The effects of violence and bad behavior of parents and in overall of the elders on the children, is transferring from one generation to another. Those people who are teased and harassed during their childhood, with more probability they transfer this behavior to their children. Violence against the children are divided into two categories:
A) Psychological violence like reprobation of love, threat, shame, sneer, careless to their psychological and physical needs of children, invective, humility and many other examples.
B) Second is physical violence like beating, throwing up, burning, beating with materials and other issues.
All of the mentioned points could affect mentally, psychologically and physically on the growth of children.
Also the recent investigations which are conducted by the English specialists shown that those children who are targeted and victims of the violence of their elders; with more probability they have the most chance of getting cancer and other health problems.
For further information about the negative effects of the verbal violence against the children I (Masoud Ansar) conducted an interview with Ms. Afifa Marouf one of the actives of human rights and also employee of the independence human rights commission of Afghanistan.
Question: First of all please introduce yourself to us?
Answer: I am Afifa Marouf; employee of the support from the rights of children section of independence human rights commission of Afghanistan.
Question: Is there anything mentioned in the national constitute of Afghanistan about the child labor or not?
Answer: Yes, in the national constitute of Afghanistan it is mentioned that the heavy and forced work are prohibited on the children and also mentioned that working on children is prohibited and also it is mentioned in the labor law that if the children have completed the 15 years old then they can learn a profession but with the conditions that this work does not become an obstacle on the way of their education.
Question: If the child is starting work after the age of 15 years; isn’t it become an obstacle on the way of his/her education?
Answer: Yes, it becomes an obstacle because it make busy the child mentally and the interest of children are reduced towards the studies; it is happening at the situation when the children are not interested in studying and then the families are deciding to involve them in a professional shop until they learn a profession and that is also after work and it is not time consuming.
Question: Based on your opinion; the point which is mentioned in the law that the children after age of 15 years can do some work because of the economic problems?
Answer: As everyone know that in all over the world; in spite of studying the children are also working for their economic development, for sure at their free time which is not becoming an obstacle to their studies and is also not harmful and safe to their psychological and physical health.
Question: Which work could be considered as heavy work?
Answer: The heavy work is that work which could disturb the mental and physical health of the child, also it harms the education process and the child could not continue his/her education is considered as heavy work.
Question: In spite of this; that most of our countrymen has their economic problems, can the children do the heavy work to remove the economic problems of their families?
Answer: In the article No 54 of the national constitute of Afghanistan it is mentioned that; this is the responsibility of the government of Afghanistan to support the children of those families which are derelict, where the government has never do anything in this regard and theses children are compelled to start the heavy work.
It is natural that if from one side the works of these children are support for their families’ economic growth and conditions but from the other side it has many harms to the children like: they will be misused by some of the people, they are smuggled, they are kidnaped and also the process of their education remain behind; also their psychological social health is disturbed because they were also away from the family and they don’t know the love of the family.
Question: Can these children be fruitful in future for themselves and the society?
Answer: As each and every mother and father have to provide the food, clothes and education for their children until they have not reached their legal age but in some of the families while the father is alive, he is sitting home and sending his child to work; which in fact is a mistake and is not good. It is to say that; these kinds of the children would be insular in future and they all the time depends on the others
Question: Up to what extent the government could provide the services based on the established laws for the children?
Answer: Yes, we have a lot of laws regarding the support of the children but unfortunately the government has not the implementation spirit and once again I would like to say with unfortunate that the number of children on the streets are increasing day by day.
Question: Up to what extent the independence human rights commission had supervise and follow up the activities of those institutions working for the child support?
Answer: We have supervised many cases in this regard and I have to say that we have a network of emergency response to the children which is conducting its meetings once a month and we discuss their about the problems of the children and we are also sending regularly our proposal regarding the publicity to the ministry of labor and other relevant organization like ministry of education and other ministries. Also we have conducted learning sessions for the police and public servants that how they should behave with the children on the street so that they don’t harm them.
Question: After giving the proposals for the development of the conditions of the children to the ministry of labor; did you also supervise their activities?
Answer: Yes, we had our supervisions on their activities but as everyone knows that the government has not a proper management and cannot chase the cases properly; also they cannot implement the developed strategies that have on hand.
For example: last year we sent a proposal to the government about the collection of the beggars from the city where some of the children and elders are collected but as the government had not a regular working program those children who were collected and kept in the red crescent for a period of one month or 45 days, they were released and the started their previous activities.
Question: Whenever the government cannot practically implement its activities then what is your responsibility in regard to the conditions of the children on the streets?
Answer: We always stimulate the government for the practical implementation of the laws; especially those laws which are for the benefit of the children in Afghanistan and also about the execution of children’s rights convention which is committed by the government. After spending many years, the government is writing a report on the situation of the children and is sending to the United Nations and we also as follow up make a report about the facts of children’s conditions and then send.
Question: As a final question; is the independence human rights commission has an exact statistics about the children working on the streets?
Answer: The recent investigation which is done by the independence human rights commission of Afghanistan shows that in the current situations 1.9 million children from the age of 6- 17 are busy in the heavy work.
Thank you very much from your companionship.
Follow TKG on Twitter & Facebook
