Young girls forced into 'survival sex', six-year-olds made to pick potatoes for cash and boys of ten working as car mechanics: The shocking truth of child exploitation for Syrian refugees in Lebanon

Aid workers call it ‘survival sex’ – Syrian refugee women and girls, some as young as 12, forced to sell themselves to earn money for their families to survive. 

Vulnerable, desperate and trapped in spiralling debt as the Syrian conflict drags into another year, women are being forced or sold in to prostitution while in the most disturbing and extreme cases, girls have undergone so-called ‘marriages for pleasure’ that last just days. 

Aid workers say these ‘marriages’ are a sham, the groom making a payment or dowry – a sum that is traditionally paid in Muslim society to guarantee a bride’s security – effectively in return for sex with a young bride, who is probably unaware she could be divorced or abandoned in days.

Officials claim that men have travelled from countries in the region for the ‘pleasure marriages’ which are pronounced legal by a court but can legitimately end in divorce after 72-hours.

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Earning: Samer, 11, and his brother Mohamad, 10, should be in primary school, but instead are working 12-hour shifts as mechanics in Beirut to support their family, who are living on the poverty line after fleeing Raqqa for neighbouring Lebanon. But this is a country where refugees are not legally allowed to work, and as the war continues, more and more families are forced to rely on their children's earnings

Grown-ups: Mohamad isn't even tall enough to reach the tools on the wall, but his family desperately need the £200 a month the boys bring home. They are relatively lucky with their jobs, as other children are forced to toil in the fields or collect rubbish from the streets

'I had no choice': Samer is sad he had to leave school but with his father dead, he tells MailOnline his knows he has to make money. It is estimated 90 per cent of the 1.2million refugees living in Lebanon are struggling with mounting debt, fuelling a rise in child labour

In one case, aid workers said a 14-year-old girl was ‘dumped’ after a week of marriage having been told her husband would ‘send’ for her after he left – she never heard from him again - while in another, a 15-year-old girl, who married to care for her family of seven, had to be taken in to a shelter when her 23-year-old husband brutally beat her repeatedly. 

Hurriyah, a 12-year-old who fled to Lebanon with her family three years ago from Idlib, is another girl looking for protection.  

She attends school but her father is worried because she has become the subject of gossip after a 17-year-old boy began following and harassing her. Hurriyah’s father is now saying he will marry her to the boy imminently as there is no other way to protect her – Lebanese police are unable to help as they have no power over Syrian refugees.

Her mother Noor, 30, who underwent her own ‘early marriage’, is against the forced marriage but unable to stop it and the boy’s family refuse to help, claiming he ‘loves her’.

Hurriyah - who would only be in her first year of secondary school in the UK - is terrified, claiming she would rather return to Syria and live ‘with the bombs’ than in Lebanon and be forced into marriage.

Survival sex involving young girls is one extreme end of the crisis over the exploitation of children that has seen international aid agencies make tackling the shocking increase child labour among Syrian refugee families a priority for 2016.  

Tough: Rowayda is just nine, but the responsibility for putting food on the table for her mother and eight brothers and sisters is already hers. In the summer, she picks potatoes and in the winter she plants the seeds for the next year's crops

Labour: At any one time, there can be 50 refugee children working in these fields, each bringing in vital money to their destitute families

Cheap: Amal, 11, right, has been picking nuts, herbs, tomatoes and tobacco for the past two years, but it is the potatoes she finds the worst. 'It is hard bending and digging,' she tells MailOnline. In return for her aches and pains, she gets just 60p an hour

As winter cold begins to take hold in Lebanon, MailOnline travelled to rural communities close its northern border with Syria and to the heart of the country’s capital Beirut to speak with families so desperate they are forced to send their children out to work for a pittance in jobs that range from picking potatoes and tobacco in dreadful conditions to working as mechanics, from collecting plastic on rubbish dumps to digging ditches. 

‘Families are desperate and ready to do whatever it takes to survive,’ a senior Western aid official in the Lebanese capital Beirut said. ‘Women or girls are undertaking a temporary marriage in return for money or sponsorship such as a visa agreement or residency…they deal with the consequences later.

‘Some are aware it is just for a few days, some are forced in to it by their families while others are left shattered because they believed it was a real marriage - and perhaps pregnant. It is obviously an area of great concern which is hard to quantify as often we do not hear about it until much, much later.’  

Traditionally, ‘early marriages’ have taken place in the region but aid agencies there has been a ‘significant increase’ among Syrian refugees.

The British-based charity Save the Children says the ‘economic realities of some families’ are leading them to marry off younger children they feel can no longer provide for.

Some mothers push daughters in their early teens into marriage, either because they can't afford to care for them or because they hope a husband will protect them, only to have the girls abused by their much older husbands. 

Heartbreaking: Across town is 15-year-old Abed, who has been working 14 hour days for the past three years, trying to gather enough metal and plastic to scrape together some money to send back to his family, who live in a war-ravaged village near Aleppo

Determination: Abed knows he is the family's 'lifeline', and without him they will not eat. But it is hard - every day he waits under a bridge for someone to pick him for work. On a good week, he can earn £20, but there are other weeks he struggles to make even that

Struggle: Worse, his eyesight is deteriorating. He needs an operation to save it, but suspects he will lose his sight for the good of his family. Instead, he spends his days walking the streets, and in this sorting warehouse in the Lebanese capital

At the same time, the risk of sexual harassment and violence is high, with fathers, in particular, claiming they are marrying their daughters to protect them from harassment by men in the camps or urban neighbourhoods.

Many women refugees are also highly vulnerable to exploitation by pimps or traffickers, particularly since they fled without their husbands — sometimes with their children — and have little or no source of income.

Inside camps in Jordan, there have been reports of husbands ‘pimping’ their own wives while Syrian women are said to make up the largest nationality in the country’s brothels.

There is also evidence, UN officials say, that women and girls are being forced to ‘pay’ people smugglers for journeys to Europe with sex.

Lebanon’s police say the number of arrests of Syrian women for prostitution this year is over 500 compared with 200 two years ago. 

‘Most of them have children, and they say “It is to survive, it’s to feed my children",’ a police officer said. 

The vast majority of Syrians fled believing their savings would last until it was safe to return home but with no prospect of that, they are even deeper in debt. Indeed, shocking figures show nearly 90 per cent of the 1.2million Syrian refugees have mounting debt while humanitarian assistance is dwindling due to a shortage of funds. 

It is these ‘economic realities’, aid workers say, that has fuelled the increase in child labour, making the issue a priority for the United Nations Refugee Agency in its latest funding appeal. Refugees are not allowed to work officially in Lebanon but thousands of children are employed each day in the black economy, often labouring for hours in fields to provide the only money their families will see making the issue of child labour and the exploitation of children a major issue in the region. 

Trapped: The first Syrian refugees who arrived in Lebanon could never have imagined they would still be trapped in a country where they weren't able to work four years later. The poverty they now find themselves in leaves many desperate - and some are forced to marry off their daughters, either for protection, or for the dowry. Pictured: Hurriyah (not her real name)

In danger: Hurriyah, not her real name, is one of the girls aid workers have noted as 'at risk' of forced marriage. The 12-year-old's father claims he has little choice but to marry a her to a 17-year-old boy to protect her. She says she would rather return to the bombs of Syria

Aid officials say the sad reality is that as with the pleasure marriages, families feel they have little choice but to send children as young as six to work. Typical of these workers who will never know a normal childhood are 11-year-old Samer and his brother, Mohamad, 10.

Each day in the Beirut suburb of Jdeideh Roeissat, they leave the two-room breeze block shell of an unfinished building where they live with their mother Ameena, 38, aunt and three sisters at 7.30am to begin what can be a 12-hour shift as mechanics at one of the city’s workshops.

It is a job they have done for more than a year since the family was forced to flee the Syrian city of Raqqa after it became the headquarters of the Islamic State.

‘We had no choice but to leave,’ Ameena said. ‘Everyone was living under the shadow of their guns, there were snipers killing people and executions on the streets – restrictions were placed on women so we could hardly go out. We were terrified.’

She continued: ‘I don’t like the fact that the boys have to work but we have no other choice, it is our reality that they have to earn.’

With rental on the rooms costing the equivalent of £140 a month, there is only £60 left of the money Samer and Mohamed bring home.

At the workshop beside a busy road, Samer emerges from beneath a battered Audi to admit: ‘I get very tired but my father is dead so I have to work. I tried to go to school but I dropped out because we needed the money. I have no choice, it is hard.’

Across Beirut in the Zokak El Blat district, life is even tougher for 15-year-old Abed, who works every day collecting plastic and metal from the rubbish dumps across the city to send money back to support his father and six brothers and sisters in a village near the beleaguered city of Aleppo.

It is a job he says he has done since he was 12, earning around £20 in a good week for what can be a 14-hour day.

He lives with relatives and their four young children in a single windowless room – once a store cupboard beside a lift shaft – and has not seen his family for three years.

‘It is a big responsibility,’ he said, ‘I was doing well at school in Syria in the sixth form but now I just work. It is depressing and exhausting. Like other Syrian illegal workers I wait under a bridge, sometimes for hours – sometimes abused by others – for people to give me work…on some days I am lucky and sometimes unlucky. On those days I worry for my family as I can’t help them.’ 

Shame: Ameena, 39, is wracked with guilt for sending her boys Samer and Mohamad out to work, but says without the money they could not afford to live in the two-room flat, in an uncompleted breezeblock building which overlooks the city

Poverty: Despite its condition, the flat (pictured) costs £140 a month to rent - leaving the family with £60 to feed and clothe five people

'We were living under the shadow of their guns': Ameena, the boys, aunt Fatima, 64, and sister Najah, 21, fled to Lebanon more than year ago, after ISIS' depraved militants began executing people in the streets, and effectively barring the women from leaving their homes

Abed added : ‘I can’t see properly, I have an eye problem that needs an operation but I cannot afford to stop work so it will just become worse. I worry I will lose my sight but my family need my money. My mother died in childbirth so my father has to remain with my brothers and sisters, I provide their lifeline.’

It is perhaps in rural areas like the district of Akkar on the northern border with Syria where child labour is at its most prolific worst.

The area which houses more than 100,000 refugees in informal settlements is known for its olives, fruit, potatoes, greens and tobacco – and for the children who to the concern of aid agencies, provide much of its labour.

In the settlement of Tal Zaffar, a cluster of flimsy wood and plastic sheeting shelters, housing 40 families, some 30 children carry out exhausting work in the fields that lie beneath the snow-capped mountains while also helping at home.

Amal, a thin, fragile-looking 11-year-old, has been picking potatoes, nuts, herbs, tomatoes and tobacco for the past two years, beginning at 6am and slogging in the fields until 2pm for about 60p and hour. 

‘The potatoes are the worst,’ she said, ‘It is hard bending and digging in the ground. The bags are very heavy to lift and I am tired, especially in the summer when it is so hot (temperatures can rise to 40degrees).

‘I know I am a child but I have to help look after my family…there can up 50 children in the field at a time and we all feel the same but we have no choice.’

Relief: But there is a bright spot on the horizon for some of these children. Rowayda's favourite time of day is when she gets to visit the child friendly space run by Save the Children in the Lebanese village of Tal Zaffar (pictured)

Joyful: Rowayda (left, holding her picture), whose school in Syria was blown up, is learning the English alphabet with the other youngsters. Most importantly though, she says attending the temporary space makes her feel like a child again, 'happy and normal'

Learning: Here in the children's centre, the British charity is providing a bare minimum of education - helping the UN towards one its new 17 sustainable development goals, to allow every child in the world the chance at learning by 2030

'THE REPERCUSSIONS FOR AN ENTIRE GENERATION COULD BE CATASTROPHIC': HOW CHARITIES ARE STRUGGLING TO TREAT THE PSYCOLOGICAL SCARS SUFFERED BY SYRIA'S CHILDREN

Terrified: Leyla says her son Iyab suffers from nightmares and wets the bed because he cannot forget the horrors he has seen during the bombing in Idlib, where they lived before Lebanon

The psychological recovery and long-term development of vulnerable children fleeing the Syrian crisis is in serious jeopardy due to a chronic lack of child protection funding, spiralling numbers of refugees, and severely over-stretched resources in host countries like Lebanon, the frontline British charity Save the Children has warned.

More than 12,000 children have been killed during the conflict while currently inside Syria, a staggering quarter of all children are at risk of developing a mental health disorder, according to the United Nations.

‘The repercussions for the future mental health of an entire generation could be catastrophic,’ warned Ian Rodgers, country director for Save the Children in Lebanon.

‘In addition to the obvious psychological damage caused by witnessing traumatic events and extreme violence, there are a myriad of secondary, under-funded and often over-looked, daily causes of psychological and social damage once a displaced child arrives in a new community.’ 

MailOnline heard many stories of the devastating impact on children from families living in shelters in the rural Akkar region of northern Lebanon that skirts the border with Syria. 

Sitting in the flimsy home made from wood and plastic sheeting on farmland on the outskirts of the village of Tal Abbas, Leyla, 34, who fled with her five young children from the battered city of Idlib, told how eight-year-old Iyad wets his bed and suffers nightmares of his homeland. 

Stroking his hand, she said: ‘He cries when he thinks of what happened, he is frightened and shakes. He remembers hiding for many days when the shells kept coming from the tanks. 

‘He remembers the helicopters above, day and night. All the children experience trauma and show signs but Iyad is the worst with his nightmares and bed wetting. He cannot forget. I don’t know how we can stop it.’ 

In Lebanon alone, a considerable portion of children have now been out of school for at least three years, and this year around 200,000 will still be without any form of education and are growing up lacking even basic numeracy and literacy skills.

‘Millions of families simply cannot access basic life-saving assistance such as food, shelter, and medical care and, due to their refugee status, many are unable to work legally and are reliant on ever-dwindling government and humanitarian agency provisions,’ said Mr Rodgers.

‘For children in particular, being out of school for months or years, dealing with the acute tension and anxiety at home, as well as separation from friends and relatives, daily discrimination, child labour, early marriage, and living in insecure, poor parts of cities or towns, has a serious and profound impact on their mental and physical health.’ 

‘Leaving children untreated has a negative impact later on – they can become aggressive, depressed, and acquire phobias. Children are more resilient for treatment now, more than in adulthood,’ says Save the Children psychologist, Reem Nasri. 

Child protection is a life-saving response in any humanitarian emergency – but there are huge gaps in providing this much-needed service, with only 26 per cent of requested child protection funding for the Syria refugee crisis secured as of October 2015 .

Mr Rodgers added: ‘There is a frightening lack of child psychologists and other trained professionals in all neighbouring host countries and the emotional and psychological impact on children, now and in the future, is a huge concern.’ 

Her mother Ferial, 38, who came with her eight children from the front line city of Homs two years ago, said : ‘I know that she should be at school and it is wrong for her to have to work but we have no choice, it is better to have a little money and live than to have no money and face no life.’

In a neighbouring shelter, nine-year-old Rowayda helps her mother Hamida, 40, look after her eight brothers and sisters.

It is one of her many jobs including working in the fields picking potatoes in summer and planting them in winter – and picking olives.

‘I have to do it,’ she said, ‘Yes, I am tired but it is what I do…it is what we all do.’

She was in her school in Idlib, Syria, when it was hit by shelling two years ago and admits she cried. Since then, she as not cried she said.

Her ‘escape’ from daily routine comes each day in a makeshift informal school run at Tal Zaffar by Save the Children where she is learning the alphabet in English, reciting it with her classmates proudly.

It makes her feel a child again, she said, ‘happy and normal.’

• To help refugee families like these, donate to Save the Children's Syria Appeal - online or call 0800 8148 148.
• To donate to the UNHCR Winter Appeal - Help Children Survive this Winter - click here.