Five barefoot young boys were walking to town to look for work when they were apprehended by the police, in a cat-and-mouse battle to stamp out child labour among traditional weavers who produce Ethiopia’s famous, white ‘shamma’ shawls.
The Gamo and Dorze people of southern Ethiopia have woven the soft, cotton cloth with its delicately embroidered edges for decades, proud of their heritage and of a valuable source of income in the impoverished Horn of Africa nation.
“My family will not be hurt (that I left),” said one of the rescued boys, sitting in a government-run children’s shelter in Chencha, some 450km southwest of the capital, Addis Ababa.
“They will only regret that I will no longer be working for them as a shepherd,” he said, as officials tried to trace the parents of the five runaways, all aged between eight and 10.
The persistence of exploitation in the weaving industry illustrates the challenges in meeting a United Nations (UN) goal of ending child labour by 2025 in Africa, where 87 million children work, usually on family farms or small businesses.
Interviews with about a dozen child weavers, as well as parents, activists, and officials in and around Addis Ababa and Chencha found child labour is thriving because of poverty, culture, family pressure and clandestine trafficking networks.
Mathewos, 13, has been weaving in a windowless room since his mother fell sick six months ago and his cousin, Wesenu, brought him to the capital to work, even though he is under Ethiopia’s legal working age of 15.
“I provide food and clothing for him,” Wesenu told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, as Mathewos, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, worked on a scarf.
“It is better for him to learn how to weave here rather than being a shepherd in his hometown,” said the 42-year-old, who kept answering questions posed to Mathewos, saying that he considered himself like a father to the boy.
OUT OF SIGHT
The UN says most of the world’s child labourers are in Africa and Ethiopia is home to one of the largest populations. Government data shows that 43 per cent of under 15s — 16 million children — work in a country of 115 million people.
The bustling streets around Addis Ababa’s main market for traditional clothes, Shiromeda, were the hub of the illegal child weaving trade until the government shut down the workshops and issued warnings in homes and schools that it was a crime.
“Despite a win at Shiromeda, child labour in the weaving sector… has not vanished but only changed form and location,” said Endeshaw Menychil of the Bureau of Labour and Social Affairs.
Children now mostly work on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, where they are out of sight. One hidden hotspot is Wolete, where dozens of boys play table football and eat out when their employers are out selling the shawls they have made. — Reuters
