KUWAIT: Dr Siham Al-Furaih, Vice President of the National Diwan for Human Rights and Chairman of the Permanent Committee for Child Rights, stated on the World Day Against Child Labor, that it is a phenomenon many societies suffer from. What proves this is that the relevant international organizations indicated that there are 218 million working children and many of them work full time. It is a global fact that varies in strength from one society to another.

In the past years, it was not an issue in Kuwait, but with the big change in the demographics it became a problem that affected the humanitarian face of Kuwait due to some cases of working children in car garages in Shuwaikh area and for years we have been asking to monitor these garages. Today another problem came to the surface: Children Street vendors for many reasons. Dr Furaih presented Child Law which the State agreed on in a legislation number 21 (year 2015). In its fifth chapter, it details an explanation about taking care of the working child, his age, working hours, rest hours, protection from dangers and study hours. In spite of all the laws the children will be denied of their educational and recreational rights.

Dr Furaih explained that our activities are not restricted to international occasions only, but it is extended all year long, for example the last campaign we arranged last October (Into Safe and Stable Childhood) about the children street vendors, cooperating with the National Society for Child Protection which sponsored the whole campaign and many representatives were invited from the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Social Affairs, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Information, Municipality and the Public Authority of Manpower. After we collected all the data and information, we arranged 3 workshops where speakers explained how to deal with this phenomenon. At the end of this campaign, we will deliver the results that we reached to the executive entities because it is part of their responsibility.