As the conflict in Syria enters its fifth year, a new report by UNICEF highlights what needs to be done in order to help the estimated 14 million children suffering in desperate conditions across the region.
“These children have seen things that no child, nobody, should ever have to see,” UNICEF Canada President and CEO David Morley told CTV’s Canada AM.
“The trauma that they’ve suffered in the first place and then, they’re not even able to go to school … without an education, what’s going to be the future for these children?”
The report states that the fate of the 5.6 million children residing within Syria is the “most desperate,” with 2 million of those living in areas of the country cut off from humanitarian aid due to conflict.
There are also approximately 2 million Syrian children living as refugees in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and other countries in the region, while 3.6 million non-refugee children living in vulnerable communities hosting refugees are experiencing a strain on services such as education and health, according to the report.
UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake called the five-year mark “an appalling milestone,” that signals “no resolution in sight” after four years of worsening conditions.
“The violence has spread across borders like an invasive infection,” Lake said in a comment on UNICEF’s website.
“Now see this horror through the eyes of the children who are living through it. Their homes bombed or abandoned. Loved ones and friends lost. Their education interrupted, or never begun. Their childhoods stolen from them.”
UNICEF is calling for longer-term investments and political intervention to meet the growing needs of youth in Syria and the region, to allow them to build a more stable future for themselves.
Satellite images have estimated that 83 per cent of Syria has been without electricity since March, 2011, according to the WithSyria movement of more than 130 impartial organizations and individuals.
“Without water, without electricity it’s very difficult,” said Morley, adding that UNICEF has installed water and electrical systems in refugee camps in Iraq.
“We have to build that infrastructure, so we have to move now from an emergency relief to really building communities and helping the refugees build a community because otherwise there’s no future.”
One of the biggest risks to youth in Syria who don’t have access to education is the threat of recruitment into armed groups such as Islamic State, due to the lack of options available to them.
Last year, the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria reported that pro-government armed groups were using children as young as 13 years old to stand guard at checkpoints in Aleppo, Dara’a, and Tartus.
Yet Morley said UNICEF doesn’t even know how bad the conditions are in some areas of the country, having to rely on stories from refugees who have escaped the conflict.
One father told Morley of how he came home one day and the street in front of his house “was like a river of bodies,” so the family was forced to flee.
Investments into the region need to include opportunities for remedial education, vocational training, recreation, learning opportunities, psychological care and the strengthening of educational and health systems, according to the report.
“We say there’s no humanitarian solution to a humanitarian crisis,” says Morley.
“We can respond, we can help, we can help look after the children now but it’s going to need a political solution and that’s where the political leaders have to start talking and working.”
