CHILDREN BELONG IN SAFE SCHOOLS — NOT IN DANGEROUS WORKSHOPS

Vocational Education Centers (MESEM), a system in which students spend most of the week
at workplaces, have turned into a mechanism that draws children into production processes
at an early age, rather than maintaining a balance between education and vocational
development.
The lack of access to official data on the sectors in which children are concentrated, the
provinces where they work, or the number of enterprises operating within the scope of
MESEM clearly demonstrates how far the system operates from transparency. With
industrial and service-oriented production gaining prominence, press reports have
confirmed that MESEM students are being directed toward areas that pose serious risks in
terms of occupational health and safety. Shaping the education process according to the
needs of workplaces leaves children unprotected.
The Child Labor Deaths Report published by the Occupational Health and Safety Assembly
(İSİG) for the period September 2023–August 2024 strikingly reflects this situation.
According to the report, 66 child workers, 9 of whom were registered with MESEM, lost
their lives due to workplace fatalities during this period. When the 2023–2024 and
2024–2025 academic years are evaluated together, it is understood that at least 15 MESEM
students lost their lives while working in high-risk sectors such as industry and construction.
These figures reveal that MESEM has evolved into a structure that pushes children into
dangerous working environments.
This situation once again reminds society as a whole that the fight against child labor is too
vital to be postponed any further. Every child has the right to life; the right to play, to
dream, and to go to school. Children belong not in fields but in classrooms; not in factories
but in schoolyards.
As Çağdaş Yaşamı Destekleme Derneği (ÇYDD), we continue our struggle to put an end to
child labor and to ensure that every child has access to equal and high-quality education. To
this end, we have been carrying out the From Production Back to Education Project (ÜYEP)
since 2013. Within the scope of the project, we have contributed to 157 children returning
to formal education. For the lives, dreams, and futures of children, we call on everyone to
take responsibility.
Children are the shared responsibility of the entire society.