"It should shame us all," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said this week, that "the suffering of the Syrian people continues to plumb new depths."
He was lamenting the lack of global leadership in ending a four-year-old conflict that is unimaginably harsh: about 220,000 people dead, hundreds of thousands more tortured or injured, almost eight million displaced internally and four million refugees – many of whom are now starving. What is actually going on inside the country is a dark mystery, since it's far too dangerous for most news outlets to post any reporters there.
The Syrian war is usually framed as a geopolitical conflict, one that has serious implications for security in the Middle East. But what often gets overlooked is that this isn't just a conflict of the here and now, but one that will cast a shadow decades into the future, because the people who are suffering most are the ones whose childhood is being sacrificed and whose future is being gambled away.
Two new reports show just how dire things are for Syria's children. The first is a global report on education from the UN-backed Institute for Statistics in Montreal, that shows the utter collapse of schooling in the country. A country that had achieved near-universal enrolment in primary school and literacy rates of more than 90 per cent 15 years ago now has no classrooms for one-third of its younger children and almost half of its adolescents. The picture is even worse for Syrian refugee children, with a reported 90 per cent out of school.
Education isn't just something that keeps kids occupied – it pays huge dividends for a future economic growth and social stability. Having a country's girls educated is one of the key factors in achieving equality in the home and in the workplace, and in increasing prosperity. The price the world pays for ignoring the crisis now will increase exponentially in the future.
So what are these kids doing, if they're not in school? According to an even more disturbing report from UNICEF and Save the Children called Small Hands, Heavy Burden, they're at work. An alarming number of Syrian kids in refugee camps are enduring hard labour in order to supplement the incomes of families who can't afford basic goods. (And it's about to get worse, because money is running out: The World Food Program has said it is almost $200-million short of funds needed to feed Syrian refugees over the next three months.)
Almost three-quarters of children in Syria (where the unemployment rate approaches 60 per cent) contribute to the family income, and almost half in refugee camps do so. The report lists some of the work they do: Jumana, 8, recycles newspapers for $3 a day. Khalid, 12, works cleaning up diesel spills: "I hate the diesel market and the clothes that I wear there," he says. "All of it makes me sick." Ahmed, 13, works in a garage and repairs cars. Another boy named Ahmed, 12, is quoted in the report: "I feel like I'm still a child and would love to go back to school but I feel like I have to work hard to put food on the table for my family." Most children earn between $4 (U.S.) and $7 a day, working six or seven days a week.
Those kids are the lucky ones, if you can call it that. Others have to work in toxic factories, or pick potatoes or are forced to beg on the street. The most unfortunate get sold into child prostitution. Then there is the matter of recruitment into various militias: A child might be offered as much as $400 a month to join one of the competing paramilitary groups fighting in the civil war.
Once recruited into one fanatic group or another, kids are expected to earn their keep, "attending to the wounded or recording battles for propaganda purposes. Other children work as guards or at checkpoints. Children have also been employed as suicide bombers."
This, more than being kept out of school, will have profound consequences for the future. A child indoctrinated into either side of the war is unlikely to grow into what we might call a productive member of society.
It's hard to imagine that life can get much worse for kids in Syria. Human-rights groups have documented that the regime of Bashar al-Assad imprisons and tortures children for political gain; they are subject to chemical weapons, barrel bombs, displacement and starvation.
Yet, by and large, the world has turned away from a conflict that seems as complex as it is intractable.
Both reports call for an increase in global action to solve Syria's woes – and not surprisingly, more money. As always, the question is, pay now, or pay a lot more later?