ABU DHABI, May 8: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Sunday signed an agreement with the United Nations children’s fund UNICEF to rehabilitate child camel jockeys after banning their use in the region’s popular sport. Under the pact, a social welfare institution will “provide all kinds of assistance and protection to the children (used as jockeys) until they are repatriated in line with internationally recognized standards,” the official WAM news agency reported.

Once back in their countries, the children will also “receive aid for a period of two years to help them recover their health and reintegrate in their families and societies”, it said.

Interior Minister Sheikh Saif bin Zayed al-Nahayan, who attended the signing between officials from his ministry and UNICEF, said that all sides concerned should “pool efforts and strive seriously to solve the problem of child jockeys as quickly as possible”.

The signing of the pact came less than a month after a UAE ban on jockeys aged under 16 and weighing less than 45 kilograms came in force. The Gulf Arab state plans to mount robot jockeys on racing camels later this year.

It was the second state in the region, after Qatar, to test robots as jockeys following criticism that small children, some as young as four, were being brought in from poor countries, mostly in Asia, to race the camels.

The UAE’s first robot jockey exercise was successfully carried out in the capital Abu Dhabi, media reports said last month. The first robots will be produced in August, ready for use in the next camel racing season after the summer.

The Emirates had in principle already banned the use of children under 15 since 1993, but abuses remained widespread and no one has ever been brought to justice.

The US State Department and human rights groups say children are exploited by traffickers who pay their impoverished parents a paltry sum or simply kidnap their victims.

The children, mostly from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, are then smuggled into the oil-rich Gulf States. They are often starved by employers to keep them light and increase their racing potential. Mounting camels three times their height, the children face the risk of being thrown off and trampled.

In December, Qatar banned the use of children in camel races and said it was preparing to use robot jockeys some time in 2005. A third Gulf state, Oman, announced last month that it would ban the use of jockeys aged under 14 in camel races starting in September.—AFP