Pandemic fuels Venezuela’s worsening child labour crisis

Coronavirus quarantines coupled with mass migration due to deepening economic woes have boosted the number of children fending for themselves in Venezuela, child rights activists warn.

Twelve-year-old Moises Bracamonte knows how to prepare fertiliser and water the black beans and corn that his family grows in Venezuela’s western Tachira state. He says the most difficult part of agricultural work is “breaking the ground” to sow the seeds without a tractor or an ox. “Why is it difficult with a pick? Because the pick is heavy, and you have to do a lot of picking if you have a lot of seeds,” he said in an interview in the living room of his house in Cordero, a town some 800km (500 miles) southwest of Caracas. With schools closed and no access to the internet, Moises and his 11-year-old brother Jesus help their father, also named Moises, 58, grow the food that provides for their family, something they almost never did before the coronavirus pandemic.