Junkyards or refineries, children’s workplaces in Syria

At the age of 15, Mohamad Majzum has already forgotten his childhood. Orphaned from the war in Syria, he had to drop out of school and works 12 hours a day in a junkyard to feed two younger brothers and a sister.

Every morning at six o’clock he heads to work where he melts metal in a large cauldron in the open air all day long. At night, he returns home and checks that his brothers and sister have done their homework and prepares food for them.

“I am his father and mother,” he confided to AFP, with his face and body covered in soot, in a junkyard in Al Bab, a city located in northern Syria.

“I work so that they can continue with their studies because they should not be deprived of school like me,” he adds.

After a decade of war in Syria, some 2.5 million children do not attend school and 1.6 million are at risk of dropping out, according to Unicef ​​(United Nations Children’s Fund), which reported on 20 November as International Children’s Rights Day.

90% of the children live in poverty and more than 5,700, some under the age of seven, have been enlisted to fight in the conflict, according to Unicef.

In the absence of official data, it is estimated that the number of child laborers has increased permanently since the start of the war in 2011.

“Suffer like me”

“It is obvious that child labor has increased in Syria (…) because of Covid-19 and the economic crisis, which is getting worse,” UNICEF spokeswoman Juliette Touma told AFP.

It stresses that child laborers in Syria “are exposed to absolutely terrible conditions.”

Mohamad Majzum, coming from the city of Maarat al Nooman, in the northern province of Idlib, controlled by jihadists and rebels, had to leave school at the age of nine to help his family after the death of his father in a bombing perpetrated by the Damascus regime.

Two years ago, his mother died. Then, along with his two brothers and his sister, he fled to Al Bab, a city controlled by pro-Turkish Syrian militias.

There they live in a two-room apartment, with bullet holes in the walls, and furnished with only a few mattresses.

His weekly salary is barely the equivalent of $ 5, but he manages to provide food and school supplies for his siblings.

“I work for them. I would like them to become doctors or teachers, not for them to suffer like me, “he says.

But large numbers of Syrian children have little chance of a decent life.

Amer al Shayban is 12 years old. He works in a rustic refinery in Al Bab. Wearing a black coat and wearing a red cap to protect himself from the cold, kneeling in the mud, he extracts pieces of charcoal that he keeps in a plastic bag. Crouching under the weight of the bag, he carries it to feed a furnace that emits toxic fumes.

“Broken dreams”

“I dream of having a notebook and a pencil and being able to go to school. But, I am forced to work, ”says Amer, who never learned to read and write.

Contacted by AFP at the refinery, he trusts that he is the main breadwinner for his family.

“I work, both in summer and winter, at the refinery to help my parents. My chest hurts from the smoke, ”he says.

When his day is over, he walks to the nearby IDP camp, where he lives with his parents and five younger siblings. The elders were killed during a regime bombing near Aleppo.

His father suffers from diabetes and has blocked arteries, and his family is barely subsisting on his salary.

The oldest of four brothers, 12-year-old Nadim al Nako, has lost all hope of being able to return to school, which he left two years ago to help his blacksmith father.

He works with a blowtorch, with the flame just inches from his face, molding pots and pans in his little forge in Al Bab.

“Today I no longer care about school, or anything else (…) The war destroyed our dreams.” the Mint. (I)