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Nine-year-old Emel works from 8am until 8pm, five days a week. (Photo: Nikolaj Nielsen)

Feature

Syrian children flee war to work in Turkish sweatshops

Nine-year-old Emel works from 8am until 8pm, five days a week. (Photo: Nikolaj Nielsen)

Thousands of children from Syria are being driven into slave-like labour in Turkey.

Some as young as six in Gaziantep, a large Turkish town near the border with Syria, are working morning to night behind sewing machines five days a week. Few attend school.

Most come from Aleppo, the besieged city in Syria near the Turkish border where the Bashar al-Assad regime has renewed its barrel bomb assault. Abdul Ibrahim, the 41-year old head of the Aleppo Health Directorate, told this we...

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Author Bio

Nikolaj joined EUobserver in 2012 and covers home affairs. He is originally from Denmark, but spent much of his life in France and in Belgium. He was awarded the King Baudouin Foundation grant for investigative journalism in 2010.

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