Abandoned babies the innocent victims of 12 years of war
One cold winter night in north-west Syria, Ibrahim Othman left his home to pray and returned cradling a baby girl, who had been abandoned on the doorstep of the mosque hours after she was born.
“I took her home and told my wife, ‘I brought you a gift’,” said Mr Othman, 59, who lives in Hazano, in rebel-held Idlib province.
He named the baby Hibatullah, meaning “Gift of God”, and decided to raise her as his own.
Babies have been left outside mosques, hospitals and under trees in Syria as more than 12 years of civil war fuel poverty and desperation.
Before the conflict broke out in 2011, “only a few cases of child abandonment” were documented in the country, said Syrians for Truth and Justice, a group in Washington that records human rights abuses.
Between early 2021 and late 2022, more than 100 abandoned children were found across the country, the group said in a report published in March. They included 62 girls.
The group estimates the real figure for abandoned children is much higher.
The number has “increased dramatically” since the start of the conflict, along with “the social and economic repercussions of the war” in government-controlled and rebel-held areas, it said.
It pointed to factors including poverty, instability, insecurity and child marriage, along with sexual abuse and pregnancy out of wedlock. While adoption is forbidden in Syria, Mr Othman has asked the local authorities for permission to raise Hibatullah as his own.
“I told my children that if I die, she should have part of my inheritance”, even though she can never officially be part of the family, he said, breaking into tears.
The three-year-old, her hair pulled back loosely into pigtails and walking around in shiny pink sandals, now calls him grandpa.
“She is just an innocent child,” Mr Othman said.
Syria’s war has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and ravaged the country’s infrastructure.
Health department official Zaher Hajjo said that 53 abandoned newborns had been registered in government-controlled areas in the first 10 months of last year, 28 of them boys and 25 girls.
Syrian President Bashar Al Assad this year issued a decree creating dedicated centres for the children, who would be automatically registered as Syrian and Muslim, with where they were found listed as their place of birth.
In rebel-held Idlib province, social workers at the main centre for abandoned children tended to tiny babies wrapped tightly in blankets in basic cradles, some spruced up with purple paint or ribbons.
In a bare-walled room with a brown-and-beige carpet, one woman rocked a baby to sleep while feeding another with a bottle of milk. Faisal Al Hammoud, head of programmes at the centre, said one baby girl it took in was found under an olive tree after being attacked by a cat.
“Blood was dripping down her face,” he said. The orphanage has since entrusted her to a family. Workers follow up to make sure babies are well treated and “that there is no child trafficking” taking place, Mr Al Hammoud added.
The centre has taken in 26 babies – 14 girls and 12 boys – since it opened in 2019, and nine this year alone, said Abdullah Abdullah, a civil affairs official with the rebel authorities in Idlib.
More than four million people live in areas controlled by fighters including Turkish-backed groups in Syria’s north and north-west. About 90 per cent of them depend on aid to survive. “The war is to blame and families too” for child abandonments, Mr Abdullah said.
“These children are victims.”