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FEATURED ARTICLE *** Tajik Street Children Face Daily Struggle Institute for War & Peace Reporting
IWPR Central Asia - Central Asia, RCA Issue 349, 20 Nov 05 iwpr.net/report-news/tajik-street-children-face-daily-struggle [accessed 28 July 2011] Hamza sleeps in his
ragged and dirt-encrusted clothes in a bid to keep the cold at bay. His arms
are thin and covered with new sores and old scars. He has never been to
school and cannot remember a day without work or responsibility. But he
is the sole breadwinner in his family, and even if he is caught by the
authorities and sent to a state boarding school, he will have no choice but
to run away and start working again. ***
ARCHIVES *** UNICEF
www.unicef.org/infobycountry/Tajikistan.html [accessed 28 July 2011] Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61679.htm [accessed 28 December 2010] CHILDREN
-
Education is compulsory until age 16 and public education was free and
universal. The law was not enforced and, while most children were enrolled in
school up to the mandatory secondary level, actual attendance was estimated
to be lower because children supplemented family income by working in the
home or in informal activities. SECTION
6 WORKER RIGHTS
[d] Child labor remained a problem, and the government neither effectively
enforced child labor laws nor strengthened existing regulations on acceptable
working conditions for children. The minimum age for
children to work is 16, although children may work at age 15 with local trade
union permission. By law children under the age of 18 may work no more than 6
hours a day and 36 hours per week. Children as young as seven may participate
in household labor and agricultural work, which are separately classified as
family assistance. Many children under 10 worked in bazaars or sold goods on
the street. Concluding Observations of the Committee on
the Rights of the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 6
October 2000 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/tajikistan2000.html [accessed 28 December 2010] [28] The Committee
is concerned at numerous and continuing reports of ill-treatment of persons
under the age of 18 by the militia, including psychological intimidation,
corporal punishment and torture. The Committee is also concerned that victims
of such treatment are largely from vulnerable groups, such as children living
and/or working on the streets; and that fear of reprisals and inadequate
complaints procedures discourage children and their parents from filing complaints. [30] The Committee
is concerned about the large number of children, especially children with
disabilities, who are abandoned or are otherwise deprived of a family
environment. It is also concerned that foster care, or other forms of
family-based alternative care, are not sufficiently developed and available,
and that, as a result, children are placed in institutions which, owing to
lack of resources, provide children with very low quality housing and care.
Further, the Committee is concerned at the absence of effective mechanisms
for children to communicate concerns and complaints about their placement.
Moreover, in the light of article 25 of the Convention, the Committee is
concerned at the inadequate system to review placement, monitoring or follow-up
of the situation of children in institutions. [42] The Committee
is seriously concerned at the deterioration in the quality of education,
especially infrastructure, teaching and curricula. The Committee is concerned
at declining pre-school enrolment and the persistence of high drop-out,
repetition, and absenteeism rates in primary and secondary schools. [48] The Committee
is concerned that the negative effects of the current economic crisis have
resulted in an increasing number of children dropping out of school and
taking up work. Tajik Children Labour to Feed Families Aslibegim Manzarshoeva
- iwpr.net/report-news/tajik-children-labour-feed-families [accessed 28 July 2011] Rustam has to get up at
dawn to drive the hundreds of animals under his care out to pasture. At the
age of 14, he should be in school, but he has little other choice he is one
of the main breadwinners for a family of nine. It is a familiar story in Tajikistan, where
children in rural areas routinely have to work alongside adults to keep their
households afloat. Increasingly, urban children from poor families are also
doing manual jobs instead of going to school, raising concerns about what
future these uneducated adolescents will have in a grim employment
situation. The young shepherd lives in
Faizabad, a district some 50 kilometres
east of the Tajik capital Dushanbe, and looks after the sheep, goats and
cattle belonging to all 160 households in the village of Dubeda. It is a long trek up to the mountain
pastures one-and-a-half hours each way and Rustam
stays there with the herd until seven in the evening. To sustain him through
the day, he usually only has some bread, tea and chakka,
the local soured milk, and occasionally cooks some potatoes or rice. He earns
a few pennies a month for each animal in the herd, but if one of them dies
the owner will demand around 100 dollars in compensation. RISE IN URBAN CHILD
LABOUR
- Even so, children at work are a common sight in Tajikistan. While children
of both sexes help their families out in the countryside, the emergence of
urban workers most of them boys is a more recent phenomenon. Young lads, some
of them street children, can be seen pushing heavy barrows around the
markets, washing cars by the roadside, changing banknotes into smaller
denominations, and corralling passengers into the shared minibus taxis which
have all but replaced other forms of public transport. Many of the kids
hanging around markets to earn tiny sums of money have come into town from
the surrounding countryside, where their fathers may have joined the exodus
to Russia. They live on the street and are often near-illiterate because they
have missed so much school time. Just
14, Anvar has not been to school in the last two
years. Instead, he is a conductor on a minibus taxi, collecting fares for the
driver. He explains that he has no time for studying as he has to support his
mother, elder sister and two younger brothers. His father went off to Russia
three years ago. The first year he sent money home regularly but that has
dried up since then and returning migrants say the man has a new wife and a
baby. Like many boys forced to take
jobs, Anvar has a strong sense of his
responsibilities as the senior male breadwinner in the household. Roxana Saberi,
BBC news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6183331.stm [accessed 28 July 2011] BACK TO SCHOOL - Members of the
youth committee reach out to these children by telling them they do not have
to work and live on the streets, and that going back to school is the key to
a better future. Their efforts seem to
be working. Many street
children have left their jobs washing cars or peddling goods in the bazaar
and have gone back to school. Several
have joined the youth committee, where they receive $20 a month and learn
about computers, languages and leadership skills. The committee has expanded from 20 children
two years ago to around 60 today, organiser Sukhrob Kurbonov says. "Street kids
have their own rules and don't allow just anyone close to them," he says. "Because these kids we work with were
from that group, they can speak to them more easily and get information from
them. We wanted to know why these kids start stealing and begging and what
problems they face." Institute for War & Peace Reporting
IWPR Central Asia - Central Asia, RCA Issue 349, 20 Nov 05 iwpr.net/report-news/tajik-street-children-face-daily-struggle [accessed 28 July 2011] Hamza sleeps in his
ragged and dirt-encrusted clothes in a bid to keep the cold at bay. His arms
are thin and covered with new sores and old scars. He has never been to
school and cannot remember a day without work or responsibility. But he is the sole breadwinner in his
family, and even if he is caught by the authorities and sent to a state
boarding school, he will have no choice but to run away and start working
again. Protecting and Assisting Street Children UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
IRIN, Kurgan-Tyube, 20 July 2005 www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=28748 [accessed 28 July 2011] Ten-year-old Parvina can neither read nor write, because she has never
attended school. "I can count up
to 500," she said proudly, adding that she learnt to do so when she
started working, selling plastic bags in the city's main market. She was making around US $ 1 a day. Her younger brother Akram
earns about $ 3 a day.. Parvina gives most of the money to her mother. "We live on the money they make. Interview with Head Of UNICEF UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
IRIN, www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=20462 [accessed 28 July 2011] Q: There are a lot
of street children in A: Some of the figures
show that some of the street children are not living in the street. They are with families, but because of
poverty they are often sent to the streets to either work or beg. So the street children are not abandoned as
such and are supporting their families.
The problem is that children in the streets are more vulnerable and at
risk of being abused and exploited.
Especially, they are at more risk of being in conflict with the law,
starting with petty crimes, drug abuse and trafficking. World
Food Program - Foreign Agricultural Service FAS, www.fas.usda.gov/excredits/FoodAid/FFE/gfe/2004/asia/tajikistan.htm [accessed 28 July 2011] COUNTRY OVERVIEW - Many families
are unable to provide their school-age children with clothing and shoes. This is creating increasing numbers of
street children, who are easy prey for criminals, drugs, and child-labor
abuse scams. Nasiba's
Wedding Song Firuz Barotov,
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL -- broadcast on 29 and 30 April, 2005 www.rferl.org/content/article/1059158.html [accessed 28 July 2011] According to
UNICEF, 18 % of Tajik children between the ages of five and 14 are
working. Many of them are
homeless. The number of children grows
in the summer. They come to the
capital from different villages [around British Embassy
Opens Its Doors - Personal
Testimony of Children [access information unavailable] KHURSHEDS STORY - Khurshed is 12 years old and is from A Community
Response to HIV/AIDS [DOC] [access information unavailable] Estimates of
international and national experts indicate that there are in all about 10
000 street children in the country.
Many of these use drugs and some of them are engaged in prostitution. The majority of them has no idea about safe
sexual behaviors and consequently is especially vulnerable to sexually
transmitted diseases, including HIV. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this webpage as: Patt,
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