<<previous  |  index  |  next>>

III. The Scope of Child Labor in Morocco

Morocco has one of the highest child labor rates in the Middle East and North Africa. Although Moroccan law prohibits children under fifteen from working, government statistics suggest that at least six hundred thousand children age seven through fourteen— 11 percent of all children in that age group—are engaged in economic activity.¹⁰ Of those working children, 372,000 are under age twelve.¹¹  The true number of working children is undoubtedly higher, as these figures do not include children younger than seven or older than fifteen, are based on labor force surveys that by their nature are poorly suited to capture data on informal and illegal forms of labor, and do not account for a significant proportion of children whom the government categorizes as neither working nor attending school but whom labor experts believe may in fact be working.¹² Morocco is expected to release additional data on child labor collected as part of a 2004 census in late 2005 or early 2006, but according to ILO-IPEC, “[t]he survey takers didn’t have child domestic labor as a priority so the data may not be complete.”¹³

Child labor in Morocco is largely a rural phenomenon, affecting an estimated 19 percent of all rural children age seven through fourteen, compared to 3 percent of all urban children in that age group.¹⁴ Rural child labor overwhelmingly consists of unpaid labor on family farms, while urban child labor also includes significant proportions of wage labor, self-employment, and apprenticeships.¹⁵ According to government data, urban child labor is largely divided among textiles (25 percent), other industries (20 percent), commerce (16 percent), domestic service (12 percent), and repairs (9 percent). Domestic service has the highest levels of paid employment of children, at 72 percent, far surpassing the next closest sector, textiles, at 29.8 percent.¹⁶

These estimates are based on the assumption that only ten thousand children under fifteen work as domestics, including four thousand boys.¹⁷ In contrast, a 2001 study by the Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science estimated that between 66,000 and 86,000 girls under fifteen were working as child domestics, and a 2001 government survey found 13,580 girls under fifteen working as child domestics in the greater Casablanca area alone.¹⁸ Of the girls in the Casablanca survey, 870 were under eleven years old, making them some of the youngest child domestics in the world.¹⁹

Morocco’s child labor rates appear to have fallen slightly in the 1990s and in the first two years of the current decade (the most recent period for which data is available), a trend that some experts attribute in part to limited job opportunities for older children and a rise in school enrollment rates for younger children.²⁰ It is not clear whether this statistical trend applies to child domestic workers under fifteen, who are an especially disadvantaged group, as we discuss below. In respect of greater school enrollment, thus far most government and NGO programs targeting child domestic labor have focused on providing them with nonformal education while they continue to work, rather than on preventing young girls from entering domestic work, enforcing existing legal protections against abuse and exploitation, or transitioning working girls back into full-time, formal education.²¹ 

Factors contributing to child domestic labor

I started working when I was fourteen. My mother died when I was small and my father died when I was twelve. I lived with my father’s wife. We needed money so I went to work. It was me and my half sister, who is now eight years old. My father’s wife works now [that I don’t work anymore], but I haven’t seen her for a year.

A neighbor found me the job. I wanted to commit suicide, but then I thought, “No one will miss you.” So I went to the neighbor and she found me work in Casablanca.

We were very poor and I didn’t see a way out. I didn’t want to work in prostitution and I thought that killing myself would be better morally than dying of AIDS from prostitution.

—Nejla O., eighteen, interviewed in Casablanca, May 17, 2005

Moroccan child labor experts frequently cite poverty, poor quality education and poor access to education (particularly for girls), broken families, and widespread social acceptance of child labor as primary factors explaining the prevalence of child labor.²² In addition, studies have found that in Morocco and elsewhere, parents’ level of education and access to water and electricity also have a strong impact on whether rural children work.²³ These rural push factors are particularly important for child domestic labor, because while child domestic laborers’ workplace is typically urban their origin is typically rural.

Twelve of the fifteen domestic workers Human Rights Watch interviewed were originally from rural areas with high poverty and unemployment rates, a pattern consistent with the findings of other studies.²⁴ Morocco’s rural population continues to suffer the effects of a decade of frequent droughts and falling prices that devastated the agricultural sector.²⁵ Extensive rural poverty has contributed to a high rate of rural-urban migration, which has in turn contributed to growing urban unemployment.²⁶

Despite ongoing efforts by the Moroccan government to address rural poverty, progress has been slow. The World Bank estimated Morocco’s poverty incidence in 2005 to be about 15 percent, down from 19 percent in 1998/99; if those considered “economically vulnerable” are included, the incidence rate rises to 40 percent.²⁷ Child domestics appear to be particularly likely to come from the most impoverished families. A 1999 study of child labor by the ILO and Morocco’s Ministry of Social Development, Solidarity, Employment, and Professional Development found that 82 percent of child domestics came from “very poor families,” and 87 percent from families “living with great difficulty.”²⁸ In contrast, it found that 36 percent of the overall population of working children were living in “restricted circumstances,” and 36 percent in “abject poverty.”²⁹

For children in families living below or near the poverty line, death, divorce, or disability of a wage earner in the household can overwhelm fragile coping mechanisms, increasing the likelihood that children will be sent to work to replace lost income. This appeared to be the case for most of the domestics we interviewed. Nasra J., twenty, said, “I am the only one [in my family] who worked. If my father had lived I would not have worked. All the others married and left home. I was twelve when my father died, and I went to work a year later.”³⁰

Death or divorce also can cause a child to lose a valued protector in the family, leaving her vulnerable to abuse by a step-parent. Several domestics we interviewed reported being sent away to work in order to keep peace in the new marital household, or being told by a step-parent to work or leave. Seventeen-year-old Zahra H.’s parents divorced when she “was small,” and she began working when she was eight, along with her mother’s younger sister. She told us her mother sent her to work during her school vacations to keep her away from her stepfather:

My mom’s husband didn’t like us. He was mean so when we [Zahra H. and her mother’s sister] came home she would take us back to the broker. Her husband didn’t work and we gave mom our money and she paid his expenses. I was fed up with my mom and her husband. Mom didn’t love us and they both hit us. There was a time when I was going to commit suicide. When I was at [an NGO] they took me home to talk to my mom. Her husband said, “don’t come back unless you go to work.” [He told my mother,] “If you want [to see] your daughter, sell her.”³¹

Thirteen of the fifteen domestics Human Rights Watch interviewed had either never entered school or had dropped out by the end of fifth grade.³² High rates of nonattendance and early school leaving are reflective of barriers to girls’ education that make them available for work, and of child domestics’ extremely long working hours, which leave them with little time for study. While enrollment rates have risen significantly over the last decade, dropout rates remain high and ILO-IPEC still estimates that 1.5 to 2 million school-age Moroccan children are out of school, with the majority of those children living in rural areas. ³³ Nonattendance rates and illiteracy rates for child domestics are especially high: a 2001 study of child domestics found that 84.3 percent of those under fifteen were illiterate, 83.3 percent had never attended school, and only 0.6 percent had made it to the second stage of basic education.³⁴ These rates are markedly higher than those for all working children under fifteen.³⁵ The reasons for these high rates are discussed in greater detail in Chapter IX, below.