Child labor, trafficking and more have work to do

TIRANA, Feb. 22 – Child labor and trafficking remain Albania’s Achilles’ heel in its post-communist transitory and integration process as far as the children are concerned.
That was another issue remembered last week, Feb. 20, the World Day of Social Justice.
According to the Human Development Promotion Center (HDPC), Albania Situation Report 2009, Albania is still far from being a ‘society for all’. Social poverty and injustice are prevalent and physical poverty is widespread across rural and urban areas.
Albania signed the Declaration of Human Rights in 1992 but facts show it is far from ensuring basic human rights, especially for children.
The streets of Albania’s major cities are home to children that are abused and exploited for work under the harshest of conditions.
A World Vision Albania Quantitative study interviewed some 293 street children in 2008. The study revealed as many as half of the children start work before the age of 10, with the average working between seven to 18 hours per day.
Many children are taken out of school and denied a childhood and work on the street strips children of their dignity and freedom.
Child labor however, is not only a street phenomenon. Thousands of other children work in the private sector either in agriculture, construction or the fishing industry. The Albanian National Labour Inspectorate says that child labor is prevalent in Albania and records some 133,000 children who work in the private sector*.
In Northern Albania, thousands of other children are denied their freedom due to blood feuds, which ‘imprison’ people in their homes.
Trafficking, the most common form of modern day slavery is also rife in Albania, which has emerged as a major source and transit country for women and girls, says UNICEF and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Trafficked Albanian girls are typically younger than in other countries with 80% of them under 18 and mostly from rural areas.
Trafficking in Albania goes beyond prostitution, with many children trafficked internally and externally for forced labor
According to UNICEF, 1 in 2 Albanian children experience physical violence at home and 1 in 3 at school. UNICEF also reports that 13.3% of children attending school experience sexual abuse.
Much remains to be done to overcome social and physical poverty in Albania.