Ammon News – Obada sells roadside fruit in Al Rama, Jordan, largely by himself these days. His 14-year-old brother was doing most of the work, but after being hit by a car going the wrong way, Obada stepped in to man the family’s stand. “He broke his arm,” Obada said. When asked if he was worried it might happen to him too, he replied, “No, I’m not scared at all.”
The 16-year-old is now the main breadwinner in his family. His father lost his legs to gangrene seven years ago. As a double amputee, his main economic contribution is the 150 dinars (£170) he receives each month from the state as a Jordanian citizen. Obada’s mother, meanwhile, has her hands full to care for her younger siblings. “I’m the hardest worker – I work every day,” Obada said. “I’m proud of it. I feel like it’s normal… I go to school, but only once in a while. My dad can’t work alone in the pits.
Obada said he was saving up to buy an iPhone and at some point he would like to train as a barber. These modest ambitions, together with the demands of earning money for his family, make work a necessity for the adolescent. And despite the challenges, he said he didn’t understand why some people wanted to prevent children from working. “Who would bring money for the house?” If we have to stop, then who will bring the money? he asked before rushing to speak to a customer who had just stopped by his stall.
According to the latest official statistics, published in 2016, around 75,000 children work in Jordan. Ahmad Awad, director of Jordan Labor Watch at the Phenix Center for Economic and Informatics Studies, believes the number is now higher. Adult unemployment, school closures during the pandemic and school quality are all factors that have pushed children into work in recent years. “Educational conditions are very poor,” he said, and although corporal punishment is illegal in Jordan, mistreatment by teachers is common. This makes school less attractive for students. Awad added that pressure on the job market from refugee populations also exacerbates the problem. He estimated that “16% of child labor belongs to Syrian families”.
However, Awad stressed that these factors are secondary to the generally high level of poverty in Jordan, which austerity measures are now worsening. “I couldn’t understand the World Bank when they announced they were supporting global efforts…to eliminate child labor as they help governments implement austerity measures,” he said. -he declares. “They encourage our governments to cut the public budget by cutting social spending, which means cutting the budget for education, while they announce that they will eliminate child labour. It’s against each other.
Elimination by 2025?
Inconsistencies at the political level are reinforced by the gap between political objectives and implementation on the ground. UNICEF, one of the main players in the fight against child labor in Jordan, is committed to eliminating the worst forms of child labor by 2025 (the target of the International Labor Organization goes further and aims to eliminate all child labor by 2025). In practice, this often means working to reduce, rather than eliminate, child labor in Jordan.
Mohaned Al Hami, head of child protection at UNICEF, admitted there are challenges to meeting the 2025 target. But he defended keeping elimination as the goal. “I believe if you target the moon, at least when you fall, you’ll shoot a star,” he said. Al Hami explained that, for the 700 child laborers that UNICEF has supported so far through their child protection programme, there have been a variety of results. “Thanks to the programs, some children have stopped working, others have changed their form of work, or reduced their work and returned to school,” he said. “I believe that the children are the champions themselves. When you ask them, most of the time they want to go back to school.
Haneen Mohammed, child protection adviser at Rowad AlKhair, one of UNICEF’s implementing partners in Jordan, agreed that practical decisions have to be made on the ground. “It would be a dream to say we can stop child labor,” she said. “But sometimes we have to involve the children and [help them to] reduce working hours, which really reduces child labour.
Al Hami and Mohammed are currently implementing a UNICEF program against child labor in Ghour Al Mezraa, a rural agricultural area south of the Dead Sea. One of the children they have identified for support is Hamza. Now 14, Hamza has been working on the family farm 12 hours a day, six days a week since he was 11 years old. “I had a bad feeling when I had to leave school,” he says. “It was difficult. I liked school, but I had to leave.
Among other tasks, Hamza sprays pesticides and herbicides on crops. Due to the risks associated with spraying chemicals, agricultural work is considered one of the worst forms of child labor. When asked what he thinks of his work, Hamza replied, “I don’t know how to explain it. You might say, thank God I support my family. But when I go back to school and maybe go to the army, I’ll feel better.
As part of their child protection programme, Rowad AlKhair referred Hamza to the Ministry of Education to support his return to school. Mohammed said that to facilitate this, Hamza’s family will receive emergency cash assistance so that they can pay off debts that their income helps to cover. It’s about support, she says, rather than blame: “We don’t work with the father or the mother as the aggressor. They are families in need, and we work with them on how to respect children’s rights.
Punitive responses to child labor
While the official narrative from governments and NGOs centers on support, the response on the streets can be quite different. Punitive measures are often favored by authorities, who generally exacerbate rather than address root causes such as poverty. Labor laws in Jordan stipulate that employers must be fined 50 JOD (£57) if a child under the age of 16 works for them, and 100 JOD (£113) if the offense is repeated. Often, however, the employer and the child may be members of the same family, and complex relationships or residency statuses can cloud the picture. Tamkeen, an organization providing legal aid to working children, often finds themselves settling cases out of court because of this. Linda Aklash, director of Tamkeen, said: “[The families] are afraid it will create problems for them, especially if they are refugees…many of them have good relations with employers.
Children living in the capital have also been punished by the authorities. Begging is a criminal offense in Jordan, and anyone over the age of 12 can be charged. Shop owners in downtown Amman said children as young as nine or ten told them they had been arrested and detained for selling items on the street or begging. Some children said they were detained for up to a week. Fadi Amireh, the owner of Jadal, a cultural center in downtown Amman, said he notices when these children go missing or when there are changes. “I saw one of them with his hair cut off,” Amireh said. “I asked him if he was okay, and he told me that he had been arrested in Jabal Al Weibdeh [central Amman] by officials because of the sale of things.
Amireh added that government policies make things worse, not better. “A few years ago, most child laborers I saw were Syrian. Now it’s mixed,” he said. “The economic situation is putting more and more pressure on people and this is resulting in such phenomena.”
In response to allegations of child arrests, a spokesman for the Department of Social Development said children caught begging “are placed in a care center by court order, not in jail”. He added that monitoring child labor in Jordan is the responsibility of the Ministry of Labour. A Department of Labor spokesperson said the two departments are tackling child labor through joint projects, which provide social support and “dialogue and awareness sessions for employers and families.”
Although such a dialogue can play an important role, it does not address the structural and material conditions that push many children into work. Jordan’s national unemployment rate sits at just over 23% and has been rising steadily over a five-year period. As long as these conditions are maintained and responses to child labor continue to apply band-aids with one hand and punishment with the other, working children will continue to bear the brunt.
For many of these children, the picture is a little smaller. Daily survival is the priority. Yousef, a 17-year-old who works at a coffee kiosk on Obada Road in Al Rama, said he felt proud to work and that not working would be “wrong”. “Why should I sit still, when tomorrow I will grow up and it will be hard to depend on me?” He asked. “My parents are so important. If I could help them 1000 more times, I would.
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