IRANIAN youngsters are being deprived of their basic rights by the effects of privatisation and a monopoly of wealth and power, according to a leading children’s rights group.

The Society to Aid Children At Risk (SACR) warned that rising poverty is forcing pupils to drop out of school and go to work to provide for their families.

Statistics show that there are around seven million child labourers in Iran, with most concentrated in small workshops where conditions are poor.

SACR warned of a “social catastrophe” and blamed the privatisation of public services for exacerbating the situation.

“Privatisation has always been accompanied by putting a price on once complimentary public services such as education and health,” it said in a statement.

Iran has seen an increase in industrial disputes, with workers at the Ahvaz steelworks and the Haft Tappeh sugarcane processing factory, both in Khuzestan province, going on strike over non-payment of wages and poor working conditions.

Trade unionists at the Iran National Steel Industrial Group (INSIG) have also demanded that the Ahvaz plant, privatised in a controversial deal in 2010, be brought back into public ownership.

SACR said: “Not receiving a few months of wages is not just a simple payment delay but the massacre of a family and the community.”

The children’s rights group called on the government to do more to insulate Iranian families from the impact of poverty.

“The lack of support for the families of workers, who suffer from difficult circumstances, low pay or are on the verge of unemployment, puts their children in harm’s way, including deprivation, poverty, addiction, illness, malnutrition, prostitution, delinquency, forced labour, work on the streets or other dangerous places and the early marriage of girls,” it said in a statement.

Authorities responded to the strikes by arresting 41 trade unionists, 26 of whom are still in prison where they have allegedly been subjected to torture.

Haft Tappeh workers’ representative Esmail Bakhshi, who was released recently, is reported to have been severely tortured and fed hallucinogenic drugs while in prison.

Despite Iran having ratified the United Nations International Convention on Civil and Political Rights and being a member of the International Labour Organisation, trade unionists are regularly jailed and tortured for asserting their rights.