Coronavirus: Iraq’s ’Covid-19 generation’ faces forced labour, lack of school | Middle East Eye
Yusuf, a 10-year-old Arab boy originally from Iraq’s central Salahaddin province, sells plastic bags in the centre of Sulaymaniyah.
Yusuf is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of children working across northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region to help their families - or just to survive - at a time that Iraqi government coffers have shrunk due to the crash in oil prices, an economic crisis and a pandemic that has caused mayhem around the world.
“I never attended school [and] have been working here for more than two years,” he told Middle East Eye. “My parents were killed by the Islamic State.”
Many Kurdish families, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and Syrian refugees are forced to take their children out of school and send them to work in dangerous conditions in order to make ends meet.
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