Child Labour grows at Afghan Kilns as girls replace women

Aljazeera report of Sept 2022 with many photos, describing sharply increasing child labour in Afghanistan’s brick kilns since the Taliban took over and most international aid stopped flowing. Children are working so that their families will not die of starvation.

As you know the Taliban regime has broken its word and banned women from most work outside the home. To compensate for this more children are working, and especially girls are doing the heavy work at the kilns that their mothers used to do.

In case anyone should think that Afghanistan is an especially backward and benighted place, take note that in the World’s largest parliamentary democracy India (which sends rockets to Mars and exports IT technicians to the West by the thousand) probably a million child labourers work at the brick kilns every year and do not attend any school. This child labour continues within 10 or 20 kilometres of the residences of chief ministers in the full light of day.

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2022/9/26/photos-poverty-pushes-afghan-children-to-work-at-brick-kilns

Foreign activists highlight the evil systems operating in the brick industry

brickkilnnewssasia
May 1, 2014
1 min read

The name on this brick "BHARAT" means India. Every brick kiln puts its own name onto the bricks it produces. This brick was made in West Bengal, India. Children work at this brick kiln.

The report featured in the picture is by the UK's Anti-Slavery Society. It highlights the evil of bonded labour in the contractual system by which labour is employed at many, if not most, brick kilns.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) through its regional and country specific offices in South Asia has published several reports on child / bonded labour in the brick industry.

#economy #India #southasia #childlabour #poverty