In Turkmenistan, 41 in every 1,000 babies born in 2021 died before reaching their fifth birthday. About 21.8% of the population has been living in poverty, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific estimated in 2018. Child poverty in Turkmenistan is prevalent as well but efforts are in place to address it.

The Situation

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has further worsened its preexisting economic crisis. Vulnerable Turkmen in the densely populated region of Velayat Marijsk had even tried to enroll children in orphanages, being unable to feed their families. 

Among Turkmen children, malnutrition is prevalent. More than one in three kids, aged 6 to 59 months, are anemic. In 2022, UNICEF reported that 7% of the youngsters experienced stunting due to the lack of nutrition for an extended period of time in their early childhood.

Poverty thwarts children’s physical and cognitive growth. It violates their rights to education and health care. In Turkmenistan, child rights violation take place on multiple fronts ranging from child labor, early marriage, religious discrimination to human trafficking.

Child labor and human trafficking are two primary concerns due to the region’s financial catastrophe.

Child Labor

Economic disparity triggers forced labor in Turkmenistan’s rural regions. Despite official prohibition on child labor since 2005, hundreds of adolescents work during the cotton harvest at exploitative wages every year. 

The government’s ‘repressive’ social policies often lead to forced labor of public sector employees and opens the door to child labor, states Cotton Campaign in its June 2022 report.

Mandatory labor of public sector employees in cotton harvest, coupled with perennial poverty across the society, is a key contributor to child labor in Turkmenistan. Children of humble backgrounds often replace those employees in cotton fields to sustain their families.

In 2021, Turkmen.news has reported, schoolgoers went to harvest cotton in the fall of 2020 for 30 to 40 manats (roughly between 6.5 and 9.0 GBP) of daily wage. Between September and December, rural schools were shut down. 

According to Radio Liberty’s sources, that year, “Dozens of children, some of them coughing and sneezing, could be seen in the fields along the road in the Baharden farmers’ association (Ahal region). Though they were clearly unwell, they were still kept in the fields.”

Despite being an arid geography, Turkmenistan has become the 10th largest cotton producer in the world under intensive irrigation and state control. Last year, the country exported cotton valued at roughly $300 million to the global textile market. 

Child Trafficking 

Turkmenistan has become the fifth most affected country by human trafficking in the Global Organized Crime Index (OCI). The US Department of State in its 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report evaluated that Turkmenistan has not taken adequate steps to eliminate human trafficking from its soil in recent times.

The country’s students have an obligation to spend their summer in farming. Authorities also compel them to labor in organizing events hosted by the state without compensation.

Unemployment, poverty and lack of social support put Turkmen at a greater risk of trafficking. Poor families send their children to work as porters in marketplaces and cultivate potatoes and carrots. 

Though a specific figure could not be obtained, a growing number of adolescent girls has undertaken prostitution to sustain themselves. In a blog post, Humanium, an NGO contributing towards ending child rights violations, stated that schoolgirls sell their service on streets in the cotton belt of the country.

Making a Difference

Turkmenistan has lifted most of the country’s population out of extreme poverty over the last couple of decades. The number of families surviving daily on less than $1.90 per person has decreased from 31.5% to 0.6% between 2000 and 2022. 

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to end poverty in its all forms by 2030. The UN has supplemented with $2,882,510,000 to improve the well-being of Turkmenistan. 

To reduce malnutrition in neonates, 38.6% of mothers have received maternity benefits in 2021. Among the households with children, 15.3% have received another cash cover to sustain their families.

The 2019 analysis of United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has confirmed that the nation has advanced its accessibility of education and health care services across the civil society. 

The organization has emphasized the need for multisectoral economic growth that a transparent social support system fuels, accessible health care, education and the participation of people to curb child poverty in Turkmenistan and uphold child rights. 

– Soham Mitra
Photo: Flickr