Child Labor In Somalia

Child labor around the world has been slowly decreasing, but in Somalia it has been continuing to thrive, making it become one of the top countries with child laborers. From agriculture work to construction to even child soldiering, children are being forced into work over school completion. The families of these children are dealing with extreme poverty and are sometimes willing to give up their own children in order to earn money. Some of the children aren’t given up by their families but instead forced into labor and recruitment for armed conflict. Children in this country of Africa are doing hard labor, forced into human trafficking, and being abducted to serve as soldiers. Child labor has many different aspects to it. The child laborers
40% of the people who reside in Somalia live in extreme poverty and in rural areas that number goes up to 50% (“Rural poverty in Somalia”). These families that face living in extreme poverty struggle to support their family and have to resort to giving up their children as a way to obtain more money. These children that are given up may be forced into forced labor, child soldiering, human trafficking, or becoming child brides (“Findings”). Young children are trafficked to different continents and can possibly end up dying. Dozens of these victims are found in the Arabian Sea, many times with their hands tied and even with evidence of being shot ("Human Trafficking: Greed and the Trail of Death”). In Somalia, many families live in poverty and the children feel the effects from the little money their family has because they may be forced into child labor instead of attending
The leaders of Somalia tried to expand children’s rights such as outlawing the use of child soldiers, protection from abuse, etc. but many Somalian children will not see the benefits from these new laws (Guled, Abdi and Straziuso, Jason). The government is also trying to end child labor by improving the education of the children in Somalia. They want to give children easier access to education to stray them away from working (Roble, Muhyadin Ahmed). They launched a program called “Go-2-School” that gives one million kids access to a free education. Although, this effort is not living up to their expectations as only 700,000 of the 1.7 million elementary school age are even enrolled in school (Roble, Muhyadin Ahmed). Efforts are being made to put a stop to working children but there are slim results being seen. The government is facing hard times with their civil war and trying to stabilize themselves but they are still working towards stopping child