The+Arab+Republic+of+Egypt´s+position+paper+(1st+draft)

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Commettee: International Labor Organitation. Topic: Child Labour Country: The Arab Republic of Egypt.

When people forcing underage children to work, when children have to work to eat, when they work twice as a normal adult and pay them half and when the children are doing works that can hardly be making by an adult, that is called CHILD LABOUR. Forms of child labour are slavery, forced and unpaid labour, human trafficking, child pornography and prostitution.

This is common in poor and undevelop countries. Egypt is one of that undeveloped countries where the child labour is very large. I dont have the satisfaction of saying that this is changing a lot. The children are already working with 14 years in small shop, ironing and cleaning. They are forced to leave shool and studies enter in this kind of jobs in accordingly of poverty and other circumstances like the result of an unregulated informal economy, inadequate social protection and poor educational systems. In Egypt there alre a lot of abuse of girls and can face sexual harassment that cause them psychological damage. But this not only damage gils, boys also work in very hard jobs and they also suffer a lot. The consequences of work for the health of children is very serious. Visual injured and bones deformities, many accident, early death.. Is it logical that the high economic level companies such as Nike, Adidas, Lego, etc have to make use of child labor in order to obtain higher profits by paying less for these children to any adult in a developed society? Is it logical that a country who economy is fantastic and better than the rest of the world, attack and claim countries that can not be sustained economically, socially and politically? Do be reasonable that only provide aid to countries with difficulties are non-governmental organizations, while governments turn a blind eye to these problems and to many others? We all know the answers to these questions, but few are doing something out. Perhaps because of its danger, perhaps because of the lack of importance we attach to these problems, but one thing is clear, as governments and laws do not do anything about it, the exploitation of children will still be there. Egyptian authorities take notes of this situation and create a new national strategy to combat this practice, and there are several programes to provide adequate assistance to children who are trapped in labour market. However, statistics show that child labour is a widespread practice and is very difficult to remove it immediately, but there are some laws in Egypt like Age restriction, the employment of minors below 14 years is prohibited and also occupational training before the age os 12. The probleme of this is that the Governor has come to an agreement that said that the children under the age of 12-14 can work if does not affect his studies. Statistics say there are about 11 million children in Egypt and of these 11 million between 2 and 2.5 are working children between 6 and 15 years (15 years is the age of majority in Egypt). About 78% work on farms or in places far from the city and the majority are girls. The boys doing a 29% of the work and girls to 72%. 65% of child workers are still enrolled in school, 16% dropped out of school and 19 % never attended school. Child workers earn on average 1/4 to 1/3 of an adult wage. Whith support from UNICEF, the goverment of Egypt has begun to take measures to combat child labour and start to create laws. However, it has still done nothing to prevent the violation of child labour laws. Human Rights Watch ask the Egyptian goverment that they have to respect the minimum age for work and working hours, care for the treatment of children working, punish employers who do not respect their workers...

What we have to do to help Egypt to solve this problem is that countries with a good economy like USA and similar countries help the poorest, in this case Egypt. The Egyptian goverment take action and make the rules more resistant and more serious and strict and punish people who do not follow or not to comply. Make more laws to protect children, etc. "We must talk less and do more things to solve problems", Anonymous. "Child labour must not become the nation´s social safety net", Kailash Satyarthy.

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