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“Towards improving the conditions of Child Labour in Egypt”
Land Center for Human Rights – LCHR- is concerned with the issue of child
employment for the sake of improving their conditions in Egypt. The importance
of this issue appeared, as children are the most fragile category in any
society. According to the recent statistics issued by the ILO statistics office,
the number of working children under 14 years of age is more than 240 million
children around the world, 1.5 million of them in Egypt alone.
Not only because these children employment for long hours for trifle wages, but also because they are abused all the time more than the adults, as they are poor, young and inexperienced. They are treated inhumanly and have no statute protecting their rights.
LCHR thinks that this problem cannot be solved within a day and night, as it is a very complicated issue. It is associated with other problems related to the problems of laborers in general, such as the social, cultural and economic structure of the society. Thus, effective solutions would mean executing social, economic and political reform policies, as well as changing the organizational structures in the education systems, legislation process, labor market, social insurance, health care, etc…
Child labor seems to centralize in the agrarian sector and it
does not seem to disappear or even being decreased in the near
future here in Egypt. On the contrary, the new law of lease between
the owner and the leaseholder of the arable land made a large
number of farmers “land-less” and so they turned more dependant on the additional income that the children gain.
Child Labor phenomenon is characterize with the following:
· Long working hours, more than 10 hours a day.
· Hazardous.
· No social or medical insurance.
· The current labor laws do not apply to the agrarian labor sector, thus confusion appears regarding the legal framework of these children and understanding their problems.
· Lack of awareness among the workers in the rural communities, as well as a shortage of statistics and figures about the scope of the child employment phenomenon.
Thus, came the importance of this workshop to contribute in turning the public attention to the agrarian sector, as well as to increase the awareness of the lawyers and the concerned individuals about this issue. We hope to work together in order to improve the working conditions of those children, including the wages, working hours, legislation frame and insurance, both social and medical.