Syrian Refugee Crisis

On March 15^th, the conflict in Syria entered its tenth year.

It has devastated the lives of millions of children, many of whom have grown up knowing nothing but bombing, displacement and insecurity. Tens of thousands of children are estimated to have been killed and injured in the violence, and many more have orphaned and made homeless. At least 2 million children in Syria are out of school, depriving them of their right to an education and chance of a better future.

In just the last three months, almost a million people – including at least 540,000 children – were forced to flee their homes by fighting in Idlib, NW Syria. They are now living in desperate conditions in overcrowded camps and shared shelters. Many have been displaced 4 or 5 times already, and they join the more than 6 million Syrians who are internally displaced. Recent satellite analysis released this month (4^th March) from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, World Vision and Save the Children shows how homes and vital infrastructure have been badly damaged in frontline towns, while informal displacement camps have grown rapidly.

Syria’s children deserve better. We know that with the right support and a stable environment, many can recover from their experiences and thrive. World Vision and our partners are striving to provide that – offering medical care, psychosocial support, protection, clean water and sanitation, shelter and education across Syria to those affected by the conflict.

Key Statistics

• On March 15^th, the crisis in Syria will have been ongoing for 9 years.
• Across Syria at least 1/3 of schools and over half of hospitals have been damaged, destroyed or put out of use.
• 7 million people – over half the population – are in need of humanitarian assistance, including 5 million children.
• At least 5 million Syrians have fled the country and are living as refugees, and more than 6 million are internally displaced.

Our Syria Response Team has updated its comprehensive COVID-19 Response Plan, building on our existing strengths and programmes across the three countries. While our programming in many areas is still suspended due to the risk of spreading infection, wherever possible we are looking to maintain support to the most vulnerable and scale-up health, water sanitation & hygiene, protection and education interventions to deal with the crisis and mitigate its effects. 

Syria

• WV is currently supporting 15 health facilities, including 9 mobile medical units, 3 primary healthcare clinics, 2 hospitals and 1 dialysis centre.
• 6,000 masks and pairs of gloves along with sanitisers were provided to the field team to equip them with the PPE.
• 6 events took place in mid-May on measures aimed at COVID-19 prevention and more events are planned for coming weeks.
• WV is distributing consumable hygiene kits targeting 8,500 households across 8 IDP camps. The same targeted households have previously received 5 bars of soap, as well.
• WV provides water trucking support and hygiene kit distribution to 43,260 people in northern Syria, in addition to lifesaving emergency WASH assistance.
• COVID-19 awareness raising materials were shared with 605 project participants through Psychosocial support, vocational training, gender-based violence and protection awareness sessions, and referral activity.
• WV's protection team has already prepared psychosocial support, vocational, gender-based violence and protection awareness session materials that will be shared with 7,700 project beneficiaries through WhatsApp and Telegram in the course of the project.

Jordan

• 1,050 children inside Azraq Refugee Camp are receiving curriculum-based videos, voice notes and messages to sustain the full educational cycle when possible.
• Under the Early Childhood Development programme at Azraq Refugee Camp, Teaching Assistants (Incentive-based Volunteers) are continuing to work remotely using Applications and maintaining an income.
• 22 Teaching Assistants (IBVs) at WV’s Early Childhood Education Centre in Azraq Refugee Camp are communicating with 800 caregivers on how to support remote learning and introducing creative games for children’s mental and psychosocial health.
• The Child Protection in Emergencies project at Azraq Refugee Camp will reach 650 new beneficiaries (children and their parents) through psychosocial support and life skills activities. WV is anticipating to reach up to 7,000 beneficiaries with the community awareness campaigns.
• WV continues running the Solid Waste Management service and the Green Centre at Azraq Refugee Camp, providing daily waste collection and disposal services to all 30,000 residents.
• Jordanian WV staff are equipped with all needed PPE to ensure their safety.
• The Hygiene promotion team in Azraq Refugee Camp is supporting all WV teams in sending massages related to the COVID-19 response to all children enrolled in our education programmes in the camp, targeting 1,500 children and parents.
• Under the remedial education project for host community children, WV has trained teachers on a remote remedial learning programme who are now reaching more than 1,000 children.
• In host communities, 529 children received remote remedial classes and continued learning via Zoom and WhatsApp. Training sessions were conducted for 27 teachers to support their capacity building on remote implementation. In addition, psychosocial support videos are provided weekly to 566 caregivers to effectively cope with stress and support children during curfew.

Turkey

• WV currently has one protection project in Turkey, providing case management, individual protection assistance, as well as legal, awareness raising and psychosocial support to refugees at Info-Hubs across key areas.
• All regular programming under the project is suspended and both WV and partner staff are working from home, but the team are scaling up ways to provide remote and one-to-one assistance.
• Partners are providing remote psychosocial support, case management and referral support, supported by the World Vision protection team with practical guidance.
• Partners disseminate protection and community health awareness messages through SMS, videos and social media campaigns.
• WV and the partners are working on scenarios to resume the field operations partially as of 1st June based on the normalization plan introduced by the Government of Turkey.
• In addition to the protection project, a livelihood project has started in Urfa, which aims at improving access to income generation and helping economic-vulnerable individuals to establish formal micro-businesses while adopting all the prevention measures imposed by the Government.

• Syria_Response_COVID19_Sit_Rep_3__External_use.pdf (PDF)
  

At least four children living in informal displacement camps in North-West Syria are reported to have died, as temperatures drop below zero. Among the dead is an eight-month-old boy whose mother noticed that his chest was not moving and his face colour changed in the middle of the night. The doctor later confirmed that the boy died in his sleep due to cold. A year-and-a-half old girl whose father carried her for two hours in the camp but was announced dead at arrival at our partner’s hospital in Aleppo governorate.

Some 900,000 people have been forced to flee their homes since the start of December due to escalating conflict in Idlib and Aleppo, 350,000 of them children. Aid agencies are calling for an urgent ceasefire to allow aid to reach the vulnerable and prevent further needless deaths.

Families are staying on the move seeking shelter all day with no luck. They are sleeping under tarpaulin, in cars and in half-built buildings with no windows. The majority cannot afford heaters or fuel, and many do not have enough blankets or winter clothes.

Aid workers are working around the clock to provide emergency support, but with tens of thousands of people arriving every day, supplies are low and the humanitarian response is overwhelmed.

Ahlam*, a Protection Advisor for World Vision in Idlib, says: “It is about -7 degrees Celsius here, families and children are freezing without a roof over their heads. Everyone here is begging for tents or housing to seek shelter from the cold. There are 20 children living in a basement warehouse with no windows or ventilation. They have been displaced for three days and they are sick with no blankets or mattresses to sleep on.”

Khaled*, a displaced father of six, is staying with seven other families in the basement warehouse. There is mold all over the walls and no sanitation. The rent is $100 USD a month, but they don’t have the funds to cover it. He said: “My family and I fled with other families when the fighting intensified. We stayed out in the fields for two days after we left our homes. My children do not even have blankets or mattresses to sleep on and some of them are sick.” His wife added: “There are no toilets here, men leave the warehouse when women need to use the primitive temporary toilet, the situation is utterly miserable”.

Children are being killed in the hostilities – with the UN reporting that 30% of all casualties in the hostilities since the start of the escalation in Idlib and surrounding areas last April are children, and they are dying from the cold and dangerous living conditions in displacement camps. In the last week, we’ve received reports of children dying in tent fires, suffocating from makeshift heaters, and 3 children dying in a landslide as they scavenged for trash to eat or burn for fuel.

Mr Amoyo, Health Adviser for World Vision’s Syria Response, said: “Babies and young children are particularly vulnerable living in open fields in freezing and wet winter weather, without proper sanitation. Many have weakened immune systems due to under-malnutrition, and we’re seeing increasing rates of pneumonia since people are closely sticking together in the cold. We’re also witnessing an increase in influenza-like illnesses and diarrhoea among populations living in camps, which may be attributed to poor sanitation in the camps.”

World Vision and our Syrian partners are distributing around 400 emergency kits which include blankets and mattresses, kitchen items and hygiene products. We have already delivered 3,294 winter assistance packages, providing water storage, water trucking and latrine constructions. Nevertheless, the situation in Idlib is desperate and unsustainable. At least 6,500 children are being forced to flee their homes every day – others are dying under bombardment or in freezing tents.

What is World Vision doing to help Syrians affected by conflict?

World Vision provides aid to children and families in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, as well as Iraq, which has also suffered from conflict and humanitarian crises. Since the Syrian refugee crisis began, we have helped more than 2.5 million people in the region.

• Syria: Healthcare; emergency food; water, sanitation, and hygiene; shelter repair kits; Child-Friendly Spaces and child protection training
• Jordan and Lebanon: Food assistance, clean water and sanitation, education and recreation, Child-Friendly Spaces and child protection training for adults, livelihoods support, and psychosocial support to women and children
• Iraq: Food aid, health services, water and sanitation, livelihoods training; for children — education, recreation, and programs in life skills, peacebuilding, and resilience

World Vision has been working in the Middle East for nearly 40 years and is dedicated to improving the lives of children, families, and the communities where they live through long-term sustainable development as well as responding to disasters — both natural and man-made.

World Vision quickly extended a helping hand to Syrian families who fled to Lebanon in 2011. Since then, our work has expanded to other countries hosting Syrian refugees and into Syria. Children and their long-term needs are always first in our minds as we plan our programming.