Human Trafficking in [Egypt Street Children in [Egypt] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Egypt] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery Arab Republic of Egypt [ Country-by-Country
Reports ] The Arab Republic
of Egypt [map], located NE
Africa and SW Asia, is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea (N), Egypt is a source,
transit, and destination country for women and children trafficked for the
purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Some of Egypt’s estimated
one million street children – both boys and girls – are exploited in
prostitution and forced begging. Local gangs are, at times, involved in this
exploitation. Egyptian children are recruited for domestic and agricultural
labor; some of these children face conditions indicative of involuntary
servitude, such as restrictions on movement, non-payment of wages, threats,
and physical or sexual abuse. In addition, wealthy men from the Gulf
reportedly travel to Egypt to purchase “temporary marriages” with Egyptian
females, including girls who are under the age of 18; these arrangements are
often facilitated by the females’ parents and marriage brokers. Child sex
tourism is increasingly reported in Cairo, Alexandria, and Luxor. Young,
female Sudanese refugees, including those under 18, may be coerced into
prostitution in Cairo’s nightclubs by family or Sudanese gang members. Egypt
is a transit country for women trafficked from Uzbekistan, Moldova, Ukraine,
Russia, and other Eastern European countries to Israel for sexual
exploitation; organized crime groups are involved in these movements. - U.S. State Dept
Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2009
[full country report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been culled
from the web to illuminate the situation in *** FEATURED
ARTICLE *** Egypt - Underage
And Unprotected: Child Labor In Egypt's Cotton Fields SUMMARY - Each year over one million children
between the ages of seven and twelve are hired by Egypt's agricultural
cooperatives to take part in cotton pest management. Employed under the
authority of Egypt's agriculture ministry, most are well below Egypt's
minimum age of twelve for seasonal agricultural work. They work eleven hours
a day, including a one to two hour break, seven days a week-far in excess of
limits set by the Egyptian Child Law.1
They also face routine beatings by their foremen, as well as exposure to heat
and pesticides. These conditions violate Egypt's obligations under the
Convention on the Rights of the Child to protect children from ill-treatment
and hazardous employment. They are also tantamount to the worst forms of
child labor, as defined in the International Labour Organization's Convention
182, which Egypt has not yet ratified. Children were forcibly recruited to
take part in pest management as recently as ten years ago, and some farmers
continue to believe that they will be fined if they resist their children's
recruitment. However, most children today are compelled to work by the
driving force of poverty. ***
ARCHIVES *** U.S. Dept
of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Reports indicate a widespread practice of poor rural families
making arrangements to send daughters to cities to work as domestic servants
in the homes of wealthy citizens. Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – There
were anecdotal and press reports of trafficking of persons from sub-Saharan
Africa and Eastern Europe through the country to Europe and Child
maids now being exported to US www.zimbio.com/AP+News/articles/7537/Child+maids+now+being+exported
Shyima was 10 when a wealthy
Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in
their California home. She awoke before dawn and often worked past midnight
to iron their clothes, mop the marble floors and dust the family's crystal.
She earned $45 a month working up to 20 hours a day. She had no breaks during
the day and no days off. Once behind the walls of gated
communities like this one, these children never go to school. Unbeknownst to
their neighbors, they live as modern-day slaves, just like Shyima, whose
story is pieced together through court records, police transcripts and
interviews. Shyima cried when she found out
she was going to America in 2000. Her father, a bricklayer, had fallen ill a
few years earlier, so her mother found a maid recruiter, signed a contract
effectively leasing her daughter to the couple for 10 years and told Shyima
to be strong. She arrived at Los Angeles
International Airport on Aug. 3, 2000, according to court documents. The
family brought her back to their spacious five-bedroom, two-story home,
decorated in the style of a Tuscan villa with a fountain of two angels
spouting water through a conch. She was told to sleep in the garage. It had no windows and was neither heated
nor air-conditioned. Soon after she arrived, the garage's only light bulb
went out. The Ibrahims didn't replace it. From then on, Shyima lived in the
dark. She was told to call them
Madame Amal and Hajj Nasser, terms of respect. They called her
"shaghala," or servant. Their five children called her
"stupid." Human
trafficking: the case of Egypt www.thedailynewsegypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=15456 THE
SITUATION IN EGYPT - The local dimension of human trafficking includes child
labor, the sexual exploitation of children, the sale of human organs as well
as various forms of prostitution. The issue has now become a major topic of
concern for social scientists, police and law-enforcement authorities as well
as rehabilitation centers. Not only do landless peasants earn
a pittance working the land, but they are subjected to abuse, and no group
more so than the children, the most vulnerable members of society. Foremen in
the fields subject the children to violent beatings. Gangmasters recruit the
children, invariably the offspring of landless peasants and impoverished
peasant families. The parents of the child labourers are desperately poor and
are often all too relieved to part with their children. In the final
analysis, farming out one's children as indentured labourers mean fewer
mouths to feed. In
Egypt, child workers a growing problem as food prices rise Each day, 14-year-old Ali
Abdel-Nasser works at a brick factory on the outskirts of Cairo, loading a
donkey cart with new bricks to be taken to a nearby furnace to dry. He has
worked at the plant almost every day the last four years, since age 10 when
his father died. Responsible for a
family of seven, the boy is bitter that even the donkeys at the factory get
more time off than he does. Several of the child workers in
the area, interviewed by an Associated Press reporter on a recent trip, said
they had sometimes been beaten with wooden switches by foremen at the
factories, if the foremen thought the children were going too slowly in their
work. No foremen would agree to be
interviewed. But human rights groups and outside experts say conditions for
working children can vary greatly across Egypt — from factories that provide
meals and some basic schooling, to those that work children long hours, often
in scorching heat, and abuse or beat them. Organ
trafficking: a fast-expanding black market China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Brazil, the Philippines,
Moldova, and Romania are among the world's leading providers of trafficked
organs. If China is known for harvesting and selling organs from executed
prisoners, the other countries have been dealing essentially with living
donors, becoming stakeholders in the fast-growing human trafficking web. NGOs
warn against plan to increase Russian visas However, Russia is considered a
transit destination for trafficking operations, with many men, women and
children from neighboring countries arriving there before being transported
elsewhere. Egypt has no visa requirements for Russian visitors, and its
border with Israel is considered to be a main entry point for human
traffickers. Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 6 Civil Liberties: 5 Status: Not Free Human Rights Overview
by Human Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide U.S. Library of Congress
- Country Study Egyptian
Journalists Trained to Report on Child Labor Issues Internews Arabic Network held a
training session in Aswan, Cairo in March to increase Egyptian journalists’
understanding of the harms of child labor and how journalists can help
alleviate this problem in Egypt. Liberian court tries Egyptian woman for child trafficking www.angolapress-angop.ao/noticia-e.asp?ID=262519 The Criminal Court in Monrovia Tuesday
indicted Fathia Kieta, an Egyptian wife of a Liberian diplomat accredited to
Egypt, on charges of child trafficking.
The woman is accused of "kidnapping" four Moroccan children
she brought to Liberia. She seized their passports and curtailed their
movements. Court records showed that
the four children were confined to a Monrovia pub "where they were
exposed to involuntary prostitution and other illegal services". Egypt - Underage
And Unprotected: Child Labor In Egypt's Cotton Fields SUMMARY - Each year over one million
children between the ages of seven and twelve are hired by Egypt's
agricultural cooperatives to take part in cotton pest management. Employed
under the authority of Egypt's agriculture ministry, most are well below
Egypt's minimum age of twelve for seasonal agricultural work. They work
eleven hours a day, including a one to two hour break, seven days a week-far
in excess of limits set by the Egyptian Child Law.1 They also face routine beatings
by their foremen, as well as exposure to heat and pesticides. These
conditions violate Egypt's obligations under the Convention on the Rights of
the Child to protect children from ill-treatment and hazardous employment.
They are also tantamount to the worst forms of child labor, as defined in the
International Labour Organization's Convention 182, which Egypt has not yet
ratified. Children were forcibly recruited to take part in pest management as
recently as ten years ago, and some farmers continue to believe that they
will be fined if they resist their children's recruitment. However, most
children today are compelled to work by the driving force of poverty. It is estimated that around 1.2
million children swarm the Egyptian cotton fields in early summer (Schemm,
p.8). Most of them are below 12 years of age and work up to 11 hours each
day, thus impeaching Egypt's laws that state that a child of 12 (the minimum
working age) can only participate in a six hour work day of seasonal
agricultural work. Children not only toil under the hot sun, but are beaten
by the foreman and forced to work in fields that have been sprayed with
pesticides only pesticides only 24 - 48 hours earlier. Yet these children
play an important role in the labor intensive cotton fields…being ideal in
height and plentiful in number. Laws:
October, 1997 - Number #17 CHILD LABOR - In Egypt, education is supposed
to be compulsory to the age of 15, but thousands of children as young as age
six pick cotton by hand in September for about $1.50 for an eight-hour day.
In September 1997, 31 children were killed when the flatbed government truck
taking them to a government-owned cotton field overturned. Egyptian law
prohibits employment under 12 in agriculture, and under 14 in nonfarm jobs.
However, these age limits are routinely violated, including by the
Agriculture Ministry, which owns 10 percent of the cotton fields in
Egypt. The Egyptian Center for Social
Research estimates that 1.5 million children in Egypt under the age of 14
work, and that most work in agriculture. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use |
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Human Trafficking in [Egypt Street Children in [Egypt] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Egypt] [other countries]