10 Worst Countries for Child Labor

A new report by risk analysis firm Maplecroft, which ranks 197 countries, identifies Eritrea, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Yemen as the 10 places where child labor is most prevalent.

(CNN) — Where in the world are children toiling dangerous and dirty conditions, missing out on education and other basic rights?

A new report by risk analysis firm Maplecroft, which ranks 197 countries, identifies Eritrea, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Yemen, Burundi and Nigeria as the 10 places where child labor is most prevalent.

Countries with high poverty rates fare badly in the index due to the need for children to supplement their family income, the report said, but economically important countries like China, India, Russia and Brazil were also found to have extreme risks because child labor laws are often poorly enforced.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Eritrea, Somalia top the latest list for countries where child labor is most prevalent
• High poverty rates a similar theme across countries where child labor is most commonly used
• China fares poorly on the latest index, slipping from 53rd to 20th place
• Globally, the report says there’s been an improvement in the risks of child labor

Trafficking of children into forced labor or sexual exploitation remains a big problem, the report added.

Despite its fast-growing economy, China has witnessed a substantial increase in child labor risks over the past year, ranking 20th compared with 53rd a year earlier.

The report said that unofficial estimates suggested that 100,000 children are employed in the country’s manufacturing sector.

“The use of vocational work and study schemes, along with the continued use of children in factories, present significant supply chain risks to companies even in the more economically developed provinces,” the report said.

Last year, electronics supplier Foxconn admitted that interns as young as 14 worked at one of its Chinese plants.

However, the report pointed to minor improvements in the risk of child labor, with South America now ranked as “high risk” rather than “extreme risk.”

In September, the International Labor Organization estimated that the rate of five to 17 year olds engaged in child labor had decreased to 10.6% in 2012 from 13.6% in 2008. The number of children involved in the worst forms of child labor has decreased to 85 million from 115 million during this time.

The company compiles the ranking by evaluating the frequency and severity of reported child labor incidents, as well as tracking how governments prevent child labor and ensure perpetrators are held accountable.

The index has been developed to help companies understand the risks of children being employed in their supply chains.

Sudanese Woman Flogged in Public for Getting into Car with Man

• Upsetting video shows the Sudanese woman cower and call out in pain
• A police officer meted out the punishment under strict ‘public order’ law
• The video was sent anonymously to a journalist

A Sudanese woman was filmed being whipped by a police officer for riding in a car with a man she wasn’t related to

By SAM WEBB

This horrific video shows a police officer flogging a cowering woman in the street as a crowd watches without protesting or intervening.

The crime that prompted this horrendous assault? She had ridden in a car with a man who she wasn’t related to, an offense that is prohibited by Sudan’s public order law.

The video is believed to have been taken in Khartoum, the capital, and shows the terrified and bewildered woman crying out in pain as lash after vicious lash rains down.

The woman, reportedly named Halima, cowers on the ground and tries to cover her head with a pink veil while a police officer stalks back and forth, before lining up a vicious swipe.

In the video, the police officer warns the woman: ‘This is so you don’t get into cars anymore.’

Meanwhile a crowd of onlookers mutely stands and watches the disturbing spectacle. The video was anonymously sent to a journalist, who uploaded it last month.

The accents of the people in the video point to it being filmed around Khartoum.

Mute witness: The crowd watches silently as the blows rain down on the terrified woman

Khartoum’s governor, Abdul Rahman Al Khidir, reportedly said that he didn’t think the flogging was properly carried out, but still thought the woman was ‘rightfully punished according to the Shar’ia law,’ according to the New York Daily News.

Shar’ia law, a system of Islamic religious laws, is widely interpreted by Muslim communities around the world.

According to Think Africa Press, the women of Sudan have been suffering under article 152 of the penal code, an ‘inhumane, vicious and notorious’ law first implemented in 1991.

The woman attempted to cover her face with her pink veil during the attack

Menacing: The guard paces back and forth between blows

In the video, the police officer warns the woman: ‘This is so you don’t get into cars anymore.’

Article 152 of Sudan’s criminal code stipulates that any conduct or clothing in violation of public decency be punished with 40 lashes.

The law, which mainly targets women, is vague as to what constitutes indecent clothing, leaving room for the Public Order Police to arrest whoever they deem to be dressed inappropriately or committing an act of indecency.

The nation’s harsh laws came under scrutiny last month when a Sudanese woman said she was prepared to be flogged to defend the right to leave her hair uncovered in defiance of the ‘Taliban-like’ law.

Amira Osman Hamed faces a possible whipping if convicted. Under Sudanese law her hair – and that of all women – is supposed to be covered with a ‘hijab’ but Hamed, 35, refuses to wear one.

Her case has drawn support from civil rights activists.

 

 

2.000 Female Genital Mutilation Victims Sought Help in London Hospitals in the Past Three Years

True figure is ‘far more than figures show’

Needing help: More than 2,100 women have been treated in London hospitals since 2010 for female genital mutilation injuries

• 300 victims required surgery to repair damage caused by brutal ritual 
• A dozen children needed medical help, including one with ‘open wound’
• Experts say figures do not give the full picture of growing number of cases
• DPP says it is ‘only matter of time’ before prosecution is brought in UK

By MARTIN ROBINSON

More than 2,100 victims of female genital mutilation have been treated in London hospitals since 2010, it emerged today.

Almost 300 women needed surgery to help them recover from the brutal ritual, new figures have revealed.

Among those treated in the capital’s hospitals included 12 children, including one girl who had been left with an ‘open wound’ following the criminal act.

Despite being illegal in the UK, female genital mutilation is on the rise with an estimated 66,000 women dealing with the after-effects and more than 20,000 young girls thought to be at risk.

The procedure is associated with communities in Africa, particularly Mali, Somalia, Sudan and Kenya, as well as some parts of the Middle East.

Many girls living in Britain are taken to these countries for be ‘cut’, and some will be as young as five.

But it is becoming more prevalent in the UK and  experts say today’s figures are ‘truly shocking’ but there are ‘far more victims’ than the data shows.

In the majority of cases the clitoris is removed because it gives sexual pleasure.

A total of 2,115 FGM patients were seen between 2010 and now, the Evening Standard has revealed.

Dr Comfort Momoh, a specialist in dealing with these injuries at St Thomas’ Hospital, said: ‘These statistics show a very significant number of women are being treated for FGM.

Barbaric: A collection of knives, blades and amulet used for female circumcision in Kenya’s Pokot district

‘But there are still lots out there who are not being identified because they don’t know where to go for help, aren’t being referred by GPs or are too scared to come forward.

‘I’m really worried about girls, in particular. Where are they going to seek help? The GPs who are their first point of call often don’t have the knowledge. We also need teachers and lecturers to do more to at least signpost girls towards help.’

Nimko Ali was seven when she underwent Female Genital Mutilation in Somalia and now campaigns against it through her charity Daughters of Eve.

‘For too long, it has been passed off as a “cultural” ritual. But this act is not about celebration. FGM is gender-based violence, it’s as simple as that,’ she said.

Harrowing: Nine-year old Fay Mohammed pictured days after undergoing FGM at home in Mogadishu

It came as Director of Public Keir Starmer said it was ‘only a matter of time’ before there is a prosecution for female genital mutilation.

‘I think a prosecution is much closer now than it’s been at any stage since this was made a criminal offence in this country,’ he said.

‘We have devised a strategy, and we have now got the intelligence-led operations that are bringing us very close to a prosecution.

‘I do not think that’s a failure – that is trying to grapple with a difficult problem. If it was easy there would have been a prosecution.’

‘I JUST PASSED OUT’: GIRL SPEAKS OF HER FGM NIGHTMARE IN SOMALIA

Nimko Ali was just seven years old when she was taken to Somalia for a ‘holiday’ where she would be subjected to the horrific procedure.

‘There was a woman at the door in a burka. I was scared and instinctively started running. When I was caught, I was taken into a room filled with instruments I didn’t recognise,’ she said.

‘The woman I was so afraid of was there waiting for me. She scolded me for running away, telling me how difficult it was to obtain equipment like this; how ungrateful I was.

‘I blacked out before she started cutting. I’m still not sure whether it was the anaesthetic or pure fear’.

When Ali woke, she was in agony with her legs bound together. Taken back to the Uk two days later, Ali found that friends and teachers were unwilling to take her story seriously, leaving her feeling let down and alone.

 

Egypt’s Chaos Fuels Africa’s Human Trafficking

Egypt’s political unrest has brought suffering not only to its own people but also to hundreds of African refugees. Their goal is Israel but many end up as hostages on the Sinai Peninsula.

Egypt’s political unrest has brought suffering not only to its own people but also to hundreds of African refugees.

By Adrian Kriesch / cm

Kahassay Woldesselasie simply wanted to get away from Eritrea. He planned to begin a new life in a country where citizens are not as brutally suppressed as in his East African homeland. Eritrea, located in the Horn of Africa, is one of the world’s most secretive and repressive regimes.

Woldesselasie initially fled to neighboring Sudan. While there he heard rumors of good jobs being offered in Israel. A human trafficking syndicate offered to take him there. Woldesselasie agreed and fell into their trap. The traffickers abducted him and took him as a hostage to the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.

On the journey they blindfolded him, there was little food and water. The gangsters threatened to kill him if he did not pay ransom. “You have no choice but to call your relatives,” Woldesselasie told DW in an interview. “If they agree to pay, you might be lucky. But if they don’t, you’re dead.”

The lucky and the unlucky

Israel refers to asylum seekers from Africa as ‘infiltrators’

Woldesselasie was one of the lucky ones. Family members living abroad agreed to pay for his release.

He was set free and finally managed to cross the border into Israel.

Not many are as lucky as Woldesselasie, says Hamdy al-Azazy, an Egyptian human rights activist who lives in al-Arish, the capital of the North Sinai region. He has met Eritrean refugees who had been held captive for weeks in torture camps.

While their families are listening over the phone, the victims would be subjected to burnings or have their limbs broken. Such painful experiences would then push even the poorest of families to send money. Those who don’t comply risk having their relatives being buried in the desert. According to al-Azazy, more than 500 remains of dead bodies of Africans were discovered in the desert in the past years.

The Sinai equation

The Sinai Peninsula has long been a powder keg. The indigenous population consists of Bedouin Arab tribes who settled there several hundred years ago. Today, they only represent about half of the approximately 500,000 inhabitants.

Israel withdrew from the area back in 1982 and left it to the Egyptian state. Egypt then took the best land from the Bedouins, says Günter Meyer, director of the Center for Research on the Arab World at the University of Mainz. “This goes back to a long period of discrimination against the Bedouin population.” According to Meyer, the Bedouins were seen by Egyptians as Israeli collaborators, drug smugglers and illiterate.”

Meyer however emphasizes that only a small minority of the Bedouin is involved in the criminal gangs that deal in human trafficking.

According to Human Rights Watch over 1,500 Eritreans flee the country every month. Several men who are refugees in the Sinai are seated on the ground .

Following the Arab Spring which began in 2011, security forces have been weakened in the Sinai Peninsula giving the traffickers more leeway. The situation has “escalated dramatically,” Meyer warns.

There are no known figures for the number of refugees detained in torture camps in the Sinai or how many of those hostages have perished. According to the Israeli government, more than 10,000 illegal immigrants crossed the Sinai border into Israel in 2012. Most of them came from Eritrea and Sudan. But in Israel, a nation once founded by immigrants, the refugees are not welcome. They have little chance of obtaining political asylum. Instead Israel has built a more than 200-kilometer – long (124 miles) fence against them. In the first five months of 2013, only 33 refugees managed to cross the border.

Little international support

The world, including the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), has turned a deaf ear to the plight of these refugees, says human rights activist Hamdy al-Azazy. “They write their reports from their air-conditioned offices in Cairo,” he laments.

“Nobody is on site to assess the real situation. I’m the only one here in the midst of all these dangers.” There have been several attacks on him, he adds.

His office was ransacked, his children have been attacked.

African asylum seekers meet with harsh reality in Israel. The few meager belongings of a refugee lie scattered around the area of the park which he has made his home.Ashley Gallagher, Tel Aviv May 2013via: DW/ Robert Mudge,

Al-Azazy also raises serious allegations against the Egyptian security forces. According to him victims who manage to escape from the hands of the traffickers are detained as criminals because they are in the country illegally. But the perpetrators of human trafficking enjoy a life of luxury in large villas. He believes the traffickers are supported by Egypt’s security agencies.

“Traffickers pay a lot of bribes so that they can freely bring refugees to the Sinai.”

Kahassay Woldesselasie does not feel at home in Israel. He hopes that one day peace and freedom will reign in his East African nation so he can return.