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On the outskirts of the Bekaa Valley town of Saadnayel, a cluster of tidy slant-roofed wooden buildings stand out against the farmlands and nearby tented settlements. For the children who live and work in the surrounding area, this first-of-its-kind center to protect children from the worst forms of child labor is an oasis. “That was the idea, especially for the children, because they are so sick and tired of tents ... their work and of their daily way of life in the refugee camps,” Hayat Osseiran, a child labor consultant with the International Labour Organization, told The Daily Star.
The first Social Protection Center to Combat the Worst Forms of Child Labor was officially launched this week to support the growing number of children in Lebanon who are forced to work instead of attending school. Local NGO Beyond Association is running the center, established in collaboration with the ILO, the Labor Ministry and Lions Club International.
Representatives from the partner organizations, as well as from the surrounding municipalities and religious institutions toured the specially designed cabins that house classrooms, activity rooms, sports areas and box gardens where the kids can learn and play in a safe space.
The center has been operating for around a month, offering Arabic, English, math and literacy classes as well as psychosocial support activities for around 300 children. “We have created a full package to work on all different areas of children’s development,” said Inass Amhaz, who is responsible for Beyond’s child protection centers.
As a group of boys and girls rehearsed a performance on a stage set up for the launch event Tuesday, a small group of children sat around a table in the yard between the huts making jewelry. The classrooms were packed with eager students who smiled timidly and waved at the visitors. Amhaz said the roughly 15-strong Beyond team at the center is half Syrian, half Lebanese, as was the site’s building crew. “We try always to have this balance,” she said.
Amhaz said they try to ensure that those children who are working can still attend classes and activities for half the day, before going to work.
“We do awareness sessions with families and employers to let them come here for at least one, four-hour session. It’s not ideal but it’s what we have to work with. You cannot tell the parents, don’t let your children work, they will ask for something to [replace the income]. But what we can provide is better than nothing.”
As part of the performance for the launch, children demonstrated some of the jobs they do outside the center: cutting hair, selling tissues, fruit or coffee in the street, cleaning, or working in one of the agricultural area’s many fields.
There is a dearth of statistics on child labor in Lebanon, though common consensus from groups working on the issue is it is a growing problem. This is indicated in part by school attendance data.
Though child labor was an issue in Lebanon before the Syria crisis, the ripple effect of the neighboring conflict and dire circumstances of many refugees has led to a marked rise in working under-18s among both Lebanese and Syrian populations, according to a UNICEF study.
Lebanon hosts 1.1 million registered Syrian refugees, 46 percent of whom are children. Among the community there are significant barriers to education – and poverty and residency restrictions for adults mean many children have become breadwinners for their families.
According to Amhaz, around 5,000 refugees live in the two tented settlements adjacent to the center, and while the center has space for 200 children, another 200 are already on the waiting list with more registering every day.
“I believe we need a lot more places like this for the Syrian children,” Mayor of Saadnayel Khalil Shihimi said after visiting one of the classrooms. “They don’t deserve what happened to them. It just happened and we all should help.”
Thirteen-year-old Mahmoud’s family lives in the settlement south of the center. He cuts hair in the afternoons, supporting his family as his elderly father cannot work. “I come to the center first thing when it opens and when it closes I go directly to work,” he told The Daily Star.
Joined by Abodi, also 13, and Mustafa, 7, they talk about their favorite lessons and activities at the new space. Abodi also works as a barber, while slight, shy Mustafa harvests potatoes. Agricultural work is strenuous and poorly paid, but it is the sector that employs a significant amount of laboring children.
In this sense, more worrying perhaps than the number of children in work is the nature of the work itself.
“It’s not just that it increased,” Osseiran said. “It changed in type and form, it became more exploitative. Employers abused the situation more and there is more forced labor.”
Nazha Shalita, director of the Child Labor Unit at the Labor Ministry, said, “We take this [center] as an excellent example [of what is needed], it contains all the adequate services for education and psychosocial support, social services – supporting families and even the employers, as well as the children themselves.”
A sister center is set to be opened in south Lebanon’s Nabatieh, with a view to launch more across the country. Osseiran said that while things are starting to move in the right direction, there is still work to be done and the stakes are high.
“If we ignore this issue ... for the future generation, the whole region, to be honest I see more radicalization,” Osseiran said.
“With much less money than it takes to wage war, we could help these children. What they’re doing now is treating the effects [of radicalization] but not the causes, and child labor is one of the root causes. When a boy of seven years old is made to suffer so much, silently, then what do you expect from this boy?”
Archimandrite Theodor Ghandour from the Greek Archdiocese of Zahle, who attended the launch, echoed this by saying, “[The center is] supporting them to be empowered in their lives, because without education, humanity cannot do anything in the world.”
For the time being, Mahmoud and his friends seem to agree. They said their favorite part of the center is their classes.
Mahmoud even said he hopes one day to be a teacher.
“I worked before, but since coming to the center I stopped working,” Abodi said. “Of course, I prefer to study.”
Source: The daily star
