Today, Fifteen year-old Yura Haroyan temporarily lives in the Children’s Reception and Orientation Center run by FAR, the Fund for Armenian Relief. Previously, Yura lived with his father Edik Haroyan, a Karabakh War veteran. The boy hardly knows his mother as his parents separated when he was just two months old.

His father suffers from suberculosis and is presently in jail detention. To help his father Yura started working when only seven by selling crosses at the Mother See at Holy Etchmiadzin.

“Pop was sick and couldn’t work and the medicines he took were very expensive. One medicine cost 2,500 drams just for one gram, so I was working for him and also to put food on the table.” Yura says.

The boy says he had no problem plying his trade at first but then the Police started giving him problems. “The Police first demanded cigarettes and later money; 500 or 1000 drams on Saturdays and 2,000 drams on Sundays just so I could work next to the church.”

The Police not only shook Yura down for money but other kids and older people also engaged in small-time trade at the site. Yura says, “According to my figures, the cops would collect around 14,000 drams every day. When I told them that I didn’t have any money to pay them with on a certain day and that I’d pay them later on, they tell me to get the heck out of there.” Afterwards they tried to ban all types of selling around the church. Many was the time that the Police used physical force. “One time, when I had no money to fork over they took me to the station and beat me with sticks and billy clubs to the head and feet, sometimes in the front of people.”

Four to five years ago, when his father was to be operated on, Yura first turned up at the doors of FAR which provides temporary shelter to 3-18 year-olds who, for a variety of reasons, live on the ‘rough’, on the streets. Later on the organization decides where to send these children. On several occasions The Police brought Yura to the Children’s Center, stating that he was begging on the streets rather than working. Yura’s father, though, would always remove the boy from the Center.

In order to assist and care for his father Yura hasn’t attended school after the fifth grade. He says that by interacting with customers and tourists he can get by in English. He also knows Russian which he was taught by his father.

This time around Yura doesn’t know where they’ll send him after his time at the Children’s Center is up since his father is at the Convicts Hospital located in Criminal Detention institution. As Yuri puts it his father head lent some money to the father of one of his buddies and later got him mixed-up in some crazy scheme in order not to return the money. Then the Police got involved and now his father is being charged with disturbing the peace and resisting the officers. The last time Yura saw his father was fifteen days ago. Narineh Vardanyan, a child caretaker at the Center, told us that a meeting would be “Needless to say, child labour robs children of their childhood itself. But another saddening feature of child labour is that although it often arises because of poverty, it serves only to perpetuate the poverty trap held to determine where Yura should be sent. “He has no mother and the father is in custody. By law, he has to go to an orphanage if there is no one willing to be his caretaker.”

This is just one story of the children now residing at the FAR Center; and there are scores of kids there. There are a large number of juveniles there who are forced to work

In the estimation of Ms. Laylee Moshiri-Gilani, the newly appointed UNICEF representative in Armenia, “Needless to say, child labour robs children of their childhood itself. But another saddening feature of child labour is that although it often arises because of poverty, it serves only to perpetuate the poverty trap.”

In addition, children forced to work from an early age to make ends meet are deprived of the right to even receive an elementary education

Ms. Moshiri-Gilani adds, “The ongoing education reform should guarantee every child access to education  and ensure that children who for various reasons fall out of the schooling process be re-integrated into schools at any stage,”

In order to propose possible paths leading to the solution of these problems two studies have been carried out with the assistance of UNICEF – “Child Labour in Armenia” and ‘School Wastage Focusing on Student Absenteeism in Armenia.”

The findings of these studies, announced on October 30th by the UNICEF Yerevan Office, revealed that between 2002 and 2005 school dropout rates have been growing at an alarming rate of 250% a year. Thus, if in 2002-2003 total dropouts were equal to 1,531 students, in 2004-2005 this number increased to 7,630.

The studies also show that rapidly growing student absenteeism and drop out rates are closely linked to child labour as well as quality of education in Armenia.

The “Child Labor in Armenia” study was conducted in 1,066 households. In these families 71 children were found to be working on a hired basis.  Although the Armenian Labour Code stipulates the minimum age for admission to employment to be 14 years, 30 per cent of working children interviewed during the implementation of the study were below that age. Amazingly, most of these children found work on their own, without the help of their parents.

A large segment of working children seek jobs base on social factors. They work because no one else in the family is employed or because the family income isn’t adequate to purchase the minimum necessities of life. Other kids are sent off to work “to become a man”. Still other children work because they’ rather pay for their leisure time activities out of their on pocket.

Mira Andonyan, Executive Director of the FAR Homeless Children’s Center, states, “Working children are more mature. They are ready to pave their own path in life and to take care of the family’s worries, but at the same time their long-term social prospects are quite dim. Becoming a manual laborer at an early age deprives them of the chance of obtaining any profession and earning good wages.”

The studies mentioned show that the majority of working children in Armenia are boys. Furthermore, in the case of both boys and girls, many are engaged as workers in household businesses. For the most part they work in the fields, construction and as street vendors. In about half of the homes in which children work no assistance, either governmental or private, is received.

Filaret Berikyan, Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Affairs believes that, “Frequently people conceal their income levels or don’t wish to be perceived as poor. Thus, if we had a real picture on which to go on, many more people could be receiving social assistance benefits than presently do.”

According to Mira Andonyan, the reason for the non-inclusion of people within social assistance programs, stems from a lack of information, a corrupt system, mistrust towards the system , the nominal amounts received and problems regarding required documentation. In her words, “In reality, the social assistance system is difficult to access and hopeless.”

The vast majority of children work for an employer on terms as a laborer so that many work from dawn till dusk despite the fact that the Labor Code prohibits children from working more than twenty-four hours per week. The vast majority of such employers do not take responsibility when children in their hire become sick or are injured on the job.

The authors of the UNICEF-sponsored studies also sound the alarm over the fact that Armenia’s Labor Code defines voluntary work as non-compulsory but doesn’t define the line separating voluntary and paid work; a situation that creates the possibility for frivolous interpretation of the law.

Emil Sahakyan, UNICEF’s Communication Officer in Armenia, has another take on the issue, “Armenia is in a pretty good position when it comes to its legal statutes, and there are laws on the books that regulate the sphere of child labor. But there are no oversight mechanisms.”

According to employment breakdown of the children, most work in the Shirak Marz. There are five times more children working in Shirak than in Yerevan. According to Hayan Huayi who directed the “School Wastage” study, children in the Marzes frequently work in order to pay for school supplies, otherwise social-status related complexes arise and they prefer to drop-out of school all together.

In order to avert this FAR has proposed to the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs that it allocate assistance packages to those parents who cannot pay various school-related fees and that the assistance be in the form of books, etc and not in cash, which might be spent on other items.

For 93% of working kids, work is a fulltime pastime. In other words, it can be proven that the majority either do not attend classes at all or are frequently absent from class.

However, the 3 year figures resulting from studies conducted randomly in 2,265 classrooms in 151 schools show that work and socio-economic problems are the only reasons for school absenteeism. Here, the leading causes are the fact that children don’t place much importance on getting an education, health issues and, in the higher grades, the fact that many students get private tutoring.

The two UNICEF-supported studies complement each other in stressing that efforts to eliminate child labor go hand in hand with improvements in the quality, relevance and affordability of education. (To obtain full copies of the studies contact the UNICEF – Armenia: Tel.: (374-10) 523546; 566497)