Ten years of war, the limitations due to the embargo and the Coronavirus pandemic have imposed on the Syrian population living conditions bordering on poverty, favoring the re-emergence of the phenomenon of child labor exploitation.
“After almost a week of quarantine, I was surprised to see one of our students selling vegetables in his car.” From the experience of one of the teachers of the after-school program “Generation of Hope” in Homs , of the ” Syria Emergency ” program, attention was born towards the growing phenomenon of child labor exploitation . According to what our operators reported, in the past there were some cases in which adolescents were employed in manual labor, but today, the age of the children employed to sell vegetables at the markets or as workers, barbers, waiters in fast food restaurants or in factories has decreased. When parents are asked, the answers underline how this practice is almost inevitable given the economic conditions and the great uncertainty about the future . Some believe that today it is more important to learn a job instead of staying at home (due to the pandemic) or explain how those activities are necessary to help the family budget, which is no longer sustainable with the parents’ work alone, often occasional. During the quarantine imposed to deal with Covid19 , the operators and teachers of the after-school program in Homs have committed to following the children even remotely, even though it has not always been easy: many live in crowded homes and the availability of digital devices and the Internet is not within everyone’s reach. This detachment has fueled the fragility of the children and the choice by the parents to employ them in these jobs. For this reason, in the short period of recovery, in July, the after-school program in Homs organized some meetings to investigate the phenomenon and make people understand how important it is to prefer education to child labor , even in conditions of serious economic difficulty. From those meetings it emerged that the children, even if they do not want to work, feel the responsibility to contribute to family expenses as well as the fear that the employers, faced with their refusal, could harm the parents. The center has been closed again due to the spread of the Coronavirus, but, as soon as possible, operators and teachers will resume their work aware of how much this can contribute to fighting the practice of child labor and guarantee the children of Homs the support to receive the adequate education to build their future.
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