Sudan as part of a rehabilitation and reintegration program implemented by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Save the Children Sweden, the Sudanese Ministry of Justice and Labour and other NGOs.
Ahmed Mahmoud Ahmed, secretary-general of the Peace and Development Volunteer Organisation (PDVO), a local NGO that works closely with UNICEF and Anti Slavery on this issue, said they had interviewed some children upon their return.
"Most of the children said that they lived in stables, that they were given one meal a day in order to keep their weight down and they were weighed everyday," Ahmed said.
The majority of Sudanese children who worked as camel jockeys in the Gulf were members of the nomadic Rashaida community, according to a 2003 study by Save the Chlildren Sweden. According to Ahmed, most children in Sudan were trafficked by their fathers, whereas in Bangladesh and Pakistan, children were usually abducted. "Camel jockeying is a part of their [the Rashaida tribe] culture, and it is a major source of income for them because they are very poor and therefore very vulnerable," Ahmed said. He explained that parents usually exchanged their child for a down payment and salary. The child received very little, if any, money for their work.
"The children will race until they are about nine or 10 or weigh about 45 kilos. After that they will work as cooks or cleaners until 13, 14, 15, and then they will be sent back home," Ahmed said. Once the camel jockeys had been returned to their home country, the children's ordeal was far from over.
"Because the children were so young when they left, they have forgotten their language. So when they come back they cannot communicate with their families and they remember nothing about the nomadic way of life," said Osman Abufatima, a UNICEF child-protection officer in Sudan. Another problem the boys faced was locating their families, as they had rarely been allowed to contact them while they were working. To address this issue, aid agencies established a system for family tracing and family communication.
Turner explained that rehabilitation needed to include medical care for physical injuries, as well as psychiatric care and counseling to help the boys deal with their traumatic experiences. "We need to give them their freedom back and make it possible for them to gain an education and bring them up to speed with their peer groups," she said. Turner also noted that the UAE government had to provide solutions for those children whose families could not be found.
Although most communities expressed their support for ending this practice, the members of the Rashaida ethnic group did not. "One of their chiefs told me that by attempting to put a stop to this practice we are disrupting one of their major sources of income and leaving them with few options," Abufatima said. He added that the community did not view the act of selling children for camel racing as unjust and considered it part of its traditional and cultural background.
"The chief asked me, ‘Why has UNICEF called it slavery and trafficking?’" he said.
PDVO's secretary-general Ahmed stressed that despite any setbacks, the focus needed to remain on ending the practice. "Camel jockeying is one of the worst forms of child labor that has ever been reported. ... The work is very risky. So many reports have come in from children falling from camels during races and getting killed or seriously injured. It is very sad. Very sad," he said.Children who survived the ordeal were emotionally scarred and ill equipped to return to their families.
"They all showed a lack of interest in living their lives," Ahmed said. "You see, this work has killed their spirits. Because of the harsh working conditions they have experienced at such an early age, it may be too late for them to live a normal life."
"There is nothing good about this experience," 12-year-old Mazin said. "I don't like to think about it, and I will try never to remember it."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50921&SelectRegion=
East_Africa&SelectCountry=SUDAN
Poverty Forced 32,000 kids into stone quarries in Nepal
Xinhua Net
2 Jan 2006
The constant threatening of the anti-government guerrillas to join their outfit coupled with extreme poverty leads many Nepalese children to work in stone quarries. Sanjeeb Kumar Bhujel, who migrated from eastern Khotang district because of guerrillas, is an example of those thousands of kids working in stone quarries at Agra river in central Dhading district, some 50 km west of Kathmandu. Sanjeeb's 12-year old brother Rabin also quit his studies. "The guerrillas repeatedly coerced me to join them, thus I had no way out other than to join my brother," Rabin told Xinhua with a gloomy face. The brothers had to feed the guerrillas at any cost whenever they arrived at their village. "The reality is such we were not in a condition to feed our family for a whole year," the brothers said. More than 40 percent of all stone quarry workers are migrants, according to the study of Concern for Children and Environment in Nepal (CCEN), a non-government organization working with the kids of the stone quarries.
Many of them came to the city looking for better jobs, even more fleeing a devastated rural economy and the real possibility of getting caught in the cross fire of a war between the guerrillas and the government's security forces, Bijaya Sainju, chief of CCEN noted. Nearly 85 percent of the stone quarry children came to work there through a parent or family member. Of those parents, more than 95 percent were illiterate. The family bonds are one of the major obstacles to child rights groups seeking to end under age labor, Sainju noted. More than 95 percent of the parents are illiterate, and they don't see any immediate returns from sending them to school. "So, they want their children to work instead of going to school," Sainju noted, adding, "These stone quarry children are always deprived of their basic rights to education, health, and recreation."
It is estimated about 32,000 children now are working in the stone quarrying industry of Nepal and a majority of them are between 11 and 13 years of age, Sainju said. More than two-thirds of those children worked from nine to 10 hours every day and still others regularly pulled to 12-hourshifts. "And it is not uncommon to see children as young as five working alongside adults," Sainju said. Nepal has national laws protecting children from unfair labor standards and has signed onto international treaties which prevent child labor. But though donor countries place much pressure upon the governments of the developing world to sign onto international conventions, such measures have proved largely unenforceable. And in reality, Nepal currently has one of the world's worst reputations for child exploitation. "The Nepali government is good and progressive at creating laws and ratifying international conventions," said Gauri Pradhan, president of Child Workers in Nepal. "They are just very bad at implementing them. And children suffer a great deal because of this." Under age workers now make up a full quarter of the workforce, contributing at least 10 percent of Nepal's total GDP.
http://southasia.oneworld.net/article/view/124964/1/
Children’s plight in Côte d'Ivoire worsened by lingering conflict
Integrated Regional Information Network
28 Dec 2005
Twelve-year-old Monique Yao lost her father to war, as well as her seat in the classroom. Her mother hopes to help her reclaim the latter some day soon. “I asked for help from people, but I could not come up with enough money and she was dismissed, ” Dame Sophie Yao says, seated next to the table where she sells fruit and attieke, a cassava-based favorite dish. She says she might be able to come up with enough money to put Monique back in school soon, but the young girl would have to split her time between studying and working with her mother in the market to keep the family afloat.
Monique sells fruit at their street stall daily until 10 p.m., when she returns to what was to be a temporary home, where she, her mother and her three-year-old brother have lived since they fled fighting in western Côte d'Ivoire three years ago. Monique ’s father was killed as rebels and government forces wrestled for control of the Yaos’ hometown of Man. The young girl represents the increasingly tough plight children face in Côte d'Ivoire , West Africa ’s one-time oasis of stability, split in two in 2002 and slogging along ever since in a state of no war, no peace. The conflict forced 700,000 children to abandon their studies, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). “ T housands of children are up against poverty, abandonment, lack of education, malnutrition, negligence and vulnerability, ” Youssouf Oomar, UNICEF representative in Côte d'Ivoire said last week on the release of the agency ’s annual report on the state of the world ’s children.
Côte d'Ivoire ranks among the 15 countries with the highest under-five mortality rates in the world, the UNICEF report says, and is one of the few countries where child mortality is on the rise.The rate climbed to 194 deaths per thousand children under five in 2004, from 157 deaths per thousand in 1990. UNICEF puts armed conflict among the greatest threats to childhood worldwide, along with poverty and HIV/AIDS. Armed conflict exposes children to exploitation as combatants or sex workers, guts basic infrastructure, and devastates primary education, the report says. Most often, UNICEF says, children are among the most vulnerable when conflict precludes essential services like health and protection.
For Côte d'Ivoire’s children, Oomar said, the day in and day out life is a fight for survival. Survival for 14-year-old Ousmane Kone and his family rests partly in the hands of motorists he urges to buy packets of Kleenex at a bustling roundabout in Abidjan ’s Abobo neighborhood. Beads of sweat on his forehead, in his tattered knee-length T-shirt, Ousmane runs non-stop from car to car amid the roundabout ’s nearly permanent traffic jam.
“If I don ’t sell a package of 15 by the evening, there won ’t be enough money for the family ’s needs, and it will be my fault, ” he said. If he is lucky enough to find buyers for all 15 packets, Ousmane brings 500 CFA francs, or a little less than one US dollar, home to his family.Ever since Ousmane ’s father, a craftsman, lost all his tools in arson fires during unrest in Abidjan, Ousmane and his 12-year-old sister, Kady, must work to help make ends meet.Kady washes dishes for her aunt who sells alloco - fried plantain - another Ivorian favorite.
Sometimes it is the children ’s income alone that allows the family to buy the day ’s meal, Ousmane says. Ousmane did not attend primary school, only a few years of Koranic school. He hopes to train as a mechanic one day. Some students in the rebel-held north who have gone to school are wondering whether they ’r e any better off for it. National exams have not been held in the north in over two years, leaving some 60,000 students in limbo. Without their end-of-year diplomas, their studies will have been in vain. The UN has repeatedly called on the Ivorian government to get the education system back on track.
In a statement earlier this year UNICEF said the blockage n ot only threatens the children’s educational development, but also their physical safety: thousands of children who should be studying and writing for exams are out on the streets with no certainty of their future. The situation also breeds resentment and potential violence among youth - an explosive element in a country whose condition is already fragile, UNICEF warned.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50879&SelectRegion=West_Africa&Select
Country=COTE_D_IVOIRE
Iraqi street children face hunger and abuse
Integrated Regional Information Network
26 Dec 2005
Khalid Amir, a ten-year-old boy whose surname means “the prince,” has built his castle in the streets of the capital, Baghdad. His daily income comes from selling sweets at traffic lights, where violence is part of his everyday life. “Sometimes they hit me, or close the window on my hands,” said Amir, pointing to a scar on his face caused by a driver who struck him with a penknife a week ago.“People don’t care who we are and where we come from,” he added.
Like Amir and his eight-year-old sister, Salua, hundreds of children can be seen on the streets of Baghdad struggling to eke out a living. “I don’t have a choice,” explained Amir, adding that, if he returns home without money, his father will hit him. Safa’a Muhammad, a senior official in the Ministry of Public Work and Social Affairs, concedes that few programs are currently available to help children like Amir and his sister. “Last year, we had many projects to help such children, but corruption in the ministry has caused them all to be delayed or ignored,” she said. Chronic poverty and high rates of unemployment are largely to blame. “If the government helped them by giving work to their parents, these children would be going to school today,” said Raghed Rabia’a, a psychologist who volunteers with several Baghdad-based NGOs.
Instead of going to school, though, children like Amir and Salua are growing up illiterate, forced to work to help support their families. Most of these children also face regular malnourishment, health workers say. “The only thing I eat all day is a piece of bread with some tomatoes and fried potatoes,” said Amir. “If we eat more than this, our father doesn’t let us eat the next day.” According to Hayder Hussainy, a senior official at the health ministry, approximately 50 percent of Iraqi children suffer from some form of malnourishment. He added that 1 in 10 also suffered from chronic disease or illness. Beatings are also frequent.
“One time I pushed a man to buy gum from me,” recalled 11-year old Baker Hayder, who works the streets of the capital selling candy. “He got out of his car and hit me so hard with his shoe that I lost consciousness.”
“No one came to help me or asked what had happened,” he added. “But this is what I have to do to survive.” Many Baghdad residents believe street do not deserve to be treated like other children. “I hate it when children come over to my car selling candy with their dirty hands,” said Najida Hadi, a resident of the capital. “I wish all of them would be put in a separate place from the rest of society.” Some use violence to avoid the children, hitting them through the car window when they approach.
“Only we know how much it hurts,” said Amir, prince of the streets.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50850&SelectRegion=Middle_East&Select
Country=IRAQ-MIDDLE_EAST
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India a haven for child sex tourists: study
Sunday, January 15, 2006 11:25:22 am IANS
NEW DELHI : India is slowly turning into a centre for child-sex tourists, says a path-breaking study on trafficking, while calling for a global battle against child sex.
"In India, the abuse of both male and female children by tourists has acquired serious dimensions," said the 748-page study called "Trafficking in Women and Children in India", which was sponsored by the National Human Rights Commission.
"Unlike Sri Lanka and Thailand, this problem has not been seriously tackled or discussed openly (in India) and has remained more or less shrouded in secrecy, making the likelihood of child abusers being caught and punished very low," it said.
"The silence of the community and its unwillingness to speak out and openly discuss the issue has further compounded the problem." The study said Goa had become a sex destination for many tourists, and added that sex tourism had become a problem in Kerala too.
Detailing a case study that led to the conviction of a foreigner in Goa, it said that beach boys, shack owners and former victims of paedophiles were facilitating the procurement of boys and girls for sex. Along with the growth of tourism in Kerala, there was increasing victimisation of children, it said. The study quoted other investigators as saying that hoteliers in areas like Alleppy and Ernakulam promoted sex tourism "because such services bring in extra income. "Victims are often projected by agents as college girls in search of fun and excitement or wanting to earn an extra buck."
"In places like Alleppy, foreign tourists stay in houseboats, making houseboat sex tourism a new and thriving concept. This is a safe method, as there are hardly raids on houseboats." Enforcement agencies, the study said, "have turned a blind eye to this problem and cases have seldom been registered". The study quoted investigators as saying that many children mentioned that they had sex with a varied range of tourists for Rs 50 to Rs 200. "It is hard to measure the incidence of child sex tourism as it is difficult to conduct quantitative research on such a clandestine and illegal industry," the study said.
"Qualitative research and anecdotal evidence suggests that child sex tourism is growing and spreading into different regions of the world. "There is also evidence that over the last few years, increasing numbers of sex offenders, particularly from Western countries, are shifting to less developed countries due to increasing vigilance and action against paedophilia in their own countries. "There are fewer laws against child abuse in India and the beaches of Goa and Kovalam in Kerala are increasingly becoming the main destinations for those seeking child prostitutes." The study, which was researched by the New Delhi-based Institute of Social Sciences and funded by USAID, calls for greater international battle against child sex tourism.
The report called for global cooperation to fight the menace of child sex tourism. This is an internationally organized crime and a global perspective and coordinated plan of action are necessary to deal with it. "The destination countries need to enact and enforce stringent laws and punish the exploiters and their collaborators."
"Child pornography, which is closely associated with child sex tourism, is a technically advanced crime. It is necessary to set up trained and equipped police units to combat Internet based child pornography."
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Govt asks schools to form 'child cabinets'
Radhika D Srivastava
Sunday, January 15, 2006 02:23:55 am  TIMES NEWS NETWORK
PATNA : For the first time, school students in the state will call the shots in their institutions. They will decide if school timings need to be changed, when to lend library books to fellow students, whether toilets are to be better maintained and how to make their school a beautiful and child-friendly place. In a major decision, the state government has ordered all primary and middle schools in Bihar to form "child cabinets" that will play an active role in the running of the schools. Already about 3,300 schools in the Patna district have formed these cabinets. Results are visible too. Patna district superintendent of education Shashi Bhushan told TOI, "Wherever child cabinets have been formed, the attendance of students has gone up.
On an average, we have recorded an increase of about 10 per cent." Plans are afoot to train "master trainers" who will help form these cabinets in all the 53,000 primary and middle schools in the state. The cabinet will consist of 12 members, including the prime minister, the deputy prime minister, the education minister, the health and sanitation minister, the water and horticulture minister, the library and science minister, the sports and culture minister and their deputies. Bhushan said, "The main idea behind setting up these cabinets was to get students more involved in the functioning of the schools so that they could have a sense of belonging. Rather than the principal and teachers deciding everything, the children now have a platform to voice their needs and concerns."
In the coming days, child cabinets will receive the support of Unicef that already has the experience of working with such cabinets in thousands of schools in Jharkhand and Karnataka. Unicef state representative for Bihar and Jharkhand Bijaya Raj Bhandari said, "This is a very positive step as we have seen distinct changes these cabinets have brought about in the schools in other states. The cabinets increased the confidence of children, helped them to imbibe life skills and improved the environment of the schools." Since most schools do not have a boundary wall or a garden, the cabinet's horticulture minister would be responsible for erecting a "bio-fence", basically a hedge around the school's premises that would act as a boundary.
Besides, the students would also plant saplings, water them and maintain a garden. The scheme has become a big hit in many Patna schools and teachers say they can see the difference it has been making in the confidence level of the children. Principal of a government school in Mangal Talaab in Patna City Umesh Prasad Sinha said, "The child cabinet is very active in my school. They have spades and water hoses and are developing a very nice garden. They also counsel students who do not attend classes regularly." Sinha said, "Children are now more vigilant about the activities in the school and also keep a watch on the midday meals served here.
"Recently, the cabinet raised the demand for another water tap for drinking water. At the moment, our school has only one hand pump for all the students." He said that the school administration was considering their demand.
As Rural Ethiopians Struggle, Child Labor Can Mean Survival
Many Forsake School To Support Families
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 3, 2006; Page A01
LEBASJIE, Ethiopia -- Asmara Chanie herds cattle out to grazing fields at sunrise and herds them back at sundown. He is paid in sacks of barley, which feeds his family of six. Himnat Yenealem scrubs floors, washes clothes and roasts coffee beans for her employer's breakfast. In return, she receives food, shelter and clothing. Their jobs are the norm in Africa, where manual labor is the most common form of employment. But their ages would surprise many outsiders. Asmara is 12, a skinny and friendly third-grade dropout who recently traded his backpack for a herder's whip when his father's harvest was poor. Himnat is a petite girl of 13, with chocolate-colored curls and a solemn temperament, whose parents died of illnesses related to AIDS four years ago, leaving her alone on the street.
"I was in a bad dilemma, so I said yes to working," Himnat said quietly, picking at her calloused hands. "I felt too scared. But at least this way, I wouldn't be homeless and I could try to upgrade myself." Across sub-Saharan Africa, according to U.N. research, one-third of all children younger than 14 go to work each day, making a stark jump past childhood and into responsibilities that their peers in the West don't have to think about for years.
There are so many children on the continent working that education ministries list labor as the primary reason children quit primary school, followed by the loss of their parents to HIV/AIDS and the inability to pay school fees. Many are employed informally, in neighbors' houses or fields, and paid with food or supplies; only those who work in large factories earn cash wages. "Unfortunately, child labor is the reality in Africa," said Afewerk Ketema, coordinator of Focus on Children at Risk, an Ethiopian aid group. He has recruited 30 working children, including Himnat, for a program in this northern town in which they can attend evening or afternoon classes.
"The real truth is that child labor is not seen as wrong in rural Africa. In fact, it's a source of survival," Ketema said. "Children live the poverty and the poor crops more than anyone. And now with AIDS, too, parents are often sick, die or are overtaxed raising other people's orphans. . . . There were so many cases of children being taken into homes as servants."
Pushed Into Employment
Ethiopia has one of the highest rates of child labor in the world, according to the United Nations' International Labor Organization and the African Network for the Prevention of and Protection Against Child Abuse and Neglect. Nine million children ages 5 to 17 are employed, 90 percent of them in the agricultural sector, the agencies reported. Factors pushing children into the fields include ancient farming techniques, overworked land, the AIDS epidemic and a booming population of 74 million. This is a deeply religious society where families often have eight to 10 children. It is a society where AIDS and other ailments have left 4.6 million children without parents -- the largest number of orphans in the world, according to a joint study in 2004 by U.N. agencies and the Ethiopian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. As Rural Ethiopians Struggle, Child Labor Can Mean Survival
It is also an impoverished rural society where 85 percent of the population farms two-acre plots of land, too small to turn a profit, and nearly every plot is worked to exhaustion. Studies have shown that cultures dependent on subsistence farming also have the highest rates of child labor. "The actual style of agriculture hasn't changed in 2,000 years, and that affects everything," said Stuart William, a Kenyan who is working on a joint environmental and development project with the United Nations and the Ethiopian Agriculture Ministry. "When the crops fail because the land is overused, then the farmers sell off the animals. The family is then totally stripped of their assets. The farmer loses out in every way. The only thing left is to send the child to work for someone else."
Asmara 's family fell victim to such a chain of events. Last year, when the rocky brown topsoil of their farm became too eroded to plow, his weeping father, Bisat Chanie, reluctantly sold their last oxen. First he sent his oldest son, 16, to work at a sesame factory near the border with Sudan. Then he trudged up a steep hill to the nearest market to speak to a broker about finding Asmara a job.
"We had nothing. Our food was done," said the father, 50, a tall man with a gray beard, a white turban and a gentle manner. "I cried over sending them to work. I still cry. But I'm also proud of my sons for helping us. What other choices do we have?"
Drought and Underdevelopment
Over the past several decades, nature and politics have conspired to keep Ethiopia one of the least developed nations on Earth. Some regions are prone to cycles of drought and famine, and farms depend heavily on rain. During the 1980s, the communist ruler, Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, neglected suffering regions that did not support his government, stalling development and exacerbating the effects of a 1984 famine in which an estimated 1 million people died. Mengistu was toppled in 1991 and a reformist government was installed, but seven years later it became involved in a border war with Eritrea, which cost both countries an estimated $1 million a day. Many foreign donors pulled out of development projects, including plans to build modern irrigation systems.
Recently, tensions between the countries have soared again and political problems have returned to Ethiopia. After a disputed election led to protests last fall, numerous opposition leaders were jailed and remain behind bars. As a result, Western donors are seen likely to hold back $375 million in aid. Some of those opponents were pushing for reform of the current land system, in which the government rents tiny plots to farmers and makes it difficult for them to form cooperatives. But officials say industrialization, not land reform, is the key to a better economic future for Ethiopia's children.
"The situation these children face, for even a few weeks, is heartache enough for a lifetime," Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said in a recent interview in the capital, Addis Ababa. "We have made some progress in putting in place warnings to detect food shortages. But maybe we have done too little, too late."
Meles's government has been credited with making efforts to fight AIDS, preaching family planning, planning for drought and attracting a few large factories. But until reforms reach into parched rural regions, children like Asmara and Himnat will have few alternatives.
Himnat, a tiny girl with a round face, spoke softly about how her parents, who sold home-brewed beer to farmers, died of complications from AIDS in their village 40 miles to the northwest. They had no rented land, and she was left with no place to live. Her only aunt was already overburdened with three children of her own.
She considered herself lucky, though, because she found work as a maid for a woman who was "moderate with me and never beat me for mistakes. She even let me go to school part time. I feel so happy about that, and now I work for her even harder."
A Demand for Education
Now, through Ketema's after-work program, she can also get an education. Teachers at her school said she is a star pupil but sometimes naps between classes. Himnat is excited because once she masters reading and writing, the program will teach her a useful skill like bicycle repair, tailoring, hairdressing or carpentry. Children's rights advocates are pushing for a national half-day school system so more children can move beyond farming.
Garet Mengistie, Himnat's employer, said she has been praised for taking in an orphan but knows "there isn't a future for her to work for me forever."
"She's a good girl and deserves some schooling," Mengistie said.
Bisat Chanie cannot send Asmara to school, even part time, because the cattle owner who hired the boy needs him minding the herd all day. But Asmara's two sisters have shown an aptitude for books, and Chanie said he is determined to keep them in class, even if it means using all the money his older son sends from the sesame factory -- and even if he has to collect firewood to sell, which is considered women's work.
"During the time of my father there was a lot of land. We made a small profit farming," Chanie said, sitting outside his hut, his brow furrowed with worry as he gazed over his rocky field. "We never went to school. But we didn't leave home, either. Now the young generation is very pessimistic about the land, and they are right." Maybe one day, Chanie said, his daughters will find jobs as secretaries or government workers. Then, he could finally afford to send Asmara back to school.
The next global cause: free education for all: Gordon Brown
You feel most passionately when you meet children excluded from chances we take for granted
Published: 04 January 2006
Today 110 million of the world's children will not go to school. The vast majority are girls. Half of Africa's children will never finish primary schooling. Offering primary education to every child is the most cost effective investment the world could ever make. For $10bn [£5.75bn] a year, every child in every continent could have teachers, books and classrooms. For less than 2p each per day, we could provide schooling for every child in the poorest countries, or give girls the same chances as boys in 50 countries where girls lose out dramatically.
The past year saw a massive campaign to double African aid, write off debt and ensure treatment for all Aids sufferers by 2010. This year should usher in a new resolution that, by delivering our Gleneagles promises on aid, we achieve the Millennium Development Goals for education and health care. Our mission should be universal free education for every child, universal health care for every family, and I will suggest to the G8 finance ministers in Moscow next month that this mission to deliver should reach its climax in 2007.
I am astonished at the number of school-to-school link-ups already existing between Britain and Africa. We should now encourage more schools, then colleges and universities, to join the crusade for education. And the benefits are not just for the children, but for everyone.
Delivering on education is not just about the empowerment of individuals to realise their potential, putting opportunity directly into their hands. It is also the best anti-poverty strategy, and - with trade justice - the best contribution we can make to growth and economic development. The benefits are in job chances and prosperity - for every additional year of a child's education, estimated average earnings increase by 11 per cent; and in health - for each additional year of a mother's education, childhood mortality is reduced by 8 per cent.
I visited Mozambique last February and found that mothers completing five grades of schooling are twice as likely to vaccinate their children. Zambian mothers with a secondary education are 30 per cent more likely to take their children to a clinic for treatment.
And education is also vital in preventing the further spread of Aids. Women with schooling are thought to be three times better able to protect themselves against Aids than those with no education. Even in the worst affected communities, primary age children are largely uninfected and represent a window of hope into the future: if these children could grow up free of HIV it would, over a generation, change the face of the epidemic.
But the demand must be for education free of charge. User fees can take as much as a quarter of a poor family's annual income in sub-Saharan Africa. Their very existence discourages parents and is one of the biggest barriers to the expansion of schooling in the poorest countries.
And free education should not be at the expense of good quality education. As making education free increases demand, investment in teachers, materials, training and reduced class sizes is needed to increase supply.
You feel most passionately about the sheer waste of potential when you meet children excluded from chances we take for granted. In Britain, pupils think nothing of enjoying free education. In Africa, it is a right still being fought for.
One of my most vivid memories from my visit to Kenya last January was hearing children in Kibera outside Nairobi chanting the slogan "Free Education". I recall teenagers in rural Tanzania pleading with me, demanding to know why they were excluded from the chance to study and stay on at school.
I will never forget the scores of mothers working in sugar fields in Mozambique, waving their £5 weekly pay cheques - and demanding to know how they could ever afford, no matter how hard they worked, to pay for their children's education.
And I met a 12-year-old girl in a hut in a Tanzanian village. Her brother was suffering from Aids and she told me that - to help him - her ambition was to be a doctor. But I knew there and then that this impoverished girl, no matter how determined she was, could never afford secondary school, far less pay for a medical education. Without the action we propose, her potential - and that of millions - will remain forever unrealized and unfulfilled.
Yet the demand for education and the faith in it is impressive. When Kenya made education free, one million children turned up from nowhere to enroll for schooling. One million who could not afford education one day started to grow, develop and flourish at school the next day. When Uganda made education free, numbers increased from three million to over five million and the gender gap was all but eliminated. When Malawi made education free, enrolments rose by 50 per cent to three million.
But even today, the World Bank estimates 77 out of 94 poor countries still charge some type of fees for primary education. Under the World Bank's fast- track initiative, countries like ours - with Hilary Benn's leadership - are providing increased financial aid in return for poor countries committing to prioritize education. Under this initiative, universal free primary education could be provided to 67 million children in up to 60 countries currently denied it - almost two thirds of the global total excluded.
But we know the poorest countries cannot provide schooling and abolish fees without long- term predictable funding. A year or two's aid is not enough to plan for a generation of new schools and teachers. Britain's proposal for an international finance facility would break free from the halting and intermittent aid of the past, would frontload finance and guarantee it for the long term. The pilot facility for immunization will start to show what can be done, frontloading $4bn to save five million lives by 2015.
During the coming year, we should start a new facility to do the same for long-term provision of schooling, not only enabling children to break from the vicious cycle of illiteracy, unemployment and poverty but empowering poor countries to become educated and skilled as a means to growth. So in 2006 and 2007, "Education for All" should not just be a slogan. It should become a global cause around which the world can unite that affirms our dignity as human beings - that no matter their birth or background, every child in every part of the world should have the chance to realize their potential, to bridge the gap between what they are and what they have it in themselves to become, and so to enrich the world.
Let us become the first generation in history that develops not just the potential of some but all our children. We know what quality education can achieve. We know that delivering free education is a test of our resolve at Gleneagles to double aid. We can afford it. And we cannot afford not to do it.
The writer is the Chancellor of the Exchequer
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