Morocco told to stop child labour

Many carpets in the Casblanca markets are made by children

Morocco has been told by a conference in Casablanca to abolish child labour - a practice which delegates branded an abuse of children's rights.

Some 300 member of the Union of Moroccan Women heard testimonies from girls sent by their parents to work as bonded domestic labour in cities.

One of the girls bared her legs to reveal burns which she said were caused when her employer threw hot tea over her.

Locked up for 20 days

Another child told how, when she was 12, her employers locked her up for 20 days while they took a holiday in Europe.

A third told how her father sold her to a family hundreds of kilometres away, and that they beat her every day.

A Moroccan official admitted that these were not isolated cases, and bore witness to the kingdom's institutionalised and socially-accepted abuse against children.

Official figures show that more than 2.5 million Moroccan children skip school - most are girls.

Women urged the King of Morocco to act

Many work in the handicraft trade, weaving carpets for tourists. The official said that another million - perhaps more - work as domestic servants.

In return for 16 hours' labour a day, their families are paid an average of $7 a week.

Forced to sell children

Parents told the conference that they are so poor they are forced to sell their children - some as young as six - to spare their families starvation.

Employers would argue that they act as foster parents, providing children with better conditions in the cities than they could ever expect in the mountains.

But the lack of legal safeguards means abuses go entirely unpunished. And while the government admits the scale of the problem, the trade of hundreds of thousands of children continues.