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Poverty

Child labour anywhere in the world potentially harms child development. In Afghanistan too, child labour prevails despite government regulation that mandates the minimum working age as 15 for non-hazardous work and 18 for hazardous work. But what factors influence household decision-making on child labour in Afghanistan, what types of work are commonly performed by children and under which conditions? Based on research carried out in two sites in Herat province, a new report brought out by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) examines the nature and determinants of child labour in Afghanistan.

Seven households (five child labour and two non-child labour) were selected in the research site in Herat city and four households (three child labour and one non-child labour) were selected in a village in Islam Qala. The 11 case households were sampled purposively in order to represent a range of livelihood activities, educational levels, child labour activities, household compositions and ethnicities. Low socio-economic status was an essential selection criterion for all households in order to control for this factor in comparing the decisions and experiences of households both using and not using child labour. The research team used local definitions of poverty as well as direct observation of household assets in identifying and selecting case households.

Amongst others, the study finds that:

• livelihood and economic insecurity is an important contextual factor in the decision to use child labour or not, but findings from both child labour and non-child labour households suggest that economic factors are not necessarily the only or most significant factor in the household decision-making process
• households engage in complex cost-benefit analyses when assessing tradeoffs between work and school including assessments of the quality of schooling, the likelihood of future employment opportunities and issues that may reduce the likelihood of future returns, including ethnic discrimination and gender
• learning vocational and life skills is an important, non-economic motivation for some households to send their children to work, particularly in the current context of high unemployment

The report concludes that addressing child labour in Afghanistan is not only a question of eliminating hazardous or harmful work performed by children, it also requires increasing physical and livelihood security, improving school quality and enhancing local governance and accountability. Since the incidence of child labour varies by social, cultural, educational and livelihood context, a multifaceted and flexible strategy of short, medium and long-term interventions is also required. 

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