Syrian refugee children work, provide for families

DEVELOPMENTS

•More than 30 private companies have said they are willing to destroy chemicals that Syria declared as part of its toxic agent program, an official at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical weapons said Friday. The organization sought expressions of interest last week from companies who want a role in “the treatment and disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous organic and inorganic chemicals” from Syria.

•A mortar round struck the front of a historical mosque in Syria’s capital Friday, killing four people and wounding 26 in the latest such attack on the city, state media reported. Friday was the Muslim day of prayer, when people traditionally go to mosque at noon for the weekly sermon. Syrian state news agency SANA said the shell fell in front of the western entrance of the mosque. It said most of the casualties were women and children.

Every morning in northeastern Lebanon, hundreds of Syrian children are picked up from refugee settlements, loaded onto trucks, and taken to the fields or shops for a day’s work that earns $4 or less.

Throughout the day, young boys and girls walk along dirt roads, carrying baskets of fruits and vegetables from the fields to shops. Some are barefoot, while others struggle with the heavy load.

The children, some as young as 7, are cheap labor in Lebanon and Jordan, where they’ve fled the Syrian civil war. And they are fast becoming primary providers for their families as the adults can’t find jobs in exile. They work long hours of manual labor in fields, farms and shops for little pay, according to a U.N. report issued Friday.

More than 2 million Syrians have fled their country’s civil war, now in its third year, seeking shelter in neighboring countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq. At least half of the refugees — 1.1 million — are children. Of those, about 75 percent are under the age of 12, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

The 65-page report issued by the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees highlighted the plight of the children, who are growing up in fractured families, missing out on education as they turn to manual labor, sometimes under dangerous or exploitative conditions, the report said.

“If we do not act quickly, a generation of innocents will become lasting casualties of an appalling war,” said Antonio Guterres, the high commissioner, during a visit to Lebanon’s border town of Arsal. Tens of thousands of Syrians have arrived there in recent weeks alone.

With all those refugees competing for work, the children are attractive laborers.

“There are thousands like me, and they prefer to employ boys, not men, because they will do whatever they tell them to, and for less money,” said Abu Mussab, a 36-year-old refugee from a village near Syria’s war ravaged northern city of Aleppo.

When he arrived in Lebanon nine months ago, Abu Mussab sought shelter in a shanty town near the Syrian border where he used to stay as a migrant worker during harvest season, hoping to get his old job back and provide for his family of six.

He quickly found out he had no chance of getting work. But his oldest son did, and even though he’s only 12, Mussab is now the sole provider for his parents and three younger siblings, earning $65 a month working in a car repair shop.

“I had to find a way to survive,” Abu Mussab said.

In Jordan’s sprawling Zaatari refugee camp, most of the 680 small shops employ children, the report said. A UNHCR assessment of refugee children living outside of the camp found that in 11 of the country’s 12 provinces, nearly every other refugee household surveyed relied partly or entirely on income generated by a child.

More Syrian refugee children are now out of school than enrolled in a formal education system, the agency’s research found.

“I would rather see him go to school than to work every day,” said Abu Mussab about his son, fighting tears. “But there is no school for Syrians, and I can’t teach my son anything so maybe this way, he will learn a skill.”