In the Arab world where family is so important, we cherish our children even to the extent of over-indulging them. We have been shocked by the increasingly well-documented horrors of child labor in other countries. The issue of children working in Asian sweatshops or in mines is slowly being addressed, partly by governments waking up to the scandal in their midst and partly by Western companies who have been shamed by media revelations into insisting that children are no longer employed in the factories from which they source their high-priced goods so cheaply. However, there is another pool of child labor which is only now being recognized as the great evil that it is. The findings in a new report from the International Labor Organization (ILO) demonstrate that ten and a half million children work as domestic laborers in conditions verging on slavery. The ILO document, released on World Day Against Child Labor, indicates that around 6.5 million of these unfortunate children are between just five and 14 years of age and the majority of them, some 71 percent, are girls. Many of these children are subjected to physical and sexual violence. Because these crimes take place in domestic surroundings, on farms or in city apartments, they are rarely reported, and if children seek to escape the appalling treatment and run away, they are all too often found and returned to their tormentors. This terrible process is all the more tragic if children have been sold into service by their own families. The one place where a young and vulnerable person might expect love and protection, instead produces a mammoth act of betrayal. The report of course dwells on the very worst aspects of this bondage. Children in domestic service are nothing new, nor is it always totally pernicious. The child lives with a family and earns money for its own folks, which is often much needed to pay off debts or maintain a perilous financial existence. Some employers do treat their little domestics with respect. Unfortunately, however, as the ILO report demonstrates, such behavior is the exception, not the rule. Moreover, throughout their early and formative years, there is little or no chance for any formal education. The children are treated as skivvies, at the beck and call of their masters and mistresses and subject to degrading physical and sexual exploitation. Millions of childhoods are thus being lost and, as and when they escape their bondage at adolescence, their futures are bleak in the extreme. Indeed if the females have been violated, their marriage prospects are dim. It is clear that it is only governments that can act to stop this disgusting trade in young people. There are no big name corporate brands involved, which can be disgraced by exposure. The shame here lies with legislators, law enforcement officers and indeed with the families who can afford to hire children as domestic slaves and those families that are prepared to see their offspring condemned to spend their childhood in a life of servitude. The more visible scandal of child factory and mine labor is slowly being addressed. However, the hidden horrors of juvenile domestic service must not be neglected. Too many childhoods have been lost for too long for this crime against innocence to be allowed to continue.
