As anyone who has tried their best to resist the pleas of trinket and book sellers at Angkor Wat or on the Phnom Penh riverside can tell you, child labor is a widespread problem in Cambodia. I've been told that children, by appealing to visitors sense of empathy, can out-earn their parents by a figure of 2:1 or more. For every child working to lure tourist money, there are untold more working in less visible industries like construction (where flip flops and shorts are the de facto uniforms), to say nothing of the work in family rice paddies. The US Department of Labor has recently announced a ten million USD grant to combat child labor in the agriculture industry, building upon its previous work with children in the country's brick kilns, salt fields and shrimp processing factories.
Sonia Faleiro's recent op-ed in the NYTimes, a follow up to a previous piece on the subject, addresses the underlying complexities of the problem in India. The author received numerous offers after her last article to fund the education of the orphaned Devi siblings. However, their aunt refused any assistance, on the grounds that the family could not afford to forfeit the less than one dollar per day salary that their eldest sibling, a fourteen year old boy, made in the brick kilns. However, instead of denouncing the aunt as exploitative and cold-hearted, the author instead criticizes the Indian state for its failure to address the cyclical poverty that such a situation is born from. Piecemeal efforts by NGOs and philanthropists can only go so far when corruption and partisanship in the government undermine the policies enacted to combat poverty's root causes (lack of infrastructure, poor public education, chronic food shortages, etc.)
This is a message that should resonate in many places, but especially in Cambodia, home to hundreds of NGOs and charitable organizations, and where there is currently no compulsory schooling age.
Sonia Faleiro's recent op-ed in the NYTimes, a follow up to a previous piece on the subject, addresses the underlying complexities of the problem in India. The author received numerous offers after her last article to fund the education of the orphaned Devi siblings. However, their aunt refused any assistance, on the grounds that the family could not afford to forfeit the less than one dollar per day salary that their eldest sibling, a fourteen year old boy, made in the brick kilns. However, instead of denouncing the aunt as exploitative and cold-hearted, the author instead criticizes the Indian state for its failure to address the cyclical poverty that such a situation is born from. Piecemeal efforts by NGOs and philanthropists can only go so far when corruption and partisanship in the government undermine the policies enacted to combat poverty's root causes (lack of infrastructure, poor public education, chronic food shortages, etc.)
This is a message that should resonate in many places, but especially in Cambodia, home to hundreds of NGOs and charitable organizations, and where there is currently no compulsory schooling age.
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