An increasing number of refugee children from Syria are being exploited and forced into labor to provide for their families, according to a collaborative report from UNICEF and Save the Children.
The report, based on a survey done on Syrian families in Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, recommends that more efforts be made to put a stop to child labor.
According to the United Nations, four million people left Syria as refugees and headed towards neighboring nations that cannot seem to cope with the inflow.
"Based on all of these surveys ... it's clear that child labor has increased substantially since the Syrian conflict began," Juliette Touma, a UNICEF spokesperson, told Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The report found that inside Syria, more than three quarters of surveyed families had children as their breadwinners. In Jordan, almost half of the young refugees are the sole or joint breadwinners of their families while in Lebanon, children as young as six years are already working. Children are also being recruited to fight in the five-year conflict; they are also being sexually abused and trafficked.
The war in Syria has led to the death of more than 200,000 people and the displacement of half of its population. It has forced children to work in various jobs linked to farms, bakeries and restaurants. In addition, the children are exposed to various hazards at construction sites found in the region, according to the report.
The report also noted that some employers would rather use children for work because they were much cheaper and that adult refugees usually found it difficult to find a job in the formal labor market because getting a work permit from host countries was almost impossible.
Touma told Al Jazeera that the report should serve as a "wake-up call" for individuals keen to make a difference, adding that UNICEF has already called on civil society groups, governments and donor states to address the problem.
