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Article

17 May 2021

Author:
Al Jazeera

Venezuela: Covid-19 pandemic boosts child labour figures

“Pandemic fuels Venezuela’s worsening child labour crisis”, 10 May 2021

...With schools closed and no access to the internet, Moises and his 11-year-old brother Jesus help their father, also named Moises, 58, grow the food that provides for their family, something they almost never did before the coronavirus pandemic. Coronavirus quarantine measures have boosted the number of children in the workforce in Venezuela, according to child protection activists in the South American nation, which faces a deep economic crisis that has worsened in the last five years. The child labour problem has been fuelled by a mass migration of more than five million Venezuelans that turned many children into breadwinners for their families, according to researchers. “[The pandemic] has aggravated the risk factors for child labour,” said Carlos Trapani, coordinator of Cecodap, a non-profit group focused on violence prevention and children’s rights. The work ranges from toiling in garbage dumps to agricultural fields, he said, adding that children in rural areas are more likely to be dependent on public assistance and are at greater risk of being recruited by gangs. As of 2020, at least 830,000 Venezuelan children and adolescents were living without one or both parents due to migration, according to a Cecodap report published in December...Venezuela does not provide statistics on child labour. The country’s information ministry and the state child protection agency IDENNA did not reply to requests for comment...Since the onset of the pandemic, more children are doing housework for other families in exchange for money or food and more of them are begging and selling products such as water or cigarettes in the streets, according to the study...

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