Whirling in Ramadan…

This week-end, one of my young Syrian refugee friends and I were greeted by an enormous whirling dervish on our way to see an Indonesian dance and marital art demo at Ramadaniyat Beirutiya. Last summer, when I was preparing to travel to Indonesia on a Fulbright, I taught him and his shoe-shiner friends a few phrases in Indonesian. So it brought me great joy this week-end when he was able to share his knowledge of Indonesian with Indonesian diplomats at the Ramadan festival in Beirut.

The Syrian kids I’ve befriended from this “lost generation” have now missed several years of school, and they’ve lost all hope that they will ever return to a classroom. Instead, they’re pouring their time, attention, and energy into working day and night–shining shoes on the streets of Beirut. Syrian refugee child labor is a growing, dangerous problem. According to a new report by Save the Children and UNICEF, children are working in more than 75 percent of households surveyed inside Syria–and in neighboring countries, nearly half of Syrian children refugees are joint or sole breadwinners in their families. In the words of the report, “Syria’s children are paying a heavy price for the world’s failure to put an end to the conflict.”

With renewed calls for European governments to not turn their backs on Syrian refugees, it remains to be seen if the wider international community, host governments, and civil society will do more to address child labor, release funding for income-generating activities, and provide education for this lost generation. In the meantime, these “kids” are growing up fast and getting more depressed–as they realize their futures appear doomed and they aren’t going home anytime soon.