Social workers say many of the child labourers drop out of school and seek work as they come from needy families, often of 10 children or more.

It is early morning and eight-year-old Ibrahim Khodar Arja is already hard at work, his face and hands covered with dirt as he repairs a car at the mechanics shop where he works six days a week, 10 hours a day. Ibrahim should be at primary school but his job leaves him no time for that. Like thousands of children across Lebanon he has joined a growing force of child labourers whose fate is as much dictated by their family’s dire economic situation as by the country’s turbulent politics.

Officials estimate that at least 100,000 children, or one in 10 up to 18 years of age, work in Lebanon, mainly in the agriculture sector or as mechanics as well as in jewelery workshops and sweatshops. "The 10 to 15 age group is the most affected," Nabil Watfa of the International Labour Organisation office in Beirut told AFP. "But children as young as eight have also been noted to work. "These kids, the majority of them boys, work handling chemicals, in garages, in metal-welding shops, carpentry, marble cutting and in farms where they are exposed to pesticides."

Most of the child labourers hail from the northern regions of Akkar and Tripoli, where many families live below the poverty line. Others work in the eastern Bekaa Valley and in the south of the country, where poverty is also endemic and the main industry is agriculture,including tobacco plantations. In Bab al-Tebbene, a rough neighbourhood in the northern city of Tripoli, a majority of the mechanics or scrap metal shops that line the streets employ children, including Ibrahim.

The kids can be seen welding, using dangerous machinery, or handling toxic chemicals, all with no protective gear. More than a dozen children interviewed between the ages of eight and 16 seem resigned to the fact that theirs is a future of hard work rather than play. Their tough gaze betrays a lost childhood.

Mustafa Yassin, 13, entered the work force last year as an apprentice mechanic. He earns 10 dollars (seven dollars) a week, working 10 hours a day, six days a week. "School was not for me and I prefer to learn a trade so that I can help my family and maybe one day open my own garage," he said shyly.

Social workers say many of the children drop out of school and seek work as they come from needy families, often of 10 children or more. They also point to appalling conditions in state schools where standards are poor and where children are often left to fend for themselves. "We are placed in these schools which are like prisons and many of the kids are dismissed or drop out because no one looks at them," said Rabih Saifeddin Danash, 25, who began working at age 15 at his father’s garage.
His brother Ahmed, 14, worked as a blacksmith for a year before recently joining the family business. "I work seven days and my father gives me 20 dollars a week," said Ahmed. "But when I grow up and have kids, I want them to study because the only thing useful is education."