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7.23.2007
The stories of most child laborers are similar regardless of the severity of the conditions in which they live. On the streets of Damascus, the oldest capital in history, child laborers live through the cold in the winter and at night and under the oppressive heat of the sun during the day. They are at the mercy of municipal law enforcement officials, who indiscriminately prevent child laborers from putting their straw-mats (on which they display and sell goods) on the sidewalk or the streets. Government officials thus prevent these children from working on the sidewalks of the country without offering them any form of assistance or seeking long-term solutions to the problem, such as initiating a program to combat child labor in Syria. Nonetheless, these poor children quickly learn to manage the situation and their lives, as we have learned through their stories.
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2.7.2008
Aleppo is an industrial city and has more architectural beauty than Damascus in its antiquity and modernity. At first glance, its people do not appear to be poor. Rather, most of them seem comfortable and, in some cases, wealthy. This is evident in their homes and professions, and their ability, as they say, “to make money out of dirt.” Despite all of this, wealth seems increasingly an elaborate façade, behind which much pride and shame is hidden, and child labor is still a common phenomenon in Aleppo.
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9.25. 2007
Adolescent children are withering away every day in Syria as they search for scraps in garbage cans, beg for loose change, shine shoes or sell cigarettes. This gloomy reality has become a painful routine with which Syrians are confronted on a daily basis; a reality imposed upon us all by worsening living conditions, and official neglect, corruption and mismanagement. These children, shackled with poverty and destitution, are stuck in a continuingly unfolding cycle of victimization and repression. The hand of fate places its cruelty and misfortune upon them so that they become children of the streets through their or their families’ desire to make money and escape the misery of a life that grows increasingly tougher by the day.
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12.4.2007
Two children named Ayman and Akram beg in the streets of Damascus. The older of the two is not more than 7 years-old. They say that their mother married a man who is forty years older than her and that he will quickly become frail in the next few years. He will require medication and food when the illness and hunger grow worse. The mother sent her children out into the streets of the capital after teaching them the ways of begging, including putting out their hands and crying to plead with pedestrians. They now roam the streets barefoot and half-naked, and return in the evenings to their mother, setting aside the misery of their day in her embrace.
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140
(1 vote, average 4.00 out of 5)
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12.22.2007
Twenty-four hours with a Syrian child
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