Covid-19: children forced to work are more and more numerous

Irene Wanzila is 10 years old.

She works in Kayole Quarry in Nairobi, Kenya on September 29, 2020. AP - Brian Inganga

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3 min

The number of children put into work has increased for the first time in twenty years, the consequence of the crisis born of the pandemic.

Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly affected with 16.6 million more at the start of last year compared to 2016. 

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At the start of 2020, 160 million children around the world were forced to work, an increase of 8.5 million in four years according to a joint report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and Unicef . 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 9 million additional children are at risk of being pushed into child labor by the end of 2022.



Enough is enough, we must #EndChildLabour once and for all.

More in our new report with @ilo.

- UNICEF (@UNICEF) June 10, 2021

Half of them are between five and eleven years old, points out the study and are often employed in agricultural tasks. With rising poverty, 9 million more children could be forced into labor by the end of next year. This is one of the chilling consequences of the coronavirus pandemic that rocked the world even though the uptrend was already there. 

Statistical models show that this number could be five times higher or more, warned, Claudia Cappa, statistician of Unicef ​​and co-author of the report which answered questions from AFP.

"

If social protections decline from their current level, due to austerity measures and other factors, the number of children forced to work could jump by 46 million

", by the end of 2022, he said. she explained.

The phenomenon hits the hardest boys: 97 million out of the total of 160 million working children at the start of 2020.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest increase in the number of working children with 16.6 million more at the start of last year than in 2016.

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