Heckova Job, George (Part 2)

Good thing we painted all those schools, huh?

This is from Baghdad, and is a phenomena that has emerged since we invaded, in case anyone was wondering about that:

"We found that child labour [in Iraq] has increased by nearly 15 percent, with many children working in unsafe environments,” said Saleh Muhammad, spokesperson for the Baghdad-based Children Saving Association...

In April 2005, a survey conducted by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs found that children between the ages of two and five years (some 7 percent of the total) were engaged in child labour, usually in the form of street-begging. “We’ve begun to see more children on the streets of the capital compared to last year,” said senior ministry official Haydar Ahmed. “And many of them are begging rather than working.”

The report further indicated that 16 percent of boys and 43 percent of girls were illiterate. Only 50 percent of the children surveyed reported that both their parents were still alive.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=27017

(Via Sabotabby, over at http://www.punkassblog.com/)