God. Above. They came over this Mountain Range on the other side is their country syria. They are needed here in the bekaa valley. The harvest lasts until december until then there is work for everyone. Tens of thousands of refugees from the Syrian Civil War are laboring in the fields near the Syrian Lebanese border. Children like william have to work to provide for their Families Together with her friend fatma she works an eight hour shift like the others here sometimes even longer. More than half the farm laborers our children who should be going to school but have been drafted to work as wage slaves. The farmer who owns the potato field hires the young field workers via the camp supervisor or shall we should he ensures that the harvest is carried out without a hitch and that his workers get what they need to subsist on. With theory. My parents get four packages of bread every day for all of us there is a deduction for electricity. And for the space where my family has our tent up to full council. Weve come to lebanon to find out how this system of child labor functions the young generation will be needed to help rebuild syria what will it mean for them and the country if half of these children grow up unable to read or write. We dont get any money i do this for my family when i work my wages are credited to me once a month they settle the accounts if i need something for myself i have to ask my parents. For. The men with sticks keep the field workers under control but that is the out of the thirty if anyone who is too slow faces the prospect of a beating. The farmer who the workers have been contracted to has to be kept happy there is no shortage of syrian farm laborers to choose from. I dont only go to school when it rains. When theres nothing to do in the field we can go if we have permission. I dont go to school but some of the other kids do one. Of them was. In all the out the over the other. Once the field has been harvested the Young Workers are trucked off to the next room. Two more fields are waiting for them the become valley is covered in potato farms and. The shell we should recruits the children in the refugee camp. His Business Model depends on the dependency of others the syrian families owed him money as soon as they arrived in lebanon. Up the road. We will go to. The refugees are brought directly to me homes if they have to pay the traffickers a five hundred to six hundred dollars i take on the costs. And over time they pay me back. To shall we she is not only a job recruit or his business is housing refugees who have no valid documents whoever ends up in his custody has to abate his roots. Or but they are going to hire me i set up the tent of the residents i pay for their electricity and water the hope is i even fetch bread for them. In return they work for me and i take part of their wages naturally im not running a charitable organization. But i was of you know i shall been me. Throughout lebanon there are thousands of unofficial camps like this one the shall we she is the boss here. But the people who live in the camps have no residence permits they are in lebanon illegally and they are forced to lead a marginal existence. I think youll have to laugh and i have bad little didnt get up to. The grown ups mostly earn money as hired hands on construction sites and they send their children out to do the less strenuous farm work. Fuck me and her family came here four years ago but my younger siblings are still too young to work she helps them with their school work. The arm of im. Going to play with. Flatmate would like to go to school but she doesnt have the time. But her friend we um brings her the exercises from the lessons. Flatmate was out working in the field early this morning. So i get a facets every day and go to work i come home around two oclock in the afternoon then i help my mother with the housework and do homework with the little ones were going to call my office and one of them a rule. To be sure that there are half a million syrian children in lebanon who should be going to school but more than half of them are obliged to earn money as Illegal Migrants the adults have a hard time making a regular income thats why they send their children to work. Now romney just sent to say i only went to school for a short time then i couldnt go anymore since i wasnt then one that is also for the past two years ive been working to earn money. That. I had laugh as a lot of them and then didnt hear them or did a lamb always in. The innocence that i thought for id like to be a pediatrician thats my dream. But like to learn a lot and fulfill my dream but unfortunately that cant be my house. Right next to the Syrian Border is the town of right. Here the extent of child labor is plain to see. Precious few School Age Children attend classes. Most of them came here after their homes in syria were destroyed they came to lebanon seeking a life in peace. And here in right they make bricks for the building industry. Seventy Factories Press cement to produce thousands of blocks every day. Factory owner ziad cousin runs one of the Biggest Companies in the town syrians have been coming over the border for decades to work here when the civil war broke out they brought their families to and settled next to the cement factory. While you want to get the goods and everything and the syrians have one child after another as if they didnt have any other problems. That lebanon is straining under their press its the bank it was a lot many men but there are some areas that wouldnt function without the serious its not about us and workers for the cement pressin for the drilling machines and for stacking the bricks when it syrians for that oh let me that i thought about when i was you can stop now. Everyone has to pitch in including the girls the youngest workers are ten years old. The family fled here from homes four years ago after their house was hit by a missile their new home is directly next to one of the smaller brick factories in raw eat. The two sisters watch and drug god usually work five days a week. Lebanons Construction Industry is booming and demand for bricks is high. The children are likely to have work for some time to come. I thirteen year old drug god helps her brother fill the cement into the molds the workers are paid by the brick the faster they are the more they earn. I. A quarter of a million of these children go to work instead of school the lebanese economy would grind to a halt without them. Ive been bad taking my brother sometimes backs without the about here can make more breaks i help my brother so he doesnt hurt himself. Sat yesterday a brick that failed his fate is that i felt so bad for him that that is that. Girls like drug od are being robbed of their childhood she would normally be in seventh grade but she has never seen a school classroom. Yet im allowed to go to school but the teacher didnt want me to have it why not but i dont know what i did he send you away that he said i was too old. They dont take such big pupils who have Eleven School system is overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of Syrian Refugees many children are turned away there not enough resources to accommodate all of them that means youngsters like a leak have virtually no chance of getting an education instead the thirteen year olds daily routine is toiling away in a brick factory. I can you imagine your future or the shall have to let them work. I have no chance making breaks i have to until we can go back to syria what. Do you like doing this. Was it not really. I think its it. Ive. Ive i was. In the evening the air is still full of the dust from the factories. The families gather outside their tents. Most of the syrians see lebanon as a temporary home if you want to stay here any longer than they have to. Go to for that for that. One the young man up in homes has the alsa lay family run a Transportation Company made any well they lived in a large house all that remains of it now are memories well i was the end of may and its our situation is not very good that him and syria we had a normal life and that the kids could go to school. That many of the families that came to lebanon with us have moved on and that some of them went as far as canada or australia. And then a bit of them and we dont want to go any further to be honest we havent even tried one another we want to return to syria we want to go back that is that will that vote in that. Inshallah they say god willing they will soon be able to return to our regular life in syria. Beirut the capital of lebanon. The city has undergone many changes since the refugees arrived lebanon has taken in one and a half million syrians relative to the population thats more than any other country. Today every fourth resident here comes from syria most of them eke out a living on the fringes of society they are merely tolerated and get little in the way of support from the state. Eighty percent of the around one and a half million syrians here do not any longer have legal status to be in lebanon this raises an enormous range of barriers for them right it means they cant move freely for fear of arrest at checkpoints which means they cant work and when they cant work they have very few resources to support their families to pay for rent and to pay for basic things like transportation to send their kids to school. Human rights expert. Is the author of a study on the barriers to education that the refugee children face its a massive problem. We found that lebanon had opened up two hundred thousand spots for chill for syrian children here and only about one hundred fifty thousand of those were filled so aside from the fact that this is way lower than the five hundred thousand children that are actually in need of an education and even the squats that the governor is opening are not being filled because people cant actually get to them and so thats really the root problem here that neither the lebanese government or the International Donors have addressed so far. The poor Living Conditions forced many to try to move on as is evident every day at the German Embassy in beirut for example. The syrians lining up at the entrance want to join their families in germany. Theyve waited six months for their appointments theyre here with high hopes but most of them dont have the necessary documents which are hard to obtain its a nerve wracking situation. My husband is trying to get the papers i need from germany. Hes been trying for years. I want nothing they keep sending me away because some documents are missing. It drives me crazy to always have to travel here i have a home it causes me a lot of trouble im suffering every day. In germany family reunification for refugees continues to be a contentious and highly charged issue its currently suspended for most syrians this family has been hoping for two years to get permission to travel to germany in the summer of twenty fifteen the sent three of their daughters on the long and arduous journey to europe. The parents remained in lebanon hoping that their daughters would be able to secure the family visas to enter germany one of the daughters left behind her two children five year old. And his six year old sister iowa. Shes been hard of hearing since a bombardment back in syria. The un had a plan that their adult daughter would apply to have her two children join her and an underage daughter would apply to get her parents and other siblings permission to come. They need our identification documents but getting new ones is very expensive it would cost us eleven thousand dollars and we couldnt be sure if they were real or fake. If it does wed have to send someone to syria to get us our passports we cant go there or selves. Twenty three year old is making her daily video call shes four thousand kilometers away since leaving lebanon she talks with her children twice a day. And i saw. What is currently living in eastern germany close to the polish border. She only has a temporary right to stay in germany like most of the syrians there. But they can feel you ask her if she speaks german. Will she be able to bring her family to germany. Why not. There are several hundred thousand people like this family eager to join their relatives in germany most attempts have failed. They were one of the things we needed help to get to our daughters it would be better for the childrens future. There they could all go to school in a month and. If you mean and tell you that we cant send them to school here we cant afford it two children would have to take the bus every day. That costs far too much in germany they could all get an education and. You can conceive it was. An az. And i as mother tina has tried to return to lebanon but she was denied entry on the grounds that there were already anough syrians in the country so they remain separated. We are back in the bekaa valley near the Syrian Border. The older residents of the camp are using the last days before the onset of winter to find a new place to live those who can afford to move on harvest time is coming to an end soon the first snow will start to fall. We arm is getting ready for school. Today is a rainy day as forecast. And a rainy day means she can go to school. But. The days spent out on the fields are getting fewer and fewer now she has time until spring to attend school instead of working. For william it means making up the lessons she has missed over the past months. This is not a Public School someone is one of a range of private organizations in lebanon that offer an education to children who cant attend regular schools. They may not receive a diploma but they are at least getting lessons. All the pupils here are Syrian Refugees. With all of the mcdeere thehotel the sally field the fact that our organization understands the familys dilemma we realize that our pupils also have to work but we always welcome them whenever they have time to attend class how has i missed out on how we talk with the parents and try to persuade them to let the children come to us had one of the most beautiful havent added that it was. The heat we im is older than the other pupils shes missed so much schooling that she has trouble keeping up its unclear whether she will ever be able to transfer to a regular school refugees especially those without legal residence are unlikely to be enrolled. Him in public. But you know thats the regular schools usually demand identification papers and a residence permit but most of the refugees have neither and what the main problem is that the state schools have too few spaces for all the refugee children and me and i didnt mean any of this as a muslim up at many schools still only accept people who are officially registered and turn the others away from the moment i mean the love. For this school tries to follow the official curriculum as closely as possible for all those omitted from the formal Education System yet a half. Two hundred fifty thousand syrian children in lebanon have never seen a classroom even though International Conventions recognize the right to an education as a basic human right. Was. Brian would much rather go to school than work but i can only come here when it rains or when there is no work on the field so thats the only time i can come to school. Well you know methinks you can get on the bus. These children belong to the lucky group who have managed to get into the Public School system. Over. Time for yourself welcomes them to her living room she fled from syria herself and she started up this class three years ago back when none of these children were in rolled at a school. Today theyre here for some extra tutoring. Dedication sector when it comes time to choose and situational support or even programatic support is one of the sectors that receives the biggest portion of funding weve had to do massive campaigns in order to explain to refugee parents that. Sense of in wanting their children in a formal Educational Program or at least it and i facing difficulties in accessing lebanese Public Schools they can join nonform Education Programs that will allow them to register in school the following year. Where. The time for yourself worked in a bank in aleppo before she came to love and on seeing the desperate plight of these children prompted her to take up teaching. Here. She started off with four pupils now there are thirteen. She gets funding from International Groups organized by a french teacher. The classroom materials are likewise paid for by donations. The for the. Unfortunately International Conversation has already moved on and so were now say a lot of talk of whats going to happen with the rebuilding of syria and the return of refugees. And correspondingly a decrease in the mount of money thats coming into lebanon to support this crisis i mean this is really the generation thats supposed to be rebuilding syria if this war stops and theyre able to go home and if kids dont have an education if you have literally hundreds of thousands of children who grow up without an education that will have enormous ramifications in the future. Ramifications for their native syria and also their lebanese hosts and the wider world to. Leave but he their mouth it serves says so the film and there they are a lost generation. By generation rant of their use and facing the burden and hope of making syria once again a land was an optimistic future. The fast pace of life in the digital shift has the lowdown on the web showing new developments and providing useful information. Churned. Tomorrow today to w. Living in the digital age. Coming up twenty seven teams most google names shining on instagram. And lots of every day annoyances. But first