Feature: Childhood of Syrian kids under siege as crisis enters 6th year

With a frown on her face, the 10-year-old Sawsan is selling bread pack in downtown Damascus.

Sawsan was wearing a thick shabby brown coat, which sags under her knees and hides her bony body.

"I come here everyday with my mother, waiting in line to get bread packs. I take the packs and sell them to passing drivers and people walking by, while my mother stands in line again to get more," Sawsan said.

Sawsan said she goes to school, but she often skips to help her mother, both have fled from the restive Jobar district east of Damascus.

As the government-subsidized bakeries are often crowded with people waiting in long queues to buy bread, the less fortunate people have opted to make some cash out of this situation.

They take their children to a certain bakery to get the bread. Then they ask their children to resell them to those who do not want to wait in line to buy at double the bakery price.

Now it has become increasingly common in the streets of the capital to see children and grown-ups shouting "fresh bread."

Swasan's father has passed away before the civil war, leaving she and her mother to suffer the hardships of the five-year-old crisis.

Her mother, Siham, used to work as a house cleaner, but she has got a spinal disk, which has made her to think of something less stressing.

"We have got to live... I am still cleaning houses, but on a lower rate because of my medical conditions, but when I am not cleaning I take Sawsan and come to the bakery here to make some money," Siham said.

"This crisis was so harsh on us, the poor. We were not very well ahead of the crisis but after we fled our house in Jobar, we felt the real pain, the pain of being in need with nothing on the horizon," she said, wishing she could find a better job to have her daughter properly educated.

Not only bread, kids are seen also in marketplaces selling all kinds of things, such as tissue packs, cigarettes and roses.

In Aleppo, Abdul-Qader Fayyad, who works with a humanitarian organization, told Xinhua a story he witnessed and cannot forget.

He recounted that in the coastal city of Latakia there is a displaced family from Aleppo with a small baby girl.

The father is married to two women, one of which is mentally ill. He has 11 kids with the first woman and two from the ill one, including a six-month old infant, he said.

Fayyad said the family's situation was extremely bad, as they live in a place "so bad as a garbage can."

"The food they eat is so bad... the father cannot provide for his children and they are helpless," he said, recounting that "when I saw the little girl I was so touched it was like she was trying to call for help if she would have known how to speak."

He said that during his line of work he had seen haunting stories of afflicted kids, expressing fear of the future of those kids would look like, given their distorted childhood.

"You see them small, but trust me they have endured a lot that their eyes look as if they were in their 50s," he said of the children who have suffered in the war.

He said that the Syrian children, especially those who have directly been affected by the conflict, must receive psychological help.

An estimated 3.7 million Syrian children, about one in three of all Syrian children, have been born since the conflict erupted five years ago, their lives shaped by violence, fear and displacement, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said Monday.

This figure includes 306,000 children born as refugees since 2011, said the UN agency in a report issued here as the Syrian conflict enters its sixth year this week.

In total, UNICEF estimates that some 8.4 million children -- more than 80 percent of Syria's child population -- are now affected by the conflict, either inside the country or as refugees in neighboring countries.

"In Syria, violence has become commonplace, reaching homes, schools, hospitals, clinics, parks, playgrounds and places of worship," said Peter Salama, UNICEF's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa. "Nearly seven million children live in poverty, making their childhood one of loss and deprivation."

According to the report titled "No Place for Children," UNICEF verified nearly 1,500 grave violations against children in 2015. More than 60 percent of these violations were instances of killing and maiming as a result of explosive weapons used in populated areas.

More than one-third of these children were killed while in school or on their way to or from school.

In Syria's neighboring countries, the number of refugees is nearly 10 times higher today than in 2012. Half of all refugees are children. More than 15,000 unaccompanied and separated children have crossed Syria's borders.

"As the war continues, children are fighting an adult war, they are continuing to drop out of school, and many are forced into labour, while girls are marrying early," said Salama.

In the earlier years of the conflict, most of the children recruited by armed forces and groups were boys between 15 and 17 years old, and they were used primarily in support roles away from the front lines.

However, since 2014, all parties to the conflict have recruited children at much younger ages -- as young as seven -- and often without parental consent.

More than half of the UNICEF-verified cases of children recruited in 2015 were under 15 years old, compared with less than 20 percent in 2014. These children are receiving military training and participating in combat, or taking up life-threatening roles at the battle-front, including carrying and maintaining weapons, manning checkpoints, and treating and evacuating the war wounded.

Parties to the conflict are using children to kill, including as executioners or snipers.

One of the most significant challenges to the conflict has been providing children with learning. School attendance rates inside Syria have hit rock bottom. UNICEF estimates that more than 2.1 million children inside Syria, and 700,000 in neighboring countries, are out-of-school.

In response, UNICEF and partners launched the "No Lost Generation Initiative," which is committed to restoring learning and providing opportunities to the young.

"It's not too late for Syria's children. They continue to have hope for a life of dignity and possibility," Salama said. "They still cherish dreams of peace and have the chance to fulfill them." Endit