Young girls sell narcissus at the traffic lights. Boys push carts with fruit or ice blocks, serve tea, help unload trucks and run errands for shopkeepers. Child labor is already part of daily life in Iraq, but since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, a record number of children have entered the workplace.

“It is not a priority for the authorities to tackle this,” said Vice President Tanya Gilly Khailany of the Seed Foundation, providing one reason for its continued growth. This lack of urgency translates into a lack of official statistics. Both nongovernmental organizations working in Iraq and the International Labor Organization (ILO) have called for action.

With the last known figure for child labor in Iraq at 7.3% and dating from 2018, last October the UN refugee agency UNHCR found that of the 1,600 internally displaced people and refugees it questioned in Iraq, 17% had resorted to sending their children out to work to generate income. Another 42% cut costs by marrying off their underage daughters.

The main driver behind the increase in child labor is growing poverty, Gilly pointed out over Zoom from her office in the Kurdistan capital, Erbil. According to recent Iraqi figures, the percentage of Iraqis living below the poverty line had risen to almost a third (32%) from 20% in 2018. Because of lockdowns and other COVID-related measures, many Iraqis have lost their incomes. “A large part of the Iraqi community is poor, and for a number of reasons,” Gilly stated. Before the crisis, one in five children and teenagers was poor. Now that figure is two out of five — almost 38% of all Iraqi children.