A field study for the Action Group for the Palestinians of Syria revealed high rates of Palestinian child labor since 2011, where poverty and the loss of breadwinners constituted the most important causes of the phenomenon of child labor.
Thousands of Palestinians have lost their fathers due to natural causes of death, war or enforced disappearance in prisons and detention centers, said the Britain-based Palestinian monitoring.
Like the Syrians, the Palestinians suffer poverty and their weak financial resources, which has forced many Palestinian families to stop sending their children to school, and push them to the labor market to be of assistance in securing a living and providing the minimum living necessities.
The displacement to the camps in northern Syria imposed harsh conditions that pushed Palestinian children to work to support their families, who live in tents, live on intermittent aid, and are deprived of the assistance of the UNRWA responsible for them.
Palestinian activists attribute the main reason for the labor of Palestinian-Syrian children to UNRWA's failure to assume its duties towards refugee children and their families, in addition to the lack of any serious role for Palestinian embassies in working to alleviate the suffering of refugees.
In the neighboring countries of Syria, destitution and poverty forced the children of Palestinians displaced from Syria to leave education and work in jobs that are not commensurate with their age and the nature of their weak bodies, as they work in difficult occupations such as loading heavy cartons, collecting waste, or washing cars, etc., in order to enhance the ability of their families to live a decent life.
The Syrian conflict has claimed 494,438 lives and has displaced 13,2 million people since it erupted in March 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-regime protests.
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