Syrian children in Lebanon forced to seek work/ The Guardian
World Day Against Child Labour: Although illegal in Lebanon, child labour is becoming increasingly common. Many of the large numbers of refugees who have fled the conflict in Syria are very poor, and forced to rely on sending their children out to work.
Over a million Syrian refugees have arrived in Lebanon, fleeing the conflict in their country. Syrians now make up a quarter of the population of this tiny Mediterranean country. Many were forced to leave with only what they could carry, and are living in desperate poverty. Finding work is difficult, and many families are forced to send their children out to work to make ends meet.
Mariam Houssein al-Ali, 11 (left), and her sister Ragala, 10, are from the Aleppo countryside. In Syria they lived in a big house and did not work. Now, like more than 80% of Syrian working children, they are labouring in the fields. Mariam says: ‘It’s good to have work because we need money to live’.
For Mariam, Ragala and many other children working in the fields of Lebanon’s Beqaa valley, the day begins at 6am. They are collected by pick-up truck from the tented settlement where they live and taken to the fields to begin work. They will be paid about $6.50 (£3.90) a day, but $1.30 of this will be kept by the Shaweesh, the coordinator who runs the camp and arranges for the children to work.
Before the crisis in Syria, the fields of the Beqaa valley were worked by Syrian migrant labourers and Lebanese men. Now they are tilled in the main by Syrian women and children, who work for lower wages. Jneid Houssein, who is unemployed while his son Ali, 12, and daughter Aisha, 11, work in the fields, says: ‘Farmers prefer to hire kids because they can do anything they want to them. They can hit them if they want, they can make them work long hours. Men won’t stand for this.’ Increasing unemployment among former Lebanese labourers is leading to rising anger towards the refugees.
Camiran al-Ali, 12, has been in Lebanon for eight months. He says: ‘I was scared of the bombs in Syria. I could hear them from the house and they fell nearby.’ Despite this, he preferred life in Syria, where he didn’t work. Now he is one of three working children in a family of 15; his parents have not found work. Camiran is working every day through the harvest season. He doesn’t like work ‘because it’s hard. I can’t lift heavy things, and the sun is hot.’ He says if he had stayed in Syria he would have continued school until he was 18, and would have liked to have gone to university.
Though most Syrian child labourers are employed in the fields, others do a variety of jobs, which include factory work, car mechanics, street sellers and even as drug traffickers and prostitutes. Ali Allawi, 11, is working in a garage. He is not being paid, but in exchange for his labour is being trained as a mechanic.
Ali’s father has two wives, and there are 15 children in the family. Only Ali and two of his brothers are working. In Syria his father was a carpenter, and he was teaching Ali his trade after school, but he has been unable to find carpentry work in Lebanon.
One of the most harmful forms of child labour is street selling. Children as young as three wander the streets of Beirut and other cities selling items such as tissues, gum or flowers, or just begging. Often alone, and working at all hours of the day and night, they are vulnerable to theft, physical and sexual abuse and even trafficking. Mohammed and Mohammed, 12 and 16, are working as shoeshine boys. The younger Mohammed says he doesn’t like work, ‘but it’s necessary’. Both are from Syria’s Daraa region, where the uprising started, and neither was working before coming to Lebanon. Now they don’t attend school.
Many of the refugee children are falling between the gaps in the system. But Ragala, after doing a 6am to 11am shift in the fields, attends a school run by the Lebanese organisation Beyond in the tented settlement where she lives. She says that school is better than work ‘because I learn here’. She wants to be a teacher, which, she says, is ‘better than working in the fields’.
With no end in sight to the conflict in Syria, the future looks uncertain for refugee children. There are thought to be between 180,000 and 300,000 child labourers in Lebanon, many of them Syrian.
For World Day against Child Labour on 12 June, the NGO Beyond and the International Labour Organisation are rehearsing with current and former child labourers to stage a performance of music and theatre. Sixty children have worked with Syrian and Lebanese musicians and directors to develop a play that raises awareness about the issue, which will be watched by 2,500 working children and their families. The play aims to highlight the most dangerous forms of child labour, with the intention of reducing children’s participation in these jobs.
The performance is also an opportunity for children who have lived through war, displacement and child labour to have fun and display their talents. The enjoyment of the children in rehearsal for the big day is palpable. Ruqaya Shayib, eight, is singing a solo. Her father is in prison in Syria, and no one in her family of five works. They survive on the generosity of neighbours and help from NGOs. She is excited and happy about being involved in the performance.
