{"id":12194,"date":"2018-10-18T14:59:48","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T18:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=12194"},"modified":"2018-10-18T15:05:04","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T19:05:04","slug":"unprecedented-spread-of-poverty-and-child-labor-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/12194\/","title":{"rendered":"Unprecedented Spread of Poverty and Child Labor in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The devastating policy of the ruling regime has created much social and economic crisis in Iran where the most vulnerable group, Iran\u2019s children, are the first victims of this crisis. Child labor is now a familiar scene in every city in Iran.<\/p>\n<p>The state-run ILNA news agency published a report on child labor on October 13 revealing shocking figures of poor suburbanites particularly the situation of poor children.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12200 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Iran-Child-Labor-02-300x195.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"195\" \/><\/p>\n<p>According to official figures, there are 2 million working children in Iran. However, unofficial reports suggest the real figure is 7 million. Given the fact that the regime always manipulates the statistics in its favor, the real number might be even more than 7 million.<\/p>\n<p>According to ILNA\u2019s report, the number of child labors is constantly growing, and at the same time, their average age is decreasing.\u00a0\u201cEconomic crises and the degrading livelihoods of low-class families drive children into labor. Every day, we witness poor children under school age begging, peddling or even collecting garbage,\u201d the report states.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12198 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Iran-Child-Labor-04-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Iran-Child-Labor-04-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Iran-Child-Labor-04-678x509.jpg 678w, https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Iran-Child-Labor-04-326x245.jpg 326w, https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Iran-Child-Labor-04-80x60.jpg 80w, https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Iran-Child-Labor-04.jpg 690w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>While referring to inflation as &#8220;economic violence&#8221;, the report says that the first victims of economic violence are children who are forced to leave education to find work, any work available to them, in order to support their poverty stricken families. Many of these children are under 10 years of age working without the safety gears in hazardous work conditions.<\/p>\n<p>Considering that 19 million poor people live in 3,000 districts in suburbs of Iran\u2019s cities, ILNA describes the situation as \u201cpoverty is taking its victims aggressively\u201d.<\/p>\n<h5><span style=\"font-size: 16px\">Instead of trying to solve the problem by eliminating poverty, Iranian regime punishes the victims<\/span><\/h5>\n<p>In a gesture meant to confront poverty, Tehran\u2019s municipality arrested poor children in the capital last year and punished their parents, a measure that drew widespread criticism \u2013 more than 300 professors, researchers, social activists, lawyers, journalists and child activists accused regime officials of confronting the victims rather than fighting poverty. \u201cAllocate the economic sources for providing livelihoods, education and healthcare, and for making job opportunity and supporting vulnerable strata of the society,\u201d they demanded in their statement.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12197 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Iran-Child-Labor-03-300x215.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"215\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Iran-Child-Labor-03-300x215.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Iran-Child-Labor-03.jpg 780w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>ILNA\u2019s report also talks about garbage-collector children in Mahmood Abad, southern Tehran. The report describes the place as such: \u201cLoads of garbage are on the ground with bad smell. Going down the hole between piles of garbage, you can see many children collecting trash among all kind of rubbish ranging from syringe needle, dead rats, to broken glasses and wasted foods.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs it worth working here? Doesn\u2019t it worsen your situation?\u201d the reporter asked the kids. \u201cWorsen? What is worse than this? Of course, it&#8217;s death!\u201d replied a kid. While their bodies are marked with wounds, the kids described that they should sell these garbage daily for three dollars to support their families.<\/p>\n<p>Although the Iranian regime ratified the International Convention on Child Rights in Jul 1994, it does not even care about the rights of children mentioned in its own constitution.<\/p>\n<p>Ali Rostamian, a member of the regime\u2019s parliament, told state-run Mehr news agency in June 2018, \u201cthe Welfare Organization has no agenda for organizing the children of labor at all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Obviously the Iranian regime, fully capable of organizing an agenda to fund the Assad regime in Syria and other proxies in the region with $16 billion, does not care about its own people. The wealth of Iranian people is now either going in the mullahs\u2019 pockets or used to fund conflicts and terrorism throughout the world, in a bid to stabilize the root of Iran\u2019s dictatorship.<\/p>\n<p>Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of National Council of Resistance stated in June 2018, \u201cThe third sign of the inevitable overthrow of the ruling religious fascism is that social tensions and economic crises, especially high prices, unemployment, poverty, and inequality have reached a critical mass. Everyone senses the explosive state of society. And the mullahs can offer neither a solution nor are willing or able to resolve the problems.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>(Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/english.mojahedin.org\/i\/unprecedented-spread-poverty-child-labor-iran\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mojahedin.org<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>The devastating policy of the ruling regime has created much social and economic crisis in Iran where the most vulnerable group, Iran\u2019s children, are the <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/12194\/\" title=\"Unprecedented Spread of Poverty and Child Labor in Iran\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":12195,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-irans-current-affairs","category-society-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12194"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12206,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12194\/revisions\/12206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}