Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Children are born in camps who do not even know Syria
Innocents pay price of 10 long years of killing
CHILDREN who fled the war in Syria are struggling with “layers of trauma”, a human rights campaigner has warned.
Rouba Mhaissen was speaking as March marked the tenth anniversary of the violent conflict erupting in the country – an event that has forced millions of people to flee their homes.
Now, a decade on, there are young people who have been born refugees or were very young when they fled and know nothing of their homeland, the refugee worker says.
Dr Mhaissen, whose Sawa for Development and Aid refugee support organisation is a partner of Irish aid agency Trocaire, told the Daily Mirror that when you ask some young people where they are from “they say they are from Camp X or Camp Y, they do not know Syria, they have never known Aleppo or Damascus two of the oldest cities in the world, they do not know their home”.
She added: “It’s a very difficult situation for so many young people here who have so many layers of trauma in their lives.
“Many have fled Syria, having to step over the bodies of parents to escape, they have witnessed genocide. They have witnessed trauma and they have had to flee their homes, moving perhaps two or three times within Syria before having to leave Syria.
“Their experience is of very precarious living conditions. Many have fled to Lebanon and the Lebanese government will not allow permanent camps to be built so the people, they live in tents and in the winter they flood two or three times and they have to move again so again and again they are facing this instability.
“Add to that the cold, the hunger the bullying sometimes by a minority of the host population because they are refugees. Then you have children born in refugee camps who do not know Syria, who do not know their home. It is very depressing.”
Dr Mhaissen was speaking as Trocaire’s Lenten Appeal focuses on the ‘challenges faced by families in conflict and how they can be supported to survive and thrive’.
The organisation she founded Sawa strives to help families who have lived as refugess for the last decade and whose lives appear to be likely to remain unchanged for many years to come.
In fact, Dr Mhaissen adds, they, like so many other people across the globe, have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Refugees face a “very gloomy” situation, she adds, with the sort of daily labouring jobs they rely on
drying up in Lebanon due to the economy being hit by Covid.
The country is bearing much of the burden of the Syrian refugee crisis. More than five million people have had to flee their homes in Syria, with around two million now in Lebanon – a country of four and a half million people. Most others are in Turkey and Jordan, with many more displaced within Syria.
Dr Mhaissen added: “The situation refugees face is more difficult as Lebanon is facing economic collapse.”
Sawa was started by Dr Mhaissen after she visited around 40 families who had fled Syria into Lebanon in December 2011. It started with around 100 volunteers before they started to mobilise Lebanese civil society, schools, universities, businessmen and others.
As well as relief efforts covering basic needs like food and shelter, she says they set up schools at the camps to help young people get some sort of education as well teaching them about their Syrian roots.
Every pound donated by the public to the Trocaire Lenten appeal in NI before May 16, will be doubled by the government thanks to the UK Aid Match scheme.
They live in tents and in the winter they flood DR ROUBA MHAISSEN YESTERDAY