Feature: Syrian children toil for living in Lebanon's labor market

A bunch of Syrian refugee children aged between 10 and 17 are packed in a small pickup and rush to workplace in the Marjeyoun refugee camp in south Lebanon.

Fadi Abou Sankari, the supervisor as the children call him, starts distributing "his load" in the fields where they become the "slaves" of the landlords.

Some are to work in the olive field where the young laborers are to clean the tree trunks from twigs, some are deployed in the vineyard and engage in trimming the vine, some are left in the vegetable fields to collect cucumbers, strawberries and mallows, while the rest would take care of irrigating the crops through canals that run from artesian wells.

But the most dangerous work the Syrian children are to execute is spraying the fields with pesticides without wearing proper protection gears.

If any of the young workers was seen trying to stand in the shade of a tree to protect his head from the sun heat, Ali al-Dib, a grower in the plains of Marjeyoun would yell at him "get back to work and if I see you not working, you will never come back here again."

It is not a solitary incident as most of the growers act the same with the Syrian labors, exploiting them in the fields with no mercy all day long and paying them half what the regular labor earns in a clear violation of the Lebanese labor law.

But Hassan Amro, the father of a Syrian child labor who was displaced from the devastated city of Aleppo, pointed to a more serious issue that "the landlord pays the supervisor, who in turn pays the labors after deducting 20% to 30% of what he is to pay the children."

He told Xinhua "my son Walid is paid 15000 L.L per day (10 USD) by the landlord, but the supervisor only gives him 10000 L.L (6.35 USD)."

He explained that his son was exploited twice "first by the landlord who made my son work three additional hours a day, and then by the supervisor who deducted a third of his pay for what he calls transportation fees."

The labors themselves expressed their bad treatment. Hanan, a 14-year old female displaced with her family from Aleppo, told Xinhua "we are mistreated all day long and continuously reprimanded and insulted. What makes us support is our need, so we force ourselves to continue working though mistreated, because we need to feed ourselves and our families at the end of the day."

Samira al-Ali, an aid worker, told Xinhua that "what the young generation of the Syrian refugees is facing goes against all the rules and regulations. It is a nearly grave and unjustified exploitation. The need of the refugees for money should not be subject to the mood and interests of the employer."

She pointed that 30 percent to 40 percent of the Syrian children refugees are entering the labor market at the expense of their education, and the aid agencies should discuss seriously about this issue and find a proper solution before it gets too late."

According to the United Nations Higher Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), Lebanon hosts more than 1.1 million Syrians, who fled their war-torn country since the beginning of the uprising against the regime of President Bashar Assad.

The UNHCR estimates that 50 percent of the refugees are women and children. Endit