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Twelve-year-old Alamin’s house rested on the bank of the Ilsha River in southern Bangladesh until last year, when the surging river eroded it and the family’s farmland away, forcing them to flee to a slum in Keraniganj, close to the capital Dhaka.
Now Alamin – whose father died of cancer a couple of years ago – works on a shipbreaking crew and his mother cooks for the workers. Together they earn just enough to feed and house themselves and Alamin’s two younger siblings, now 3 and 5.
“Once we were solvent. My husband earned from our cultivable land and my son was reading in a local primary school,” said his mother, Amina Begum.
Alamin was sad to say that after losing their property to the river, and their savings to unsuccessful cancer treatments, she could only expect to work.
More Extreme weatherDue to worsening flooding, erosion, storms in low lying Bangladesh, thousands of families like hers are moving into the slums at Dhaka.
For many of their children – who are battling the impacts of climate change alongside their parents – the move means the end of education and the start of a A lifetime of hard labor.
In an August report, UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, said children in the South Asian nations of Bangladesh, Afghanistan and India now face “extremely high” risks from climate change impacts.
It added that this threat affects around a billion children worldwide in 33 countries.
“For the first time, we have clear evidence of the impact of climate change on millions of children in South Asia,” said George Laryea-Adjei, UNICEF’s regional director for South Asia, in the report.
Droughts, Floods and river erosionUNICEF officials stated that millions of children have been left homeless and hungry in the region, without safe water or healthcare, and many of them are out of school.
“Climate change has created an alarming crisis for South Asian children,” Laryea-Adjei noted.
1.7 million children who are employed
Bangladesh is a fertile delta nation with close to 700 rivers. This makes it difficult for people to resettle in the country. Many once-rural families are now driving into urban slums.
Researchers estimate that children make up 40 percent of the country’s population.
UNICEF reports that most children in Bangladesh don’t attend primary school. They live in urban slums or in difficult-to-reach areas or are more vulnerable to disasters.
About 1.7 million children in the country are labourers, one in four of them 11 years old or younger, the agency’s research shows. UNICEF found that statistics rarely include girls who work as domestic labourers.
Children can be seen working in tanneries and shipyards, tailor shops, and automobile repair workshops in Dhaka’s slums. Others work at vegetable markets or transport their luggage to and from boat, train, bus and train terminals.
Many claim that they used to live in the countryside before moving to the city.
A 10 year old sweaty Alauddin has been working at a vegetable market near Dhaka for a few month now. He cleans and hauls potatoes in metal containers that he can barely lift.
He said he used to attend Debraipatch Primary School, near the northeast city of Jamalpur, until a powerful flood last year wrecked the school and his family’s home and land.
They moved to Dhaka slum where his father still pulls a tractor and his mother works part time as a cleaner at a private high school.
Alauddin’s work contributes 100 taka ($1.15) a day to the family finances, money the family can’t do without, his father said.
“My children will never go back to school,” he admitted. “We are struggling with rent and our daily livelihood. How can we bear it? [my son’s] educational expenses?”
Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury, Bangladesh’s deputy state minister of education, said in a telephone interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation that floods last year inundated more than 500 educational institutions in 10 districts across the country.
While a few were entirely washed away, most have since dried out – but only a few have been repaired sufficiently to be available for classes, he said.
The new flood-related closings follow long pandemic-related shutdowns. Children who do not need to work are often still out of school in many locations.
Bangladesh’s Annual Primary School Census for 2021 showed 10.24 million students attending 65,000 government primary schools – but noted the drop-out rate in 2021 was more than 17 percent, with more than 2 million children leaving school.
According to educational officials, global warming impacts were the main driver of that flight.
Alamgir Mohammad Mansurul Alam, director-general of the Directorate of Primary Education, called the drop-out rate “alarming” and noted “one of the big reasons is climate change”.
“Last year we observed that more than 500 schools were damaged by flooding. The students could not go to school for a long time,” he said in an interview.
What became evident, he said, is that “a large number of them never come back to school and are involved in different work to support their family.”
More than 14,000 private primary schools in Bangladesh were also at least temporarily shuttered by the COVID-19 pandemic, said Iqbal Bahar Chowdhury, chairman of the country’s private primary school association.
According to UNICEF’s October joint report, UNESCO and UNICEF, 37 million children have had their education interrupted by school closings in Bangladesh since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020.
Rupa, nine years old, is one among the children who work instead of attending school.
After her family’s home in Khulna Shyamnagar was destroyed by a cyclone last year, her family came to join an aunt living in a slum near Dhaka.
Rupa’s mother eventually abandoned her blind husband, who could not work, leaving her daughter behind with him. The girl now earns 100 Taka ($1.15) per day by helping to unload watermelon at the wharf.
“I realise it’s really hard for a little girl to work with adult workers but I’m helpless. I also have a year-old baby and family to maintain,” said her aunt, who works as a cook.
Syeda Munira Sultana is the national project coordinator for International Labour Organization Bangladesh. She said that she has met many girls similar to Rupa who were forced into work due to extreme weather or other climate changes. “I was surprised to see many girls younger than 10 years old working in a factory near Keraniganj, where women’s dresses are produced,” she said.
“I talked to them and they said most of them came from climate-vulnerable areas like Barisal, Khulna and Satkhira – and all of them are dropouts from school,” she added.
Children forced to work can face both physical and mental harm as well as losing their chance at an education, which can restrict their future opportunities and lead to inter-generational cycles of poverty and child labour, said Tuomo Poutiainen, director of the ILO’s Bangladesh office.
“Children are paying a high price for climate change,” added Shelton Yett, UNICEF’s representative in Bangladesh.
