“I wish I could go to school. My dream is to be a doctor but our financial situation is not good,” says Mohammed, a 12-year-old laborer.
He and thousands of other children from deprived households in Raqqa are increasingly dropping out of school and entering the world of manual work to support their mothers and siblings.
The region’s economy and its workforce were devastated by the war.
“I am working in the industrial area to support my family,” says Ahmed Al-Ali, another underage worker forced to earn a living.
Work that deprives children of an education is banned under international law.
An estimated 40 percent of school infrastructure in Syria has been damaged or destroyed in the war, according to the UN children’s fund UNICEF. As of 2018 figures, more than 2 million children – over a third of Syria’s child population – are out-of-school and 1.3 million are at risk of dropping out.
Among refugees outside the country, over 800,000 children remain out-of-school.
Enmaa is an aid organisation dedicated to protecting children’s rights. It aims to stop the use of child labor by offering Raqqa’s children training and education programs.
“In Al-Karamah, the Enmaa organisation has managed to support just 1,150 out of 24,000 children. This number is very low in relation to the total number of children out of school and working children,” said Enmaa chief Ahmed al-Hashlom.
“The provision of support to the families could be one of the solutions to help children leave their jobs and join schools.”
Enmaa would like to offer families economic assistance so the children can stop working and go back to school.
Raqqa is under the control of Kurdish-led forces which led the ground operation to retake the city from ISIS in 2017. Much of the city remains in ruins. Local and international teams continue to find mass graves and unexploded ordinance.
