Saturday June 12th is World Day Against Child Labour designed to bring attention to and promote action against this serious issue.

For impoverished families the world over, working hard from an early age isn’t a choice, it is a necessity. Children in poorer countries are pulled from school and forced into manual labour positions in order to make enough money simply to eat each day. With little education these children grow up in this industry and have very little opportunity to advance and break the cycle of poverty.

Goallover has reported on this heartbreaking trends with such stories as the plight of children working in the cocoa trade in West Africa or the children working in Malawi on tobacco farms.

Now, Plan UK is interested in highlighting the problems of children working in famine-ridden Niger. Right now, children are being pulled from school and play and sent to earn money to help their families. This is a very real problem, according to recent numbers from the Niger government 74,000 children under five are suffering from acute malnutrition. Overall 7.2 million people do not have enough food to sustain themselves.

Country Director of Plan Niger, Rheal Drisdelle explains:

“In Niger, when families feel threatened they develop coping strategies, and one is to get children earning money or food. They are often taken out of school to be an added helping hand, instead of being a ‘burden’ on the family”.

“Girls will do mainly domestic work and boys will work selling things in the market, like cold water, or ice,”

adds Assalama Sidi, programme support manager for Plan Niger.

“There are definitely consequences,” says Sidi. “If children are pulled out of school they will fall behind in their education. And towns and cities are dangerous for a child, who knows what kind of work they could be doing? Some can be involved with illegal sales like drugs, and young girls are easily exposed to sex work”.

Plan Niger has been working tirelessly in conjunction with a national food crisis board delivering almost 1,050 tons of food. Plan’s next imperative is to provide enough food to cover these communities’ needs until the harvest in October. You can help Plan to achieve this goal by sponsoring a child in these troubled times.