Syrians living in the worst imaginable conditions have been forced to eat rubbish from a US military dump as they can longer afford food.
Alia has set off at 7am every day for the past three years to make a two-hour journey to the dump in Tell Beydar, north-east Syria, in a hunt for food to eat and plastic to sell for recycling.
The 25-year-old said: "People shame us; they call us garbage people."
Surrounded by putrid waste and the toxic fumes from burning rubbish, she explained that the US military dump is their only source of food and income.
"We're here to find meat, to find food because we're hungry," her daughter Walaa, 12, said.
Last year, Syrians faced the worst economic crisis since the conflict began in 2011, brought on by economic crises in neighbouring Turkey and Lebanon, the Covid-19 pandemic, sanctions, a severe drought, and the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine.
In 2022, 90 per cent of Syrians lived below the poverty line and at least 12 million Syrians out of an estimated remaining population of around 16 million were food insecure, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).
More than 600,000 children were chronically malnourished.
The BBC spoke with another child, 15-year-old Amer, who finds leftover pieces of chicken and gladly sucks on the bones as he hunts for more.
"If there were other jobs, I would have worked elsewhere. But there's nothing else for me to do," he says.
Amer is the only breadwinner in his family of 11 and earns between 3,000 and 5,000 Syrian pounds (roughly £0.80-1.60) a day from selling the plastic he finds.
He says it is barely enough to survive and he is desperate to earn more money so he could go to school and work.
“As we move into 2023, the Syrian people remain trapped in a profound humanitarian, political, military, security, economic and human rights crisis of great complexity and almost unimaginable scale,” said Geir Pedersen, UN Special Envoy for Syria.
Most people in northeast Syria, where Alia and Amer live, rely on humanitarian aid to survive, but dwindling funding and logistical constraints with the regime mean aid is not reaching everyone in need.
Thus, they turn to leftover chicken bones in desperation.
Maha, 30, who also works as a waste scavenger told Save the Children: “The war brought extreme hunger with it. Before we never had to worry about food being available despite being poor back then too.
“Sometimes we skip meals to save something to eat for the next day.
"I cannot remember the last time my children had meat or sweets.
"Sometimes they crave meat and ask me to get them some. I lie to them saying that I will the next day. I never do. They will have nothing to eat if I do. Our breakfast is always tea and bread only.”
