18 Nov 2021

Zarqa, Jordan – On the outskirts of Russeifa, children sort through mounds of garbage in hope of finding something salvable: an aluminium bottle cap, a glass bottle, a cardboard box. Some children come to work in the landfill from the nearby village, others come from far, many from the kingdom’s refugee camps.

The kids spend days, up to weeks, living among the rubbish, eating expired food, and breathing the fumes of burning plastic.

Only a short drive from the landfill is a scrapyard, which spans almost 3km (1.2 miles). Here, children collect scrap metal, to later sell for a few Jordanian dinars. Piles of 1960-era cars hide what happens in the scrapyard from authorities’ sight, leaving the children susceptible to gang membership and violence.

In these locations, children work in hazardous conditions with dangerous machinery, heavy loads, long hours, and unhealthy living conditions. The National Child Labor Survey in 2016, Jordan’s most recent statistics on child labour, found almost 76,000 children were engaged in economic activity, 60 percent of whom work in risky environments.