‘I have to work to help my family’: Child laborers in Raqqa face dangerous conditions

Ahmed Hussein Al Jasem doesn’t remember much about the accident. He only recalls waking up in the hospital in pain.

The 14-year-old tripped and fell from the fourth floor of a building under construction — where he was working as a laborer. Both of his legs were broken, his stomach was ripped open and he needed stitches on his head.

Today, he can barely walk with the help of crutches.

“I saw death with my own eyes,” he said, sitting on a white plastic chair in the courtyard of his home in the Syrian city of Raqqa. 

Across Raqqa, there are hundreds of construction sites. The 2017 operation to liberate the city from ISIS leveled entire neighborhoods. Since then, reconstruction has picked up, and labor is in high demand — particularly child labor — because children are willing to work for less money than adults.

In Raqqa, it is common to see pickup trucks carrying groups of kids as young as 7 or 8 years old to and from construction sites. The work is grueling and unsafe. But families say the choice is often between this work and starvation.

Ahmed’s mother, Mona el-Kassoum, screamed when she heard the news of her son’s accident. 

“I was like a mad woman,” she said, “I lost my mind.”

Ahmed’s injury has had a devastating effect on the whole family. His manager paid all the hospital bills, his mother said, but the teenager is going to need medical and physiotherapy support for a long time.

Since his injury, he hasn’t been making any money. As a result, his mother said, the family has had to cut down on the number of meals they have in a day.

“See this kid?” Kassoum asked, pointing to her seven-month-old baby she held in her arms. “We’ve had to ration his milk.”

“Every mother wants to send her kids to school,” Kassoum added, “but we have to pay rent and buy food. We need this money to survive.”

Ahmed’s brother, Mohammed, who is 15, also works at a construction site. On a recent spring day, he was busy cutting slabs of stone that will be attached to the façade of a six-floor building.

Mohammed said he starts work at 7:30 a.m. His day ends at 5:30 p.m. He makes $1.30 a day, he said. 

“I love this work, and I hate it,” he said, his face covered in white dust from the stone work. “I love it because my colleagues are like my brothers. I hate it because it’s hard, dangerous and exhausting.”

Across the street is a soccer field, where kids of Mohammed’s age were playing.

“I love playing soccer too,” Mohammed said, seeming envious, “but I have to work and help my family.”

Several other children on construction sites in Raqqa shared similar stories. They said working is a way to get ahead in life — more so than school — and that they can learn skills that will eventually lead to better-paying jobs.

Mohammed and two other workers said they want to start their own construction companies in the future.

But Mohammed and his family know firsthand that this work can be dangerous and costly. None of the workers at the sites The World visited were wearing protective gear like helmets, goggles or masks.

The number of working children in Raqqa has increased significantly since the start of the Syrian civil war, said Ali Shouaib, the head of the Social Affairs and Labor Committee in the Kurdish administration that runs Raqqa.

“Before the war,” he added, “we had few cases, maybe 1 child out of a 1,000 worked … But today they make up between 30 or 40% of the workforce,” Shouaib said, adding that his office doesn’t collect data on child labor and that this is an estimate.

According to Shouaib, most of the working kids are orphans who lost their families during the civil war or the subsequent war against ISIS.

“They have survived airstrikes and ISIS,” he said.

In response to questions about what officials are doing to increase safety on the construction sites, Shouaib said his office sends inspectors to sites to check on workplace safety.

“If there are problems,” he said, “they issue fines. The law states that anyone working must be over 15,” he added. Children ages 15 and up are allowed to work full-time instead of attending school. 

Shouaib explained that his office has plans to reduce child labor. For example, he said, they plan to hold hairdressing and tailoring workshops for mothers so they can earn an income instead of relying on their children.

Still, those plans have yet to materialize. With an estimated 35.5% unemployment rate in Raqqa, many families continue to rely on their children’s income. This makes it hard to completely ban the practice, Shouaib said.

As 15-year-old Mohammed took a pause from cutting stones and wiped off his dusty forehead with his leathery hands, he reflected on the future.

“If I have my own children,” he said, I’ll send them to school. I’ll send them to school to learn.”