Children at War Times

The regionally and Western-backed war against Syria has forced thousands of Syrian families to leave their home, seeking refuge in neighboring countries like Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey. However, the refugee camps set to host the displaced families in these countries, have offered nothing to the Syrians, but humiliation, exploitation and insecurity.

Children, in particular, have been major victims of the unimaginably miserable living conditions, harsh circumstances and human rights violations in these camps. As if the biting cold, the pain and the fear these children have been exposed to weren’t enough to make them really miss the stability and the safe haven their home had always offered to them.

Child Brigades

Recruiting Syrian children inside and outside the country by armed terrorist groups and exploiting them in the ongoing armed conflict in Syria emerges as one of the gravest violations of internationally-recognized child rights.

Child rights international experts affirm that horrible violations against children in the refugee camps in Syria’s neighboring countries continue under the deadly reticence of the international community.

The UN has admitted, according to the experts, that the international resolutions and conventions, prohibiting the recruitment of children in armed conflicts, are being violated by the armed groups fighting the Syrian government for more than two years.  An example of armed groups recruiting displaced Syrian children in a neighboring country is embodied in a recently formed child battalion calling itself “Toyour al-Janna” (Birds of Paradise) to join the so-called “jihad” along with the armed terrorist groups in Syria.

But though posing a challenge to related International Security Council Resolutions, the armed terrorist groups’ crimes against Syrian displaced children continueunabated aiming to add more pressure on the Syrian government. 

Not only militarily exploited, the Syrian children in the refugee camps are being economically and sexually abused and deprived of necessary health and education services, particularly in Turkey, where the government of the Justice and Development Party commits blatant violations against Syrian children and women. Even the humanitarian assistance, set to be sent to them, is being stolen by the armed groups and gangs.

The report regrettably didn’t mention the blatant violations against displaced children and women by the authorities of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party government in the Turkish refugee camps.

Deprived of education

Children in the refugee camps of Jordan and Lebanon are deprived of education and are being forced to join religious schools so as to get extremist brain-washing education based on destructive and takfiri dark ideas.

Concerns also grow over the situation of displaced children as the Syrian government faces difficulties in conveying humanitarian aid to displaced families because the armed groups hijack the aid convoys and steal their contents. They also attack schools and hospitals to use them as bases for their terrorist acts.

Rape, “sex jihad”

Shamelessly, the armed groups also admit their inhuman acts against women and children in the refugee camps, stressing that they have molested and raped girls as well as boys, encouraged the so-called “sex jihad” and run illegal relations under and an alleged “religious” cover.

Media reports from Jordan’s al-Zaatari refugee camp have come up with examples of Syrian girls, sometimes under 14 and 15, having been raped and exploited in sex trade. 

Some disparate families in these camps accept a little sum of money from men, coming mainly from Gulf States, for their 14 or 15 year-old daughters. The men, sometimes too old, take their child wives to flats and stay with them for a few months then go home alone leaving behind psychologically destroyed victims who later discover that they weren’t wives, but were actually taken for sex only.

Immediate action should be done to squelch these atrocities as soon as possible. International organizations must send their representatives to the refugee camps to detect the security of the children and guarantee that they are rendered their necessary services.

The Syrian government has repeatedly urged the displaced Syrians in the refugee camps to return home and promised to provide them with all their needs. It has spared no effort to cooperate with the UN organizations to do what helps halting the violations in the camps and guarantee the refugee’s safe return to their home.

H. Mustafa