Kids Rights: Anna

Article 32 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibits economic exploitation of children - that includes any work that is damaging to health, education and physical or mental development. Nonetheless, nine-year-old Anna works every day in dreadful conditions to earn enough to feed her family. She is one of the estimated 50,000 Albanian six to 14-year-olds who are forced by poverty into work. If Anna comes home with three euros earned cleaning cars at traffic lights, she's had a good day and her parents are happy, because that means there's money for soft drinks, beans, bread or onions. She is usually less fortunate. We watch as she goes about her daily work and she explains, mostly in voice-over, what she has learned: for instance, just asking for money doesn't work, but begging sometimes does. And men are more generous than women. Anna hates the work: "People shout at me and call me names. I wouldn't even dare to repeat them out loud." She also gets shoved or hit once in a while. While she stands in the pouring rain trying to persuade drivers to hand over a few cents, an audience of bus passengers looks down at her.