• 96 violations and 104 warnings related to child labor issued by the Ministry of Labor in the first third of 2023

• Calls for building a comprehensive child labor database

Compass – On June 12 of each year, Jordan and the world commemorate the International Day Against Child Labor, in a move to end this issue by revitalizing international action to achieve social justice.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Labor, Muhammad Al-Zyoud, said that the ministry has a mechanism for reporting cases of child labor through an electronic link on the ministry’s website through the inspection portal.

He added that the online link, Childlabor.mol.gov.jo, works in coordination and cooperation between the Ministries of Labor, Social Development, and Education.

He explained that the Ministry of Labor controls working children through its inspection campaigns, and lists their cases on this link, so that the Ministry of Social Development can then manage the case to study its programs and study the support that it may provide to the family of this child through the National Aid Fund.

The Ministry of Education is working to ensure that there is a case of school dropout for this student and to correct his situation.

Al-Zyoud confirmed that the Ministry of Labor has made an awareness-raising effort to combat child labor since the first five months of this year, as it carried out 52 activities to raise parents’ awareness of the seriousness of child labor, compared to 51 activities last year.

231 child labor cases discovered

In order to reduce child labor, he said that the ministry conducted, from the beginning of this year until the first of May, 7,587 inspection visits, compared to 15,706 visits last year.

He added that the ministry seized 231 cases of child labor during the same period, compared to 520 in the whole of last year.

As of May 1, the ministry issued 96 violations and 104 warnings related to child labor, compared to 160 violations and 142 warnings last year, according to Al-Zyoud.

He pointed out that the ministry received 44 child labor complaints through the (Hemaya) program, compared to 87 in the whole of last year, while it received through the electronic link 4 communications, compared to 16 communications last year.

Laws and penalties

Regarding legal procedures, he added that Article (73) of the Labor Law stipulates that “it is not permissible in any way to employ a juvenile who has not completed sixteen years of age,” while Article (74) of the same law stipulates that “it is not permissible to employ A juvenile who has not completed eighteen years of age in work that is dangerous, exhausting or harmful to health, and these works are determined by decisions issued by the Minister after consulting the opinions of the competent official authorities.

Article 75 of the Labor Law prohibits the employment of a juvenile for more than six hours per day, provided that he is given a rest period of no less than one hour after working four consecutive hours. weekend.

According to Article (76), the employer must, before employing any juvenile, ask him or his guardian to submit several documents. A certified copy of the birth certificate, a certificate of the juvenile’s health fitness for the required work, issued by a specialized doctor and certified by the Ministry of Health.

The written consent of the juvenile’s guardian is also required to work in the institution, and these documents are kept in a special file for the juvenile with sufficient data on his place of residence, date of employment, work in which he was employed, wages and leave.

Regarding violations and penalties, Al-Zyoud said that Article (77) defines a penalty for violating the employment of children, as “the employer or the director of the institution shall be punished, in the event that he commits any violation of any of the provisions of this chapter or any regulation or decision issued pursuant thereto, with a fine of no less than (300) ) dinars and not exceeding (500) dinars, and the court may not reduce the penalty from its minimum limit or take discretionary mitigating reasons.

And he continued, “In addition to any penalty stipulated in the legislation in force, the employer shall be punished for any violation committed by employing any worker in a coercive manner or under threat, fraud or coercion, including withholding his travel document, with a fine of not less than (500) dinars (and not more than ( 1000) dinars, and the accomplice, instigator and interfering in this use shall be punished with the same penalty, and the stipulated fines shall be doubled in case of repetition.

Calls to build a child labor database

The Jordanian Center for Labor Rights called “Workers’ House” to take urgent measures at the level of social policies to contribute to addressing the problem of child labor.

In a report it issued on the occasion of the International Day Against Child Labour, the Center stressed the importance of measuring the impact caused by the successive rises in unemployment rates, and building a comprehensive child labor database that is periodically updated.

The report considered that the issuance of the “National Framework for Reducing Cases of Child Laborers and Beggars” in addition to the “Manual for Procedures for Dealing with Cases of Child Laborers and Beggars” and their approval by the Council of Ministers in 2021 represents a quantum leap in dealing with cases of child labor, and the government’s fulfillment of its obligations to address this issue. phenomenon.

The report recommended updating the national strategy to reduce child labor so that it is binding on all relevant authorities, and takes into consideration preventing children from engaging in the worst forms of child labour, in addition to providing direct assistance to extract children from work, rehabilitate and integrate them socially, and ensure their access to free education. basic.

The Tamkeen Center for Legal Aid and Human Rights called for the implementation of integrated social protection programs to meet the needs of the child, which ensures that low-income families do not resort to child labour.

In a specialized working paper it issued on the occasion of the International Day against Child Labour, the Center stressed the importance of reviewing and amending policies and laws related to child labor, and organizing a comprehensive awareness campaign focusing on the risks and their impact on them.

The Center called for the development of a child labor database, which includes correct data on the size of the phenomenon, the situation of working children and their numbers in each governorate and sector, the elimination of all barriers to access to education that face children and push them to enter the labor market, and the allocation of the necessary resources to secure their access to education.

The Jordanian Labor Observatory recommended the need to reconsider the social protection system so that it becomes fair and provides a decent life for all, especially the poor, and reconsider wage levels towards raising them in line with the standard of living in Jordan.

He also recommended the development of the educational process during the basic stage to reduce the dropouts of children from their schools.

The observatory called for tightening control by the concerned official authorities over places where child labor is concentrated, especially dangerous ones, and activating the application of laws, regulations and instructions that prohibit child labor, and setting deterrent penalties against violators and not only paying simple fines, in addition to activating awareness campaigns about the negative effects resulting from kids work.

Globally, it was decided that the slogan for this year’s celebration would be “Achieving social justice for all. End child labor!”

On the occasion of the International Day against Child Labor, the United Nations affirmed that the joint experiences in addressing child labor over the past three decades have shown that it is possible to end the phenomenon of child labor if the root causes of it are addressed, and it is urgent for everyone to contribute to finding solutions to people’s daily problems. Children is one of the most obvious of these problems.

prevalence of child labor

According to the United Nations, children around the world are routinely engaged in various forms of paid and unpaid work that do not cause them harm.

However, such work is classified under the concept of “child labor” if the children are too young (and weak) to engage in such work, or when they engage in hazardous activities that may jeopardize their physical, mental, social or educational development.

In the least developed countries, one in four children (between the ages of 5 and 17) are engaged in work considered harmful to their health and development.

Africa ranks first in terms of the number of children engaged in child labour, with 72 million children, while the Asia and Pacific region ranks second, with 62 million children.

Thus, in the regions of Africa and Asia and the Pacific together, there are up to nine out of ten children classified as child labor, while the remaining number is distributed among the Americas (11 million), Europe and Central Asia (6 million), and the Arab countries (one million).

The figures indicate that 5% of children in the Americas are employed, and their percentage reaches 4% in Europe and Central Asia, and 3% in the Arab countries. While the percentage of children within child labor is the highest in low-income countries, their numbers are in fact Greater in middle-income countries, where 9% of all children in lower-middle-income countries and 7% of all children in upper-middle-income countries are in work.

Statistics also indicate that 84 million children (representing 56% of all working children) live in middle-income countries, while 2 million working children live in high-income countries.

Facts and figures

At the start of 2020, 1 in 10 children aged 5 and over were involved in child labor worldwide – that equates to 160 million children, or 63 million girls and 97 million boys.

Globally, significant progress has been made in reducing child labor in the past two decades (ILO and UNICEF 2021), with the number of children in child labor declining by 85.5 million between 2000 and 2020, from 16% to 9.6%.

Only 26.4% of children worldwide receive social protection cash benefits, and globally, national spending on children’s social protection is only 1.1% of GDP. In Africa, the region with the largest proportion of children in the population, the highest prevalence of child labor and the greatest need for social protection, the equivalent of 0.4% of GDP is spent on social protection for children.

The kingdom