The situation of children has worsened in Iran due to raising covid cases and Iran’s leader’s decision not to import vaccines.
Many children are left to work on the streets to support their families in dangerous conditions.
Many children lost their parents worldwide due to Covid. National Human Rights Commission says that nearly 3600 children lost their parents, and 26,000 children lost either of their parents in India.
Sadly, parents left at least 250 children on the streets due to the incapacity to take care of them.
Iranian welfare authorities say that 51,000 children became orphans due to this pandemic. The actual number of children who lost both or either of their parents is thrice the official figures.
Coping up with parents’ loss is extremely difficult for children. Dr Samineh Shaheem, professor of psychology and leadership in London, has opined that it creates trauma and disturbance in children’s minds.
Parentless children think they have lost the most important person in life and have nothing else left in life.
It will seriously affect the mental development of children, and it deprives a child of their happiness and growth.
It is a lost battle for the mother of Eliza, one of the children who lost her father in Iran, to make her understand where her father vanished.
One day her father started coughing and went to the doctor, never returning. The doctor ran a few tests and said he had covid. It was the last time Eliza saw her father.
Her mother says, “Eliza gets frightened whenever I cough or go out for work thinking I will also not return home.”
Covid proved to be fatal for the Iranians as that country was already under the US imposed sanctions.
The country was in a disadvantageous situation because it couldn’t transfer money abroad for importing vaccines.
Iran’s Islamic parliament research center said that 1 million Iranians became jobless and suffered a financial crisis.
Furthermore, their leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini was firm on not importing vaccines from the US or UK.
Iran is the worst covid affected country in the Middle East. Now Iran has imported vaccines from abroad, and according to Reuters, 44.7% of the population vaccinated to date.
Increased loss of lives along with a financial crunch devastated the parents. Last year many parents started homeschooling these children, and the prolonged covid situation cut off support networks as the country imposed many restrictions during this pandemic.
Dr Shameem said that ” Many parents stopped sending their elder children to school so that they can provide education to their younger child. Financial difficulties of the parents further aggravated the covid situation.”
The families choked by the loss of job of the breadwinner and pandemic situation continued to send their children for work.
Iran already had a high child labor rate, and the pandemic situation further aggravated it. These children were under constant threat of being exposed to dangerous working conditions, sexual exploitation. They don’t have access to safe health care services too.
A Rokna news agency journalist says the problem has worsened to such a situation that whoever wants to report on child labor can grab at least 10 of them, even on tiny roads.
Welfare organizations in Iran are trying hard to control the situation, and the children doing child labor are orphans who struggle to eat one day’s meal.
Many social workers like Mostafa Eghlima, whom the country calls father of social work, say that the government should estimate the exact number of children going to be orphans in months and build a plan to provide for them.
