AMMAN (ILO News) - A pair of child labour studies launched by the ILO on Monday (June 9) found improvements in law enforcement, greater access to education, alternative support mechanisms, as well as closer cooperation between stakeholders are all needed to tackle the growing number of children employed in Jordan’s agricultural and informal sectors.

The studies, which each included surveys of hundreds of households, said a significant number of children work up to 8 hours per day, with worrying indications of physical pains and other conditions caused by work in order to earn extra income to support their families. Syrian refugee children were found to be particularly vulnerable to child labour in both urban informal and agricultural sectors.

The study on the urban informal sector, which focused on the governorates of Amman, Irbid and Mafraq, concluded the main driving forces behind child labour in these areas were economic need and attitudes among families and wider society that did not value education. Furthermore, in the case of Syrian refugee children, work was observed as coping mechanism to compensate for the loss of family livelihoods and savings. The income from child labourers was found to make a significant contribution towards meeting basic household expenses of poor families such as rent, energy bills and food.

The agricultural sector study examined child labour in the governorate of Mafraq and the Jordan Valley. The study identified a strong correlation between child labour and impoverishment, with almost 70 per cent of families surveyed found to be living below the poverty line. The majority of children surveyed also said they felt exhausted by the nature of agricultural work they performed, while around half of children surveyed said they were exposed to various types of hazards including pesticides, dust and a lack of general safety at work.

Both studies found that working children were less likely to be enrolled in education than their non-working counterparts. Over 80 per cent of children surveyed in the urban informal sector were not attending school compared to around 70 per cent in the agricultural sector. However, around two-thirds of working children in the agricultural sector said they had acquired a basic level of education (Grades 1-10).

‘These studies allow us to understand the scale and reality of child labour in Jordan, particularly in the agricultural and informal sectors. Through this we can build on existing interventions including the current National Framework to Combat Child Labour,’ said Hamada Abu Nijmeh, Secretary General of the Ministry of Labour. ‘Procedures will soon be enacted on the ground, for example in terms of labour inspectors, in order to deal with employers who exploit working children as well as with the families of Syrian child labourers.’

The main recommendations across both ILO studies were to:

• Increase access to education;
• explore opening more technical and vocational training centres;
• raise awareness of education and negative impacts of child labour among the parents of working children;
• enhance the capacity of labour inspectors to tackle child labour;
• formally engage civil society and employers through the National Framework for Combating Child Labour;
• enhance the identification and follow-up of child labour cases;
• provide alternative support mechanisms and income generating activities to families of child labourers; and
• Systematically improve data collection on child labour in Jordan, especially in existing national surveys.

“What these studies convey is an increasing urgency to tackle the root causes of child labour in specific sectors through institutional and actionable reform based on the evidence now available,” said Frank Hagemann, Deputy Director of the ILO Regional Office for the Arab States. “Such interventions must also address child labour amongst both Jordanian and Syrian refugee children and so as to create an environment where all children are offered the opportunity to access education and develop accordingly.”

Key findings from the agricultural study: 

• 30.4 per cent of the children surveyed attend school.
• 17.9 per cent of working children are below the age of 12.
• 55 per cent of children experienced exhaustion from work.
• 22 per cent were injured during their work.
• 70 per cent of the children working come from families who live under the poverty line.

Key findings from the urban informal study: 

• Child labourers earn between 3 to 5 Jordanian Dinars (US$4.24 to US$ 7.06) per day;
• 96 per cent of Syrian child labourers and 40 per cent of the Jordanian child labourers surveyed previously attended school;
• 77 per cent of Jordanians and 90 per cent of Syrians are currently not attending school;
• 73 per cent of children work six to seven days per week;
• 46.7 per cent of employers employed children due to empathy;
• 42.2 per cent of employers employed children because they demanded less pay than adults.