Child labour within the Syrian refugee response
Peter Matz
Highlights
Since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis in March 2011, more than 4.8 million Syrians have fled their country, seeking protection in neighbouring countries, such as Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq. In some of the hosting countries, they still face difficulties in accessing services, impacting their ability to provide food, housing, health and care, and other basic needs for their families. They are increasingly exhausting their savings and resources and are falling further into poverty.
Half of these refugees are children, whose well-being, protection and development is profoundly impacted by the crisis. One of the major child protection concerns is the emergence of child labour among refugee children and vulnerable host communities in all refugee hosting countries. In addition to poverty, refugee children are also affected by other determinants of child labour, such as the breakdown of the social fabric of families and communities and the disruption of education and training provision.
Child labour represents one of the key challenges to the fulfilment of the “No Lost Generation” (NLG) initiative. Consequently, child protection, including child labour concerns, is one of the three pillars of NLG, which seeks to address child protection concerns through three inter-related strategies in the current phase:
- Scaling up access to community-based child protection, including psycho-social interventions.
- Offer specialised child protection services, including for children involved in or at risk of child labour.
- Strengthen national formal child protection systems.
In order to consolidate knowledge and inform the future strategic response to child labour among Syrian refugees in the 3RP countries, the present report aims to take stock of existing approaches and initiatives, and review current promising good practices, needs and challenges for UNHCR, ILO, UNICEF, and other NLG partners, with the aim to scale up collective efforts for prevention and response to child labour in the Syrian refugee response.