Poverty fuels trafficking of Yemeni children

SANAA-Ali Abdu, a slim boy of 14, just wants to go home to his family in the Yemeni mountains. His dream of making money in Saudi Arabia ended in a hospital bed."First I worked as a goatherd, then in a car-wash for three months. Then I was hit by a car and spent 29 days in hospital," he mutters. "After that I gave myself up so I could come back."Abdu is one of thousands of children, mostly boys, who U.N. officials say are trafficked from impoverished Yemeni villages to Saudi Arabia and other rich Gulf countries to work illegally as beggars, camel jockeys, domestic servants or laborers.The murky cross-border business is run by gangs who recruit boys directly from their families or from the army of child workers already seeking survival on Yemeni city streets."It's just underground,"Aboudou Adjibade, the Yemen representative of the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, told Reuters."It's difficult to control because there's a lot of complicity from the community level and the authority level."Driven by poverty and greed, the trade exposes children to the risks of violence, sexual abuse and exploitation. Worldwide, UNICEF says about 1.2 million children are trafficked annually."I went to Saudi Arabia with a friend. We walked all the way," said Abdu, from Mahwit, a rugged region northwest of the Yemeni capital and about 100 km (60 miles) from the border.Feet tapping nervously, he told his confused story in the courtyard of the Centre for Protection and Rehabilitation of Children in Sanaa.The government-run institution had received its first batch of a dozen boys only a few days earlier.
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