Syrian children 'increasingly exploited' for labour

The conflict in Syria is pushing an ever increasing number of children into exploitation in the labour market, a new report revealed.

Children in the country were now contributing to the family income in more than three quarters of surveyed households, according the report released by Save the Children and UNICEF. Thursday's report (PDF) also showed that close to half of all Syrian refugee children in neighbouring Jordan were now the joint or sole family breadwinners in surveyed households.

In Lebanon, children as young as six years old are reportedly working, the report said. "As families become increasingly desperate, children are working primarily for their survival. Whether in Syria or neighbouring countries, they are becoming main economic players," Roger Hearn, regional Director for Save the Children in the Middle East and Eurasia, said.

Full story at Al Jazeera English

Save the Children/UNICEF report

UN Declares 2014 A Devastating Year For Millions Of Children

The United Nations children's agency UNICEF declared 2014 a devastating year for children with as many as 15 million caught in conflicts in Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and the Palestinian territories.

UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said the high number of crises meant many of them were quickly forgotten or failed to capture global headlines, such as in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Globally, UNICEF said some 230 million children were living in countries and regions affected by armed conflict.
"Children have been killed while studying in the classroom and while sleeping in their beds; they have been orphaned, kidnapped, tortured, recruited, raped and even sold as slaves," Lake said in a statement. "Never in recent memory have so many children been subjected to such unspeakable brutality."

Significant threats also emerged to children's health and well-being like the deadly outbreak of Ebola in the West African countries Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, which has left thousands orphaned and some 5 million out of school.
"Violence and trauma do more than harm individual children - they undermine the strength of societies," Lake said.

The World Post

Wasilat Tasi'u, 14-Year-Old Nigerian Girl, Sentenced To Death For Murdering Husband

The father of a 14-year-old child bride accused of murdering her husband said Thursday he was appealing to a Nigerian court to spare his daughter the death sentence. Wasilat Tasi'u is on trial for the murder of her 35-year-old husband, Umar Sani, who died after eating food that Tasi'u allegedly laced with rat poison. "We are appealing to the judge to consider Wasilat's plea," her father, Isyaku Tasi'u, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

On Wednesday witnesses told the High Court in Gezawa, a town 60 miles outside Nigeria's second largest city of Kano, that Tasi'u killed her husband two weeks after their wedding in April. Three others allegedly died after eating the poisoned meal. The prosecution, led by Lamido Soron-Dinki, senior state council from the Kano State Ministry of Justice, is seeking the death penalty.

The case calls into question the legality of trying a 14-year-old for murder under criminal law and the rights of child brides, who are common in the poverty-stricken, predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria region. "She was married to a man that she didn't love. She protested but her parents forced her to marry him," Zubeida Nagee, a women's rights activist in Kano, told AP. Nagee and other activists have written a letter of protest to the Kano state deputy governor. Nagee said Tasi'u was a victim of systematic abuse endured by millions of girls in the region. Activists say the blend of traditional customs, Islamic law and Nigeria's constitutional law poses a challenge when advocating for the rights of young girls in Nigeria.

The World Post

Universal Children's Day - 20 November

By resolution 836(IX) of 14 December 1954, the General Assembly recommended that all countries institute a Universal Children's Day, to be observed as a day of worldwide fraternity and understanding between children. It recommended that the Day was to be observed also as a day of activity devoted to promoting the ideals and objectives of the Charter and the welfare of the children of the world.

The Assembly suggested to governments that the Day be observed on the date and in the way which each considers appropriate. The date 20 November, marks the day on which the Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, in 1959, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in 1989.

UN.org

Remains of 55 found at notorious former Florida reform school

For decades, relatives of some boys dispatched to the notorious Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys have struggled to find out what became of them after they went missing amid reports of beatings, torture and sexual assaults at the reform school in Marianna, Fla. On Tuesday, researchers and forensic anthropologists moved a step closer to providing answers. The remains of 55 people have been uncovered on school grounds, University of South Florida researchers announced – five more than previous field work had indicated and 24 more than listed in school records.

"Locating 55 burials is a significant finding, which opens up a whole new set of questions for our team,’’ said Erin Kimmerle, a University of South Florida associate professor and forensic anthropologist who has led researchers on a nearly two-year project aimed at uncovering lingering mysteries at the school, which operated from 1900 to 2011. From September to December of last year, researchers led excavations at or near Boot Hill, an unmarked cemetery on school grounds. Using ground-penetrating radar, DNA samples and search dogs, they probed for unmarked graves of boys reported missing over the years.

Bones, teeth and other artifacts were recovered for all 55 bodies, Kimmerle said Tuesday. Bone and teeth samples will be submitted for DNA testing. Meanwhile, researchers are attempting to collect DNA from survivors of boys sent to the school as "incorrigible,’’ or for truancy or petty crimes. So far, DNA has been collected from 11 surviving family members of former Dozier residents. Researchers are seeking DNA from 42 more.

LA Times

thewhitehouseboys.com - White House Boys Survivors Organization: Victims of Fl. School Boys

No Child Born To Die

In the poorest countries, children are dying, at a rate too awful to think about. Basic illnesses claim 8 million young lives a year. It's in our power to stop this. No child is born to die.

savethechildrenuk

US Republican: Make Poor School Kids Work For Food

In response to a shocking 2012 national survey revealing that three out of five American teachers report hunger in their classrooms, West Virginia’s House of Delegates passed a bill to address childhood hunger, with an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 89-9. Tyler Kingkade from The Huffington Post reports that SB633 — also known as the “Feed to Achieve” Act — will provide free breakfasts and lunches to all K-12 public school students, and make up for any budgetary shortfalls by establishing non-profit organizations to collect donations. W. VA Governor Earl Ray Tomblin is expected to sign the bill into law.

US State Delegate Ray Canterbury (R-Greenbriar), turned the proceedings into a fiery debate when he claimed that school children should be required to work for their school lunches: I think it would be a good idea if perhaps we had the kids work for their lunches: trash to be taken out, hallways to be swept, lawns to be mowed. If they miss a lunch or they miss a meal they might not, in that class that afternoon, learn to add, they may not learn to diagram a sentence, but they’ll learn a more important lesson.

More on Addicting Info

Chinese Olympics training or child cruelty?

You be the judge. All for the glory of the motherland with gold medals. The rigid chinese sports system has produced successes in this Olympics but at what costs? How many hurted or killed for these chinese gold medals?

Life not sweet for Philippines' sugar cane child workers

Barefoot and covered in dirt and sweat, 14-year-old Dante Campilan pulls weeds from orderly rows of sugar cane. Wearing an oversized red cap to protect him from the scorching Philippine sun, Dante is doing work that should be reserved for men, not children. Earning 150 pesos ($3.50) for a seven-hour day, Dante has been a child laborer in the Philippine region of Mindanao since he was seven years old. He says he does it to help his parents, but he is just one of many children who are part of an illegal economic system of child labor.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates 2.4 million child workers are in the Philippines. Many of them, according to the ILO, are in rural areas working in fields and mines. The organization estimates 60% work in hazardous conditions.

CNN.com

iEmpire: Apple's Sordid Business Practices Are Even Worse Than You Think

Behind the sleek face of the iPad is an ugly backstory that has revealed once more the horrors of globalization. The buzz about Apple’s sordid business practices is courtesy of the New York Times series on the “iEconomy”. In some ways it’s well reported but adds little new to what critics of the Taiwan-based Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, have been saying for years. The series' biggest impact may be discomfiting Apple fanatics who as they read the articles realize that the iPad they are holding is assembled from child labor, toxic shop floors, involuntary overtime, suicidal working conditions, and preventable accidents that kill and maim workers.

It turns out the story is much worse. Researchers with the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) say that legions of vocational and university students, some as young as 16, are forced to take months'-long “internships” in Foxconn’s mainland China factories assembling Apple products. The details of the internship program paint a far more disturbing picture than the Times does of how Foxconn, “the Chinese hell factory,” treats its workers, relying on public humiliation, military discipline, forced labor and physical abuse as management tools to hold down costs and extract maximum profits for Apple.

More on AlterNet

Chocolate's Child Slaves

Everyone loves chocolate. But for thousands of people, chocolate is the reason for their enslavement. The chocolate bar you snack on likely starts at a plant in a West African cocoa plantation, and often the people who harvest it are children. Many are slaves to a system that produces something almost all of us consume and enjoy.

The CNN Freedom Project sent correspondent David McKenzie into the heart of the Ivory Coast - the world’s largest cocoa producer - to investigate what's happening to children working in the fields. His work has resulted in a shocking, eye-opening documentary showing that despite all the promises the global chocolate industry made a decade ago, much of the trade remains unchanged. There are still child slaves harvesting cocoa, even though some have never even tasted chocolate and some don't even know what the word "chocolate" means.

In the documentary "Chocolate’s Child Slaves," CNN discovers a human trafficking network and farmers using child labour for an industry offering low prices and little more than broken promises.

More on The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern-Day Slavery

Zimbabwe's Child Exodus

Over the past decade, tens of thousands of Zimbabwean children have taken quite remarkable risks to smuggle themselves across the border into South Africa. For the most part they are acting illegally, and most travel alone or unaccompanied by adult relatives, but it is the only way that many of them feel they can escape the debilitating poverty, disease and violence they have experienced under Robert Mugabe's regime. 

Al Jazeera English

Children to be banned from blowing up balloons, under EU safety rules

The EU toy safety directive, agreed and implemented by Government, states that balloons must not be blown up by unsupervised children under the age of eight, in case they accidentally swallow them and choke.

Despite having been popular favourites for generations of children, party games including whistles and magnetic fishing games are to be banned because their small parts or chemicals used in making them are decreed to be too risky.

Apparently harmless toys that children have enjoyed for decades are now regarded by EU regulators as posing an unacceptable safety risk. Whistle blowers, that scroll out into a a long coloured paper tongue when sounded – a party favourite at family Christmas meals – are now classed as unsafe for all children under 14.  Telegraph

"Sweatshop boys: Twenty years after the U.N. adopted a treaty guaranteeing children's rights, Bangladeshi kids are still working in factories like this balloon workshop in Kamrangir Char. While fewer youngsters are dying and more are going to school, an estimated 1 billion still lack essential services." Curly Girl Chronicles - Slaves of balloon on Bangla Voices

Fashion Week Cancels Show of Uzbek Dictator’s Daughter

Enslaving children and torturing dissidents is never chic.

The daughter of Uzbekistan’s dictator planned to unveil her spring fashion line at New York City’s prestigious Fashion Week. But her show was cancelled after Human Rights Watch and a coalition of like-minded organizations spotlighted her connection to her father’s tyrannical government.

Gulnara Karimova isn’t just the eldest daughter of Islam Karimov – Uzbekistan’s autocratic leader since the Soviet era – she also serves as the government’s ambassador to Spain and the United Nations, a high-level position in a regime known for imprisoning and torturing political opponents and rights activists. Her father’s government forces up to two million Uzbek children to leave school for two months each year to pick cotton – a fabric woven throughout Karimova’s designs.

Karimova maintains a jet-setter lifestyle, which includes making a pop video with Julio Iglesias and launching her fashion line “Guli.” But according to a cable released by Wikileaks, US diplomats said most Uzbeks view her as “a greedy, power-hungry individual who uses her father to crush business people or anyone else who stands in her way.”

Human Rights Watch

Hidden No Longer

This documentary (2006) reveals Canada's darkest secret - the deliberate extermination of indigenous (Native American) peoples and the theft of their land under the guise of religion. This never before told history as seen through the eyes of this former minister (Kevin Annett) who blew the whistle on his own church, after he learned of thousands of murders in its Indian Residential Schools..."

Hidden From History: The Canadian Holocaust – The untold story of the genocide of Aboriginal Peoples

Catholic sex abuse cases (Wikipedia) - Download Genocide in Canada, Past and Present here. – More on Red Ice Radio

Coca-Cola Exposed! Killer Cola

You will never look at a can of Coke the same way after seeing this documentary film.

Child Labour

Afghan children sorts bricks at the Sadat Ltd. Brick factory, where they work from 8am to 5 pm daily, on May 14, 2010 in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

Child Labour on avaxnews.com