Juan Luis Rod

Abancay is the capital of the Department of Apurímac and is located in the south of the Peruvian Andes. It has almost 60,000 inhabitants and is the industrial and commercial center of the region. This incessant flow of commercial activity means that many children end up working in their streets and markets.

In Peru, the latest data from the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics show worrying data: about 2.5 million children work in the country. For the children of Abancay, the activity starts at four in the morning on the market and can be extended until two or three in the afternoon. They arrive to work days of up to ten hours.

The work of the children consists of loading the customers' purchases in a cart and taking them to their homes or to the car in exchange for a tip that ranges between 0.50 cents and 2.5 Peruvian soles (about 60 cents euro), depending on the generosity of the client.

The Peruvian State has been advancing in recent years under various agreements to protect children, such as the International Labor Organization (ILO) 138 (on the minimum age for admission to work) and 182 (on the worst forms of child labor). They also have the General Law of Labor Inspection, the National Strategy for the Prevention and Eradication of Child Labor 2012-2021 or the National Plan of Action for Children and Adolescents 2012-2021, among others.
However, all this willingness to stop child exploitation is frustrated by lack of resources for its implementation. The goal is to get families to value education versus work and aspire to a better future.

After these long days of work, children can get an average of 20 or 25 soles per day, equivalent to approximately 5 €

Why do they work? The main reason that leads the Peruvian child population to perform economic activities is the need to supplement family income in 27% of cases, followed by 19.8% who do to acquire skills and skills, and 18 , 3% who do it to help in the family business.

In Peru more than one hundred thousand girls, between 14 and 17 years old, are engaged in domestic work, according to the official registry of the national household survey (ENHAO). From the age of 14, this problem is almost exclusively female, below that age, both boys and girls are immersed equally in this activity.

Many of these children leave school to work on the streets, exposing themselves to insecurity. Some of them combine work and school but with a low level of learning, since these jobs impede an adequate integral development of children.

Peru is a country with around 70% of the economically active population (EAP) in the informal sector, with almost 2.5 million working children according to the ILO, and with around 600 thousand children working in informal mining according to the Agency. Environmental Assessment and Control (OEFA).

Abigail has been helping at her mother's stand since she was 8 years old, where she sells seasonal fruits, usually watermelons, bananas, pineapples or prickly pears.

Child labor affected 12.1% of Peruvian children between 5 and 9 years old, 29.3% between 10 and 13 years old, and 40.5% of the adolescent population between 14 and 17 years old.

The physical exhaustion of the minors reduces time for study or recreation. In addition, studies conducted on the subject show that children who work at an early age suffer up to three years of school delay.

The most common jobs carried out among children are the sale of sweets and newspapers, the sale of fruits, the cleaning of shoes, carrying the purchase, mining and construction.

The economic development of the country should serve to overcome this reality and make children able to devote themselves to studying, playing and training properly. Poverty is the cause of early employment and, also, its consequence.