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Geneva (AsiaNews) – As the school year began yesterday in many Western countries, the
world celebrated International Literacy Day. Organised under the auspices of UNESCO, the
event had “Literacy and Gender” as its main theme. According to the UN agency’s own
data there are 860 million illiterate adults, more than two thirds women. The number of
minors not attending school exceeds 110 million, 56 per cent girls.
Illiteracy is directly related to poverty and underdevelopment, circumstances that force
millions of children to leave school before they become fully literate and work in conditions
where they are easily exploited. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has estimated
that throughout the world, 250 million children, aged between five and 17, were engaged in
child labour, 155 million in Asia alone.
In Asia child labour has become a virtual system that is particularly abusive of girls. Sexual
exploitation has in fact become a major social ill in many Asian societies. Many girls are
forced into prostitution in countries like Cambodia, Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Pakistan.
“About one million children are lured or forced into the sex trade in Asia every year,”
reports Child Workers in Asia, an organisation fighting child exploitation. “A more alarming
fact is that people known to them introduce many of these children into the work,” it adds.
Children in Asia are used in different types of work: farming, making leather goods, stone-
cutting, mining, toy making, textiles, making brick in kilns, construction, dumpsites. The
problem is accentuated by western multinational companies setting up Asian branch plants
in many manufacturing sectors, especially textile.
The many wars in Asia compound child exploitation for they provide opportunities to recruit
boys into armies. Tens of thousands of them have thus been recruited and are being
recruited, often by force, by armies and paramilitary groups. Human Rights Watch reports
that many, very young children are serving as soldiers in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka,
and Cambodia. Many others have been recruited by groups such as the Tamil Tigers in Sri
Lanka and Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines.
Worse still is the situation in India where human rights activists have denounced child debt
bondage. At least 5 million children are forced to work to repay debts their parents
contracted or for the cash advances they received. According to Human Rights Watch,
very few children are ever ransomed from bondage. Asian Labour Monitor estimates that
one fifth of India’s GNP is generated by exploited minors working in the farming sector,
mostly children of landless families. With 44 million minors working, India has the
unenviable world record in child labour