Children of Syria A UNICEF update

Helping refugees with special needs

By Chris Niles

SULIMANIYAH, Iraq – There are about 2,000 Syrians living in Arbat refugee camp just outside of Sulimaniyah and a few of them, like Suliman Gorgis’s family, live with disabilities.

Suliman’s oldest son, Yousef, was paralyzed at birth and his other son, Mohammed, has Down’s Syndrome. A third son, Yasser, is unable to walk properly because of a hip injury.

UNICEF Water and Sanitation Officer Atheer Al Yasin has been working with the family since they crossed the border from Syria a couple of months ago to ensure that they are as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. Getting a bed for Yousef was the first step.

“He was very uncomfortable lying on the ground,” Mr Al Yasin said. “He would get very stiff and insects attacked him constantly.”

Yousef now rests in a bed in the family tent, and his family are more easily able to take care of him.

Arbat is a transit camp. A permanent camp is being constructed a few miles down the road and it will have facilities for people with special

needs, including ramps and wide access points for latrines and other sanitary facilities.

That camp is expected to be finished in the next couple of months. In the meantime, UNICEF’s Al Yasin has ordered 15 wheelchairs and 15 beds to cater to those in the transit camp. And he has begun advocating for more employment opportunities for Syrian refugees of all abilities.

Like many parents, Suliman worries that Mohammed doesn’t have enough to do.

“He likes playing football and he likes to work on the computer,” Suliman said. “He doesn’t have a computer.”

Suliman Gorgis (left) with his son Mohammed in Arbat refugee camp in Sulimaniyah, northern Iraq.

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“He would get very stiff and insects

attacked him constantly.”

5 December 2013

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By Najwa Mekki

GAZIANTEP, Turkey – Inside a rugged tent lit by ceiling lamps, children sit three to a desk. It’s music time, and they are singing and clapping their hands, many with their UNICEF cyan blue schoolbags still strapped on their backs.

This is the tent-school of Islahiye camp, in the province of Gaziantep, south-eastern Turkey. But this is no regular school day. In just one hour, these children – all of them Syrian refugees – will be leaving this former tobacco factory which has been their ‘school’ since the camp opened in March 2012.

Because just up the road, there is a new purpose built prefabricated school that UNICEF provided and furnished, with funding from the American Government.

“The only concrete structure in the camp was an old tobacco factory which we turned into a school by equipping it with tents that served as classrooms,” says Abu Ahmad, the school principal. “It did protect the children from the elements, but it was dark, damp and had no natural light. The smell of tobacco was also overwhelming.”

None of this anymore – at least for most of the students. The new

UNICEF school will accommodate 2,200 school children. Others might have to continue going to the tented school until more space is provided.

For now, and on this opening day, hundreds of schoolchildren are cheerfully lined up in the crisp morning air, waiting to discover their classrooms.

“There are not enough words to describe the suffering of Syrian children,” said Ayman Abu-Laban, UNICEF Representative in Turkey, to a crowd including local officials, representatives from foreign embassies, teachers, parents and children. “Education is what gives them hope for the future.”

Islahiye camp opened in March 2012 and is now home to nearly 10,000 Syrians. It is one of four refugee camps in Gaziantep hosting nearly 34,000 refugees. Another 100,000 refuges live in host communities.

While children living in camps can attend camp schools, those living in host communities are facing serious challenges in continuing

their education – and far too many have had to drop out. Long walks to school, sometimes disturbances on the way, and the fact that Syrian children can only go in the later afternoon shift have kept many at home.

In Nizip town, in a four-bedroom apartment shared by 25 members of the same family, a grandfather told us that not all the children can go to school every day.

“The older and younger ones go to different schools which are scattered across town – sometimes an hour’s walk away. Because of the late shift, one of us adults has to accompany them. But if the adults are working, the children get stuck at home. We feel that our children have been forgotten.”

UNICEF has so far provided 3 schools in camps, 1 school in host communities and is finalizing plans to provide an additional 12 schools.

A return to learning is essential if the children of Syria are to be saved from turning into a lost generation.

The new school offers a better, and healthier, learning environment.

New school offers safer learning environment for children of Syria in Turkey’s Islahiye camp

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“There are not enough words

to describe the suffering

of Syrian children.”

5 December 2013

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Children of Syria

By David Youngmeyer

DAMASCUS/AMMAN – Despite extraordinary challenges associated with the on-going conflict, UNICEF-supported school clubs in Syria have reached close to 290,000 children with remedial education and recreation activities.

The conflict is taking a serious toll on school infrastructure, limiting education opportunities for children across the country. Over 4,000 schools — or one in five — are either damaged or destroyed, or being used to shelter displaced families.

Many children have lost one or even two years of schooling, while others have dropped out with little chance of a return to school or benefitting from alternative learning opportunities. Since the last school year, as many as one million children in Syria have dropped out of school.

To address urgent education needs, UNICEF, along with the Ministry of Education and other partners, are running hundreds of school clubs around the country. The school clubs provide an opportunity for children aged 5-18 to participate in remedial classes and benefit from psychosocial support through recreational activities such as sports and music, while under the care of qualified teachers and counsellors.

Some school clubs operate in a school compound, while others provide their activities in centres run by an NGO, or in shelters for displaced families.

The generosity of the State of Kuwait has allowed the provision of essential educational support for children in Syria – including in hard-to-reach, conflict-affected areas such as in rural Homs.

“The school clubs aim to improve children’s learning performance and prevent children from dropping out,

or help them to re-enter school,” says Tomoya Sonoda, UNICEF Syria Education Specialist.

UNICEF, along with the Ministry of Education and the sector partners, has established more than 830 school clubs to enable 287,000 children to access remedial catch-up classes and recreational activities in 11 of Syria’s 14 governorates. The coverage has gone well beyond the target of 260,000 children set in the 2013 Syrian Humanitarian Assistance Response Plan.

“I’m very happy to be here and have so many friends here,” says Amal* (10) who was displaced from Homs and has been attending a UNICEF-supported school club in Tartous governorate for more than six months. Amal has lived with her family in the host community, for more than two years, sharing a house with another family.

“I like learning Arabic the best,” says Amal, who also takes part in drawing, singing and sports sessions at the club.

Another child attending the same school club since last year, Sami* (9) was displaced from Aleppo by conflict.

“I enjoy it here,” he says of the school club. “Math and Arabic are my favourites because they will help my future.” Sami lives with his family and eight other families in a shelter set up in a factory building.

Apart from the success of school clubs, UNICEF made successful advocacy efforts to the Ministry of Education to keep schools open during the recent summer holidays. Following the advocacy efforts, 122 schools in 9 govenorates remained open between July-August. This meant that children could access remedial classes based on the national curriculum covering four

core subjects — Arabic, Math, Science, and English.

This initiative helped children, especially those who have missed out on education, go back to school and keep on learning in the current school year, which started on 15 September.

The advocacy work also resulted in the Ministry of Education allowing all children, especially those who missed out on education, to take the extra round of exams before the new academic year.

School clubs help conflict-affected children in Syria access remedial education, recreation activities

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Children take part in an activity at UNICEF-supported school club in Tartous governorate

Refugees by numbers*

Lebanon 833,000

Jordan 563,000

Turkey 537,000

Iraq 206,000

Egypt 129,000

North Africa 17,000

Total 2,285,000(UNICEF estimates that 50% of these

refugees are children.)- Figures have been rounded

*UNHCR registered refugees and individuals awaiting

registration as of 5 December 2013

5 December 2013

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Children of Syria

By Jess Wright

ZA’ATARI, Jordan — “You’ve never seen UNICEF’s work before?” my colleague asked me the day before I was due to go to Za’atari refugee camp. After six years of working for UNICEF – in the UK – I was finally going to see our programme work in action. So there I was, in my new UNICEF jacket, as ready as I’d ever be.

We were greeted when we arrived by UNICEF’s Abed Elmajeed Noaimi. Having worked in Za’atari since it first opened, Abed Elmajeed is known by people across the camp, and adored by the children. We agreed with him to do a whistlestop tour of the camp.

Creative space

After a brief visit to one of the three schools at the camp, where smiling schoolgirls poured out of the buildings after their morning shift to let the boys go to their classes, we drove to

an adolescent-friendly space run by partner IMC (International Medical Corps) and funded by UNICEF. Sitting outside in the shade of a tarpaulin when we arrived was a group of girls learning to draw henna designs, and practising on each other.

We peered into one of the rooms to see artwork plastered on the walls; young people go there to draw, paint, model and sew. And they’re pretty talented – the oil paintings were

particularly impressive. Across from the art room, a projector screen was set up inside a tent, and we stood to one side as a group of younger children sat and watched a short animation about penguins. When the screening finished, an adult facilitator asked them what they thought of the film, and what the moral of the story was. The point of this exercise is to get the children talking about their own experiences, and if the film raises any issues that are on their minds, they talk about them as a group so they can offer each other support. If a serious issue is raised, the child is referred for a one-to-one session with an adult. This psychosocial support helps children to open up about any traumas they’ve been through rather than bottling up their experiences, which can have deeper consequences for their health and wellbeing in the longer term.

Working children

After a quick break we headed towards the famous ‘Champs Elysees’, the main road running through the camp where refugees have set up shops and other

businesses. On our way we drove past a dusty clearing to see children using large pick-axes to chop into the ground. They were separating the sand from the small stones: the sand is used to make cement blocks in preparation for the harsh winter and the small stones are laid outside the tent to prevent the ground getting muddy when heavy rains come. The children receive 1JD (equivalent to about $1.5) for each wheelbarrow of earth they produce, and it’s then sold in shops in the camp.

Finally we reached the Champs Elysees, and as we walked down the bustling road towards the car waiting to take us back to the office, Abed Elmajeed’s popularity became apparent; a group of young boys crowded around him, wanting to hold his hand and walk with us. One boy wouldn’t let go of his hand, and after a while Abed Elmajeed gently tried to persuade him to go home, saying he was worried the boy might get lost.

“No, I’m worried that you’ll get lost, Abed Elmajeed”, said the boy. And that to me sums up the spirit of the refugee children living in Za’atari.

First day at Za’atari

A small boy gets dust in his eye while playing in the sand and gravel where other children are working, Za’atari refugee camp.

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Psychosocial support helps

children to open up about any traumas

they’ve been through.

5 December 2013

For more information:Juliette ToumaUNICEF Middle East and North Africa

jtouma@unicef.org menaro@unicef.org

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