RAQQA, Syria (North Press) – Throughout watching his underage daughter going out to work, the 50-year-old Muhammad al-Nasser feels pain and misery because he becomes unable to help his family.
Al-Nasser sits on a plastic chair in front of his tent waiting for his daughters, although he cannot see them after they leave, but that is much better than staying in the tent, he told North Press.
He lives with his family in a tent in Dahmoush camp, 10 km south of Raqqa; after he left his village in the countryside of Homs Governorate in 2017 due to battles took place in the area between Islamic State Organization (ISIS) militants and Syrian government forces.
Dahmoush is in a squatter camp run by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syrian (AANES) and shelters IDPs from the countryside of Homs and Hama Governorates held by Syrian government.
The AANES was first formed in 2014 in the Kurdish-majority regions of Afrin, Kobani and Jazira in northern Syria following the withdrawal of the government forces. Later, it was expanded to Manbij, Tabqa, Raqqa, Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor after the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) defeated ISIS militarily.
The camp’s tents are made of the remains of cloth and bags of grain.
About a year and a half ago, al-Nasser had a motorcycle accident which resulted in breaking his pelvis and smashing parts of his foot. This forced him to send his underage daughters to work in agricultural fields near the camp.
Al-Nasser is a father of eight daughters and a son, the eldest one is 18-year-old girl, who goes with her sisters to work in nearby agricultural fields every morning.
The IDP used to work in agricultural fields, driving some agricultural machines or herding sheep before he had an accident which disabled him.
The IDP told North Press that watching his daughters heading towards agricultural fields instead of joining their peers in school hurts him deeply.
However, he believes that it is the only solution amid bad conditions his family passes through in the camp which coincides with the interruption of humanitarian aid a long time ago.
Residents in the camps in the countryside of Raqqa complain of lack of humanitarian aid in light of bad humanitarian and social conditions they pass through inside the camps.
There are 58 squatter camps in the countryside of Raqqa, which are scattered among towns and villages. Most of the IDPs who live in these camps came from the areas held by the Syrian government such as Hama, Homs, and Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor.
These camps house around 90.000 IDPs, comprising 16.165 families, according to an official statistic obtained by North Press from the Office of Camps and IDPs Affairs in the Raqqa Civil Council.
Al-Nasser told North Press that sometimes his family sleeps without having dinner, if his daughters did not get enough money for their work that can meet the family’s needs.
The man is aware of the risks posed by the girls’ work, especially that most of them are underage which exposes them to physical, social and psychological problems.
But he added, “We are forced to do so in light of the absence of humanitarian aid.”