Human-rights experts say that a large number of Syrian refugee children in Lebanon are being forced to work in conditions that verge on slavelike.
Lebanon has a population of just over 4 million people, a quarter of whom are Syrians who escaped the escalating civil crisis in their home country, Reuters reports. Their complicated legal status requires them to find irregular ways of making money and desperation is driving children into the Lebanese labor force.
According to a report by Freedom Fund, an antislavery activist group, refugee families are forced to live in tent communities — known as shawish — and undertake labor obligations. Certain employers in Lebanon prefer to hire children, and so the shawish will send young members of the community to work at farms, restaurants and repair shops nearby.
They often work under conditions of “forced labor,” the report says, earning little or even no pay.
[Reuters]
- Here's Where All The Strongest Hurricanes Have Hit the U.S. in the Past 50 Years
- 2022 Time100 NEXT: TIME’s List Of Emerging Leaders Who Are Shaping the Future
- Industrial Farming Causes Climate Change. The ‘Slow Food’ Movement Wants to Stop It
- Here Are the 12 New Books You Should Read in October
- Artist Oliver Jeffers Wants to Paint the World Out of a Corner
- A Vibrant North Korean Community in London Finds Its Days Are Numbered
- COVID-19 Vaccines Can Make Periods Longer, Study Says
- Column: What Happened When My Entire Family Came Out
