The Petite Bonnes of the Moroccan Workforce
They’re Cheap, Obedient and Available on the Streets. An Ambitious Young King Wants to Stop Their Exploitation--But Poverty May Prove Too Powerful a Foe.
If you think that Morocco is most prominent for its argan oil or tourist industry, think again. There may be millions of tourists visiting Morocco each year, but only a select few are aware of the human rights abuse behind Morocco’s closed doors. There are many issues amongst this ever growing country, and whilst the King, Mohammed VI is persistently trying his absolute best to address all of them, it is obvious that child labour itself has become a problem deserving immediate attention and one that started centuries ago.
Abusive and Exploitative Working Conditions
Morocco has one of the worst child labour cases on the African continent. Children work long hours for very little pay and are treated severely substandardly, especially considering the workload, plus physical abuse that they receive from time to time. Eleven of twenty of child domestic workers said their employers beat them, and fourteen of the twenty described verbal abuse. One girl who began working when she was nine years old said: “My employer used every bad word she could think of….when I didn’t do something as she wanted, she started shouting at me and took me into a room and started beating me. This happened several times a week”. Child workers said their employers beat them with their hands, belts, wooden sticks, shoes, and plastic pipes, stated by Human Rights Watch, an organization that interviews children undergoing through child labor. Domestic work is considered “women’s work”, so nearly all child labour workers are girls. The name given to these female child workers is, petite bonnes, translating to “little maids”.
A number of factors affect the reason why child labor is still active up until this day. Poverty, lack of access to education, and gender inequality are some of the most daunting problems facing the country today. Everything started with the history in when the French colonized Morocco, which spawned the start of child labor. It started with the French forcing children and adults to work for them. The adults were given a higher workload, resulting in the children to mainly support their family. As time progressed, the cycle never ceased, even now, entering into the 21st century.
These petite bonnes come from rural areas like the Atlas Mountains to work in industrial capital such as Casablanca, Rabat, Marrakech, Tangier, Agadir, and Fez. Moving into these places can greatly affect these girls. Forced to adapt into the environment that they are currently residing in, can prove to to be difficult, especially when they misunderstand the errands, which can result in more physical abuse. They are sent away from their homes to a place where people speak a different tongue, and that can be cruel and harsh for the petite bonnes. The main reason to why they leave is because their family cannot support their children financially, leaving them no choice but to work for others, and to support their family instead. Latifa, a 12 year old girl child domestic worker, states, “My employer frequently berated me and sometimes beat me, sometimes with a shoe when I broke something or when one of the children cried. I did not tell my parents about the abuses because I felt obliged to help them financially, I told Human Rights Watch.” And this unfortunate situation often occurs when children are at a very young age, which may leave them isolated and vulnerable from their employers. The girls typically only speak Berber, and while street signs and tram stops may include this language, many Moroccans typically do not speak Berber. This is due to the fact that they were raised in the city, where education that is provided since primary school is essentially only given to them in Arabic text. The girls are forced to either become quick learners and speak Arabic, or become isolated to a large portion of the population. The girls are also extremely vulnerable, given that they live with their employers and often do not have contact with their family. These girls have no advocates, which leads to sexual abuse by the male members of the employer's’ household in many cases. Aziza S. said she was only twelve when her employer’s twenty-two-year-old son tried to rape her. Amal K. also told Human Rights Watch, an organization that maintains all human rights, that she experienced sexual violence by the son of her employer when she was fourteen. “The eldest son came into my room and did things to me,” she said. “He told me not to tell anyone…. I was afraid he would hurt me if I told.”
Work in Progress
Child labor is no doubt a largely significant problem in Morocco specifically, but it is also problem that can be felt worldwide. In fact, there are an estimated 15.5 million child domestic workers that are known to the public, and numbers that are still being hidden behind closed doors, meaning that most people in Morocco are not aware that such a huge problem is happening. This is due to the fact that most people who are actually aware of this problem deem it as a normal situation and makes no effort for further actions against it.
That being said, there have been many indications that things are starting to change in Morocco. For instance, the government and the international human rights organizations have reported that the number of child domestic workers are slowly declining since 2015. This is due to the fact that child labor is being raised by public awareness, and thus, society is starting to realize child labor is not something that should be taken lightly, and is a serious issue worldwide.
From a wider perspective, Moroccan children’s quality of life has been improving since King Mohammed VI succeeded his father as the ruler eighteen years ago. Now, more than 88% of children finish primary school, up from 62%, which was last recorded at the end of King Hassan’s rule in 1999. Many children’s rights organizations have escalated and the government often times funds their projects.
Rural children have benefitted from this change in particular. Improved boarding and transport facilities for those from far away villages have made schools easier to contact with. Starting from 2008, the education ministry has given writing instruments and exercise books to millions of child domestic workers starting primary school. Cash allowances have been given for parents of pupils to help win over their families.
Still, for all Morocco’s progress, problems persist. “Rural families are often unaware,” says Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby, that “all children under 15 must attend school.” And the legal requirement, introduced in 2000, is not being strictly enforced. Therefore, many Moroccan authorities are considering whether or not to enforce this law, as though the statistics of child labor is looking for the better, it has yet to be ceased.
In the cities, boys as young as ten can still be found in high intensity manual labor jobs, especially in districts such as in Fez’s Ben Souda where metal parts are stacked high in front of car body shops. Accidents are common. “The employer just takes the child to hospital, pays off the police and that’s the end of the story,” says a worker, “over in the ceramics neighbourhood of Ain Noqbi, a man explains that a child's earnings are necessary to help keep a family afloat since most fathers—the breadwinner in most families—earn just six or seven euros a day.”
Despite the unfair pay being provided by these employers, the petite bonnes have no choice but to support their family financially by sending little pay each month. The average pay of what a child domestic worker earns is about 545 dirhams per month (approximately $55), far below the minimum monthly wage of 2,333 dirhams (approximately $233) for Morocco’s industrial sector. While the industrial sector is not composed of child domestic workers, this simply does not mean that they do not need financial aid for taking care and looking after their parents.
In summary, there has been some progress in taking action against child labor, however there is much is to be done. Many human rights organizations have set up campaigns to take action against physical abuse against child domestic workers, such as campaigns to raise public awareness. Their goal is to put the issue out there in the open, where everyone can witness what is happening behind closed doors.
Morocco’s government should adopt additional measures to eliminate child domestic labor, taking into account the particular isolation and vulnerability of girls employed as domestic workers. These should include ways to identify girls forced to illegal, abusive, and exploitative child domestic labor, investigate these cases, and provide appropriate assistance, including shelter, family reunification, proper education. These are ideas to improve the child labor situation that Morocco faces, and for now, there will be only be slow but steady progress.
Sources:
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/resources/reports/child-labor/morocco
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/06/189069/morocco-has-high-level-of-child-labor-hcp/
http://themeltingpost.com/index.php/art-culture/children-labor-in-morocco/
https://humanrightswarrior.com/2013/06/12/petites-bonnes-child-domestic-labor-in-morocco/
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8438/lonely-servitude_child-domestic-labor-in-morocco-
