U.N. Warns of Lasting Harm to Syrian Refugee Children
U.N. Warns of Lasting Harm to Syrian Refugee Children
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A Syrian boy waited for customers in Beirut. The United Nations has registered more than 1.1 million children among the total of 2.2 million refugees.
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE
Published: November 29, 2013
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GENEVA — Syria’s conflict is creating a generation of damaged children, the United Nations warned Friday in a report on the plight of more than a million children who are refugees in neighboring countries, many of them deprived of access to education and of any semblance of a normal family life or childhood.
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“The world must act to save a generation of traumatized, isolated and suffering children from catastrophe,” the United Nations refugee agency warned in the report. “If we do not move quickly, this generation of innocents will become lasting casualties of war.”
The agency has registered more than 1.1 million children among the total of 2.2 million refugees, presenting a crisis on a scale unseen since Rwanda two decades ago, Volker Türk, the agency’s director of international protection, told reporters in Geneva. Of these refugee children, more than 385,000 were in Lebanon and 290,000 were in Jordan, he said.
The conflict had caused children of all ages “to suffer immensely, both physically and psychologically,” the report said. “Children have been wounded or killed by sniper fire, rockets, missiles and falling debris. They have experienced firsthand conflict, destruction and violence.”
The report came less than a week after a study of Syrian casualty data released by a British research institute estimated that more than 11,470 Syrian children under the age of 17 had died in the conflict.
The study by the institute, the Oxford Research Group, based on the analysis of records compiled by Syrian nongovernmental organizations, found that around 70 percent of the children were killed by “explosive weapons,” particularly aircraft bombs, rockets and artillery shells.
It also found that 389 children were reportedly shot by snipers and that more than 700 children were summarily executed after they were captured or in “field executions,” a term encompassing massacres conducted by armed groups.
“Whenever we interact with children, they tell us how much they miss home, how they want to go back, how horrific the situation is, and they talk mostly about death,” Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for Unicef, the United Nations children’s agency, said in an interview. “They talk about dead people, dead bodies, death in general and fear of death. It’s completely shocking what these children have to go through.”
The United Nations refugee agency said that fewer than half of Syria’s refugee children were able to go to school and that many children, some as young as 7, were working long hours for low pay, sometimes in dangerous conditions, to try to ease the hardship faced by their families.
Around 100,000 Syrians every month are still fleeing across borders to escape the conflict, creating a huge strain on health, education and water resources.
Tens of thousands of children are growing up without their fathers, who may have been killed or detained or who are missing, a situation that increases pressure on male children to work, the report said, based on interviews with 81 children in Lebanon and Jordan and group discussions with 121 more. Many families, fearful for the safety of their children, rarely let them out of their homes.
“If the situation does not improve dramatically, Syria risks ending up with a generation disengaged from education and learning,” the report said.