SANAA (Reuters) - Ali Abdu, a slim boy of 14, just wants to
go home to his family in the Yemeni mountains. His dream of
making money in Saudi Arabia ended in a hospital bed.”First I worked as a goatherd, then in a car-wash for three
months. Then I was hit by a car and spent 29 days in hospital,”
he mutters. “After that I gave myself up so I could come back.”Abdu is one of thousands of children, mostly boys, who U.N.
officials say are trafficked from impoverished Yemeni villages
to Saudi Arabia and other rich Gulf countries to work illegally
as beggars, camel jockeys, domestic servants or laborers.The murky cross-border business is run by gangs who recruit
boys directly from their families or from the army of child
workers already seeking survival on Yemeni city streets.”It’s just underground,” Aboudou Adjibade, the Yemen
representative of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, told
Reuters. “It’s difficult to control because there’s a lot of
complicity from the community level and the authority level.”Driven by poverty and greed, the trade exposes children to
the risks of violence, sexual abuse and exploitation.
Worldwide, UNICEF says about 1.2 million children are
trafficked annually.”I went to Saudi Arabia with a friend. We walked all the
way,” said Abdu, from Mahwit, a rugged region northwest of the
Yemeni capital and about 100 km (60 miles) from the border.Feet tapping nervously, he told his confused story in the
courtyard of the Centre for Protection and Rehabilitation of
Children in Sanaa. The government-run institution had received
its first batch of a dozen boys only a few days earlier.All seemed bewildered. Staffers said some were traumatized.
The atmosphere was awkward and formal, with few signs of
purposeful activity for the boys, who had been transferred from
a bigger reception centre at Harad, near the Saudi border.”We will care for them while we try to trace their
families,” said Abdulillah Thabet, the centre’s director.
BACKWASH OF POVERTYUNICEF, which supports the Sanaa and Harad centers, says
traffickers move several thousand children a year, perhaps many
more, from Yemen. It plans a survey for accurate figures.”It’s a heavy phenomenon in deprived, remote governorates,
where there is not much opportunity for work and even
agriculture is deteriorating for lack of water,” said Adjibade.He said desperate families with too many mouths to feed
might hand a son over to traffickers on the promise of future
earnings. In Yemen’s patriarchal society, boys are anyway
expected to shoulder responsibility early in life.”The dramatic consequence on children is that when they go
to Saudi Arabia, it’s a horrible form of exploitation,”
Adjibade said. “They beg or work on farms in painful
conditions.”Abdu’s voice shook as he recalled his tiring days washing
cars with a few older Yemeni youths. He said he had slept alone
in a nearby room and had been paid 500 rials ($133) a month.Asked if he had been lonely, the black-haired boy said: “I
don’t know. I used to finish work, sleep, then go back to
work.”Abdu had saved 1,500 rials to bring home to his family
before he was run over by a Saudi driver, who paid for him to
stay in hospital until his leg had mended.”I would love to go back to school, learn something,” he
said. “I would like to have a shop near my house. I’ll do
anything, any work, but it must be halal (permissible).”
TABOO SUBJECTWhen UNICEF tried to alert the Yemeni, Saudi and other
governments to the trafficking problem 10 years ago, Adjibade
said the common response was denial, on the grounds that such a
practice contradicted Islamic injunctions to protect children.”The reality is completely different,” he said. “It took
some time, in Yemen and the region, to recognize the facts.”The International Organization of Migration (IOM), which
trained Yemeni staff at the two centers for trafficked
children, also says government attitudes are slowly changing.”Two years ago, we couldn’t even talk about this problem
officially,” said IOM representative Stefano Tamagnini. “Now
they start accepting the word trafficking.”Acknowledged or not, the flow of youngsters to Saudi Arabia
goes on, spiking each year around the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca, when child beggars can
expect the faithful to show more generosity than usual.The Saudi authorities dump the children back over the
border whenever they catch them, although UNICEF is promoting a
Yemeni-Saudi dialogue aimed at a more coordinated response.Some boys at the centre in Sanaa had made several trips to
the kingdom. Others had been intercepted at the border.”I’ve been to Jeddah three times with my cousin and his
group,” said Khaled Ali, 18. “I used to herd goats in the
morning until 11 a.m. and then work on the farm until the
night. It wasn’t easy … I don’t want to go back there again.”UNICEF spokesman Naseem-ur-Rehman said children were
victims of the poverty eroding Yemen’s social fabric as
population growth outstrips resources. Parents often did not
realize what awaited their sons in Saudi Arabia or on city
streets.”These kids have amazing potential and an ability to
survive despite woeful tales,” he said. “We are working with
families to persuade them not to push their children into
darkness.”(Editing by Charles Dick)
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