06/13/2006
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On Kathmandu’s first sunny day in weeks, approximately 5,000 children are celebrating
in the streets of the old town centre to mark the World Day Against Child Labour
promoted by the International Labour Organization (ILO).
“In Nepal there are 2,6 million child workers”, explains Sanu Giri, in charge
of one of the CWIN centres for the street children. “In my centre at the moment,
we have taken in 23. Last week we had 35, but some of them ran away. I have been
doing this job since 1994 and I know well how hard it is to get them off the street,
which for them is sometimes better than home, or the workplaces where they are
often abused”. Like Bikram, 12-years old, who smiles at us as he settles his baseball
cap with its Coca Cola logo: “I was washing dishes in a restaurant but I ran away
because they used to beat me”, he tells us, becoming serious. “I went to live
in the streets, but it was terrible. I am happy to have been taken in by CWIN
and I don’t want to go home. I have parents, a brother and a sister, but I don’t
want to go back to them”. Bikram has now started playing again and he dreams of
a better future: “I like football, cricket and videogames, and when I grow up
I’d like to be a truck driver and visit all Nepal”.
In Kathmandu about 500 street kids survive by begging, sniffing glue to combat
hunger and fatigue. Some of them scrape a few rupees together by selling the pieces
of plastic they find in the dumps, or drawings to the tourists and the social
workers from the west who pass through these parts. In the meantime, Indian pop
music distracts the children at Sanu’s: a film has started on TV which was made
in Bollywood, the capital of Indian cinema. They sit around in a circle to watch,
enraptured by their favourite actors.
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5,000 take to the streets of Kathmandu, on World Day Against Child Labour
from our correspondent
Francesca Lancini
Francesca Lancini
On Kathmandu’s first sunny day in weeks, approximately 5,000 children are celebrating
in the streets of the old town centre to mark the World Day Against Child Labour
promoted by the International Labour Organization (ILO). Aged between three and sixteen, they walk in an orderly fashion through the travelling
markets, the small and large Hindu temples and the roads thronging with noisy
motor scooters and rickshaws, the typical canopied vehicles towed by bicycles.
Mingling with them, hand in hand, are pupils from the schools in their traditional
white, navy and sky-blue uniforms, and street-children in their ragged clothes.
Together they laugh as they carry the banners of the local organisations that
struggle against child exploitation, such as IPEC and CWIN, which runs several
shelters in the Nepalese capital. Here, as in the rest of the country, children
of all ages are forced to do the hardest jobs: porters, dishwashers, bricklayers,
vendors of spices and shoddy goods.
“In Nepal there are 2,6 million child workers”, explains Sanu Giri, in charge
of one of the CWIN centres for the street children. “In my centre at the moment,
we have taken in 23. Last week we had 35, but some of them ran away. I have been
doing this job since 1994 and I know well how hard it is to get them off the street,
which for them is sometimes better than home, or the workplaces where they are
often abused”. Like Bikram, 12-years old, who smiles at us as he settles his baseball
cap with its Coca Cola logo: “I was washing dishes in a restaurant but I ran away
because they used to beat me”, he tells us, becoming serious. “I went to live
in the streets, but it was terrible. I am happy to have been taken in by CWIN
and I don’t want to go home. I have parents, a brother and a sister, but I don’t
want to go back to them”. Bikram has now started playing again and he dreams of
a better future: “I like football, cricket and videogames, and when I grow up
I’d like to be a truck driver and visit all Nepal”.
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