Poverty pushes children out of school and on to the streets, putting an
entire generation at risk

By Sandro Contenta

 
Toronto Star Middle East Bureau

 
Ten years ago, oil-rich Iraq was considered an emerging success story,
with hospitals and schools that were the envy of the Middle East. But a
decade of U.N.-imposed sanctions has brought the country to its knees. The
Star's Sandro Contenta recently spent two weeks in Iraq to chronicle the
effects of the embargo on the country.

 
BAGHDAD - Like homeless people the world over, the poor of Baghdad
gravitate to bus terminals, where men in rags curl up to sleep on the
concrete platforms.
 
There are about 40 of them on a recent night, their bodies silhouetted by
a nearby bonfire. Another group of homeless men gaze at the fire in
silence. Ismael Ibrahim is among them, squatting behind his shoeshine box.

Ibrahim is 15, has never gone to school and has been sleeping on the
streets of Baghdad for the past 14 months.

Homeless youths are a relatively recent phenomenon in Baghdad. United
Nations workers say their numbers have grown steadily since the mid-1990s
as the trade embargo tears at the country's social fabric. The U.N.
imposed the embargo against Iraq because President Saddam Hussein refused
to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction.

``The number of children on the streets increases each month,'' says Jean
Michel Dupouy, head of the Iraqi mission for Enfants du Monde, a French
non-governmental organization.
 
But street kids are only the visible part of a much bigger problem
concerning Iraqi youths, who are growing up knowing nothing but hardship -
and a deep hatred for the United States, which is seen as the main
obstacle to lifting sanctions.

 
Dupouy and U.N. youth workers say the embargo has shattered traditionally
close-knit families because of the strains caused by poverty, and the
resulting psychological and physical abuse it can breed.

Many of these young people have survived a high infant mortality rate only
to suffer the stunting effects of malnutrition. They're dropping out of
miserably equipped schools in growing numbers, failing to see the point of
education when the payoff is unemployment, or a teaching or engineering
job that pays $2 (U.S.) a month.
 
`I tell them, you are the young soldiers of the revolution. The enemies
want you to leave your schools. They want you to be ignorant, but you have
to study because your country needs you' teacher Essma Abdul Adim
 
``We're frying a whole generation,'' says the head of a Western
non-governmental organization working to improve Iraq's health-care
system.

They're a lost generation that won't develop the technical and
professional skills Iraq needs to get back on its feet.  ``This generation
is going to make everybody pay a heavy price for the suffering,'' says
Hashami Abdul Razak, a senior member of the ruling Al Baath party and
Iraq's ambassador to France during the Gulf War.
 
Anupama Rao Singh, head of UNICEF in Iraq, notes the world is full of
examples of violent movements fuelled by angry youths.

``This is not the best case scenario if we're interested in peace,'' Rao
Singh warns. But there's no sign of anger on Ibrahim's face.  There's
timidness, and some fear, as he answers questions put to him through a
government-selected translator, whose job it is to ``mind'' foreign
journalists.

Ibrahim says he and his six siblings all ran away from home to escape an
alcoholic father and a stepmother he describes as uncaring. He suffers
from asthma and can't read or write.
 
He says he makes up to 30 cents a day shining shoes and gives half of it
to the man who owns the shoeshine box. Police regularly tell him he can't
sleep on the street and tell him to go to Dar al Rahma, a centre that
houses both homeless youths and young offenders.
 
``I'm afraid to go there,'' says Ibrahim, adding it's because he doesn't
want his father to find out where he is. Also, he adds, several of his
homeless friends went to the centre and he has not seen them since.

Dupouy says the centre is essentially a prison for youths.
 
The Iraqi government, he says, has a hard time accepting the presence of
homeless youngsters, seeing them as some sort of affront to the country's
collective dignity.
 
It's a paradox foreign journalists constantly come up against.
 
Iraqi officials want to demonstrate the devastating effects of the
embargo, but a kind of wounded pride makes them balk at allowing access to
scenes they believe portray them as a Third World country.
 
Government officials reluctantly agreed to allow The Star to interview
street kids. But when a reporter wanted to snap a picture of Ibrahim, the
government minder refused to allow an angle that would have also shown
another homeless youth sleeping behind his shoeshine box.
 
The Juvenile Welfare Law empowers police to round up vagrants, which it
defines as homeless people, but also ``someone who is a beggar in public
(or) someone who is polishing shoes or selling cigarettes as a peddler.''
 
Eleven-year-old Ali Khalid, who lives at home and shines shoes from 8 a.m
to 10 p.m., is talking about his dream of being a soccer player when he
suddenly catches a glimpse of a police car. He quickly picks up his
shoeshine box, which weighs almost as much as he does, and dashes away.
 
The children police pick up are first placed in two transit centres
housing 550 boys and girls ranging in age from 9 to 18 years. A judge
decides who gets sent to Dar al Rahma, where some 80 street youths were
being held.
 
Enfants du Monde distributes food in Dar al Rahma, and has set up a school
at Dar al Rahma. It's also trying to encourage the government to see
street children as a social, not criminal, problem.

Baghdad is equally concerned about the growing number of children who drop
out of school to work, although it doesn't treat them as delinquents.
 
In Basra, a mainly poverty-stricken Shiite city in southern Iraq,
13-year-old Mohammed Ramahi kneels inside a basket of cucumbers and
proclaims his school days are over. ``There is no use going to school
because life is so hard. I'm going to help my father,'' says Mohammed, who
looks small for his 13 years.
 
Mohammed's father, Kareem Mehedi El Ramahi, says he needs his son's help
at his vegetable stall. Ramahi says he understands the importance of a
good education, but the need to make a living is more urgent.
 
``When life goes well, he will go back to school,'' says Ramahi, 41.
Ramahi has four other children in school, but says he can't imagine
letting them finish their education unless things improve.
 
The government doesn't provide statistics on dropouts. But it does say 66
per cent of 6-year-olds were enrolled in school in 1999, compared to 88
per cent in 1991.  UNICEF believes the enrolment figures are lower.
 
School buildings need urgent attention. The U.N.  estimates about 55 per
cent of schools are unable to provide proper instruction because of
dilapidated buildings. According to Iraq's education ministry, 8,000
schools require structural work and 5,000 new schools are needed. Some
schools run two or three shifts a day to cope.
 
Essma Abdul Adim, 28, teaches English at Basra's El Noor high school,
exclusively for children of National Oil Company employees.
 
The company helps finance the school, which means it's better equipped
than most - desks, running water and textbooks are a luxury at most other
schools.
 
Investment in education during the first two years of the ``oil-for-food''
humanitarian program, which allows Iraq to sell oil in return for goods
approved by the U.N., averaged $23 million (U.S) a year. That compares to
Iraq's $230 million (U.S.) budget for education in the mid-1980s.
 
But Adim says even her relatively privileged school has to fight an uphill
battle to convince students of the value of education.
 
``I tell them, you are the young soldiers of the revolution. The enemies
want you to leave your schools. They want you to be ignorant, but you have
to study because your country needs you,'' Adim says.
 
``Most of them tell me, `You are a teacher and what did it get you?' ''
Adim adds, alluding to her salary of about $2 a month, and to the fact
that her family has had to sell most of its furniture to survive. ``They
tell me, `If I leave school to go work in the market, I will get more than
your salary'.''