According to a report by the research center of the Iranian regime’s parliament, due to “poverty among families,” the number of child laborers has increased to 15 percent of the population of children, and at least “10% of child laborers” do not have the opportunity to study or go to school.
The report, titled “Effective Monitoring Challenges to Prevent Child Labor,” emphasizes that “child labor affects approximately eight percent and, considering children who are housekeeper, about 15 percent of Iranian children.”
Accurate statistics on the number of child laborers in Iran are not available.
According to a report by the Strategic Statistics and Information Center of the Ministry of Labor, in 2017, out of about 9 million Iranian children, around 499,000 children were “active” in the workforce. This means that about half a million children in Iran were either “working” or “looking for work.”
Taking into account the current population of children in Iran, which was approximately 9 million in 2017, the population of “child laborers” has increased to 1,350,000 based on the estimate of 15 percent of the child population being involved in child labor.
The parliamentary research center also emphasized that at least “about ten percent of child laborers” do not have the opportunity to study and “do not go to school,” and child labor “deprives them of their potential and abilities” and is harmful to their “physical and mental growth.”
Additionally, the report identified “poverty among families” as the main reason for the growing trend of child labor and added that “some children engage in various forms of child labor, such as working in workshops, due to various reasons, including poverty among families.”
The report states that “child labor” is banned and considered a crime under both international and domestic laws, including the Labor Law (1990) and the Law on Protection of Children and Adolescents (2019), and “the government is obliged to take necessary measures and support children in order to reduce child labor.”
The report also highlights that despite the ban, “children are still being exploited and abused in economic activities.”
“The nature of some of the work that child laborers engage in, especially the worst forms of it, is difficult monitor,” the report reads in part.
The majlis (parliament) research center has mentioned “domestic work,” “work in remote and unmonitored areas, such as border crossing,” “illegal work such as drug trafficking,” and “sexual exploitation of children in various areas” as examples of the types of work that child laborers engage in and noted that monitoring and preventing them is difficult.
The report also notes that a portion of the child labor population engages in “domestic work,” and in practice, “legal monitoring of domestic work is not easily possible since it occurs in the private sphere,” and the “lack of effective monitoring of child labor has led to children being exploited and abused in many economic activities” according to reports.
Based on statistics published by state-run media in Iran, the number of children involved child labor is increasing and those actually in schools are unfortunately decreasing with each passing year. More children are joining the “army” of child labor, selling goods and roaming the streets of large cities checkered across Iran.
Despite the fact that regime officials go the distance in publishing doctored reports to place the blame of this social catastrophe on any source but the regime, the footprints of this phenomenon can be traced back to its actual cause through remarks made by authorities.
The main reason lies in the unprecedented and ever-increasing poverty that is spreading across Iran like a plague resulting from the regime’s unpopular policies that are plundering the Iranian people. Millions of families are in such dire conditions that they literally cannot even adequately feed their children, let alone provide for the fees of sending their children to school.
As a result, Iran’s younger generation, the future of this country, have no choice but to roam the streets and work in dangerous workshops in a desperate attempt to help their families make ends meet.
The report concludes that reducing the number of child laborers, especially preventing children from engaging in exploitative work, “is only possible by eradicating poverty and raising awareness in society.”
