The LCHR has issued report no. 46 of the Economic & Social Rights series monitoring the conditions and problems of child labor in the agrarian sector. It presents a case study about children working in Ezbet El Hakim, Bany Swief governorate, in one of the big governmental farms. The report consists of several sections as follows:
The Preface presents the concept of child labor, meaning efforts children make in return for a certain amount of money. This section also presents different forms of child labor and the dangers involved, especially in the agrarian sector.
The First Section covers the size and causes of child labor on the international and the Arab world level. The most important cause for child labor is the poverty that many families face, forcing them to send their children to work in order to earn money and satisfy the family’s basic needs. This means that the children are deprived of their right to education, which consequently increases the rate of unemployment among adults. The report shows that there are 250 million children working worldwide. 121 million underage children who have quit school entirely and are working, most of them girls. There are 180 million children between the age of 5 and 17 who work under very bad and dangerous conditions. The report states that the majority of working children in developing countries work in agriculture, fishing, petty-commodity sale, restaurants and hotels. Most of the world's poor people are found in the agrarian sector. They work long hours for very low gains and under very hard and dangerous conditions. Although there were some international efforts to limit child labor, this phenomenon is continuously increasing and so are the dangers that working children face.
The Second Section presents the conditions of rural working children in Egypt, indicating that the government has no plans or policies to improve the conditions of education, health, work or income of the rural population. Most of these people suffer from the lack of basic services, like potable water, paved roads, sewage systems, and suitable housing. The report shows that the agrarian sector consists of more than three million working children, especially during the harvest seasons of certain crops such as vegetables, rice and cotton. This section presents the dangers that children face when working in the agrarian sector, especially the health hazards they face when using pesticides.
The Third Section covers farmers’ conditions in Bany Swief governorate in particular. This governorate has 2,200,000 inhabitants who live in an area of 155 square kilometers – the total area of the governorate is 7169 square kilometers and includes the green valley and the eastern and western deserts. The governorate consists of seven cities, 220 towns, 38 of them major towns, and 764 small villages. The report reveals the bad economic and social conditions in the governorate, as the illiteracy rate in Bany Swief is 40%, 73% of illiterates being women. This governorate is considered the worst in providing educational services such as decent classrooms, books and teachers. It also suffers from bad medical services: there are only three doctors to treat every 10,000 thousand people. Only 70% of the governorate's population have access to clean potable water, meaning that 30% are drinking polluted water.
The Fourth Section presents the conditions of working children in the village of Ezbet El Hakim. The real tragedy in this case is that the employer is not an individual but governmental agencies, syndicates and agrarian associations. The stories that children tell us in this section may help improve the way we and others interested in protecting children's rights work. These children work more than ten hours a day spraying seeds with pesticides for storage without any precautions. The farm uses children to protect seeds, but it does not protect these children who are the seeds of our future.
The Fifth Section presents testimonies of some children working on this farm and their families. One of them is a ten-year-old boy called Ibrahim, who says about his life: "I am the youngest of seven children, three of them are girls and are married, while the other three are boys: two of them are educated and one is not, just like me. My father said that it was better to work than to have education, as most of the educated people here don't work, just like my two brothers. Me, my father and one of my brothers work in the farm for daily wages." About his work he says, "we wake up at dawn, pray and then ride a car to the farm which takes about 15 minutes. I work with maize, we make it into grain, filter it into a machine and put a red or green powder on it for storage. The color of this powder sticks to our clothes, hands and faces; soap can't clean all of it. We take one hour break, we eat some Tameya, cheese and bread that mother has given us, we rest a little and then go back to the exhausting work until sunset. Then we ride back home, and on the next day we do the same. My father takes my daily wage, which is four pounds. On Friday, he gives me one pound so that I can go out with my friends and have fun."
The Sixth Section presents some recommendations, such as:
• The state must follow the child law that specifies a minimum age limit for working children and the number of working hours.
• The Ministry of Education must develop a program in order to know how many children are not enrolled in schools in every area of Egypt, spend more efforts on discovering the causes of this problem and remove these causes.
• Pesticide spraying must be done under the supervision of agrarian engineers in every area and village, and anyone who uses children for such work has to be prosecuted.
• The Ministry of Agriculture must take all the necessary precautions to protect children working in agriculture from any health hazards. There must be continuous periodical inspections in all farms and facilities that employ children.
• The Ministry of Social Solidarity must take care of the poor families in the countryside, especially those who do not own any land, and provide them with a monthly support of no less than LE 300, so that they do not have to force their children to join the labor market.
The LCHR calls on all civil society organizations to do their best in implementing these recommendations in order to protect the rights of working children and contribute to creating a better future for everyone.
The report will be published on our website when we finish the translation.