73
away, two boys, ages 12 and 13, are fold-
ing knockoff Adidas tracksuits, cough-
ing on clouds of cotton dust.
As inflAtion soArs and more fami-
lies descend into poverty, getting Ban-
gladeshi children out of the workplace
and back into schools will take more
than the public-facing ratification of
the ILO convention establishing that
no child under the age of 14 should go
to work, says Yett. He notes that the leg-
islation doesn’t even come into effect for
another year. “There is no single magic
bullet here. Ratification of the conven-
tion is critical, but not enough.” There
are many factors at play, he says, includ-
ing the fact that education is compul-
sory only until age 10, and that there is
little to no social support for families
facing financial collapse.
Still, since schools partially reopened
in September, many teachers have
started visiting students’ homes,
pleading with their parents in person to
return their children to class. “We loved
them,” Saha says of his school’s former
students, adding that some of his teach-
ers were close to crying when they saw
their once overcrowded classrooms
filled with empty desks.
Today, two years after he last at-
tended school, Alomgir is silent as
he tends to the family’s five goats—
scratching one behind her ears as he
ushers her toward the pile of grass he
cut that morning. His parents don’t
want him to join his father and brother
at the brick kiln. There is plenty of
work on the family’s farm, and Helena
isn’t ready to give up her hope that they
could find the money for him to re-
sume schooling in the future. “I have tobelieve I can make it happen,” she says.
Other families are less hopeful. Just
a 10-minute walk from where his for-
mer classmates are studying English
and history, Rafi sweeps the floor of
the glass factory under his employer’s
watchful eye. Before the pandemic, he
was boisterous and talkative, his par-
ents say—a bouncing ball of energy
who never kept quiet, and rarely re-
mained still.
These days he returns home
exhausted, prone to outbursts of
emotion. “Because of you, my life is
over,” he tells his mother. Rekha is
unsure how to comfort him, fearing
he might be right. “We are ruining
his future,” she says, blinking back
tears. — With reporting by Simmone
Shah/new York△
Kamran, 13, sorts through shirts
at his job at a garment factory in
Narayanganj on Dec. 1