Martin, who last reported from Lebanon in 1973 just before civil war broke out, saw how children have paid the heaviest price in this six-year war. Today, one in four people in the country is a refugee, the highest proportion per capita in the world.

Inside Syria, suffering hit rock bottom last year in a drastic escalation of violence. With grave violations against children at their highest level on record, 2016 was the worst year for children in Syria. At least 652 children were killed – a 20 per cent increase from 2015.

“Millions of Syrian children have known nothing but war, death and destruction their entire lives,” said Martin. “As the war drags on, negative coping mechanisms are on the rise and families are taking extreme measures just to survive, often pushing children into early marriage and child labour.”

Martin made the journey to Lebanon with Unicef, the world’s leading children’s organisation and one of the agencies operating both in Syria and its neighbouring countries.

During his visit to the Bekaa Valley, he witnessed how Unicef is supporting families that have fled Syria, providing them with safe drinking water, child protection services, education and healthcare. Many of the people he met fled Aleppo and Raqqa because of indiscriminant shelling and violence which tore families apart.

Syrian families face many challenges in Lebanon; some are not able to send their children to school, refugees have not officially allowed to work (making them dependent on international aid), and children are being pushed into the workforce far too young, often in low paying and hazardous jobs or by begging.

“One boy I met described how he fled from Raqqa six months ago with his mother and five brothers and sisters. His father had been taken away, murdered,” recalled Martin. “Right now, the world is facing an unprecedented refugee crisis and we must do more to protect the extraordinary number of children who have been torn from their homes by violent conflict,” he added.

Ensuring all Syrian children have access to the education and protection they so rightly deserve is the first step on the journey to recovery and rebuilding childhood. After six years of war, nearly 6 million children now depend on humanitarian assistance, a twelve-fold increase from 2012. Millions of children have been displaced, some up to seven times. Over 2.3 million children are now living as refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq.

On behalf of the children of Syria, Unicef is appealing to all parties to the conflict, those who have influence over them, the international community and anyone who cares about children for an immediate political solution to end the conflict in Syria and sustainable support for vulnerable children, regardless of their status.

Fonte: Look to the Stars

The UNICEF study on the situation of the 350,000 children and teenagers who have arrived in Germany as asylum-seekers since 2015 said they often spend months or years in shelters where they sometimes witness or are exposed to violence and abuse.

Only a third of the children living in shelters have access to schools and kindergartens, it said. While they do have adequate access to emergency health care, they don’t get the same medical treatment as German children when it comes to chronic and psychological illnesses, the study added.

“Children who have lost their homeland and experienced horrible things have to quickly find their way back to normality,” said Christian Schneider, the director of UNICEF Germany. “First and foremost, kids are not asylum seekers, migrants or refugees, but simply kids.”

While calling for further improvement in helping refugee children, the study applauded huge efforts German authorities and communities made to provide accommodation and emergency supplies in 2015 and early 2016, when more than one million migrants arrived in the country, many from war-torn countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Still, many children now spend more than six months in cramped shelters. They also often feel stigmatized and excluded because of their asylum-seeker status, the study said.

“The children should stay for as little time as possible in asylum shelters and get as quickly as possible into kindergartens, schools and job training … so they don’t lose more precious time of their childhood,” Schneider said.

Some 447 employees and volunteers working at asylum shelters were questioned anonymously for the online study from May to September 2016. Eighteen interviews with refugee families as well as interviews with 13 children and youth welfare experts were used to complement the study.

Fonte: ABC NEWS

A report that focused on refugee children on Greek islands says aid workers there are seeing “an alarming deterioration in children’s mental health.” (LOUISA GOULIAMAKI / AFP/GETTY FILE PHOTO)

They have witnessed deaths, were hurt and sometimes recruited to fight in wars. If they managed to flee, the scars stay with them.

Stranded in unbearable living conditions in refugee camps, with the perpetual uncertainty of finding permanent homes, some of them harm themselves, try to take their own lives or use drugs to escape their misery.

That’s the picture three recent reports by international aid groups have painted of the grim reality faced by refugee children fleeing war and unrest around the world.

“Child refugees are more likely to have higher levels of behavioural or emotional problems, including aggression and other affective disorders,” said a report released by Save the Children last week, titled “A Tide of Self-harm and Depression,” which focused on those stranded on the Greek islands.

“They become more likely to turn to negative coping strategies. These could include harming their own bodies, drug and alcohol abuse. For some this may lead to attempting suicide. It is important to recognize that self-harm is a way of expressing difficult feelings when children and adolescents become numb and desensitized over time due to unbearable situations.”

Six-year-old Aya al-Souqi, a Syrian refugee, held the camera phone up to her gaze and listened to hear her mother.

“I hear you!” she exclaimed.

It was only the second time she’d spoken to her mother in Beeskow, Germany since getting fitted with a hearing aid by a Chicago-based charity to treat an invisible wound of the Syrian war.

Aya, timid and diminutive, was a little over a year old in 2012 when a rocket struck her family’s house in the Eastern Ghouta countryside, outside the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The strike killed Aya’s father and, the family believes, damaged her right ear. Shortly afterward, the family moved to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, where hundreds of thousands of other Syrians now live as refugees, to wait out a war whose conclusion is still a speck on the horizon.

“She used to respond to her name and play with other children,” said her grandmother, Hayan Hashmeh. “When we came to Lebanon, we noticed that her hearing was very limited.”

The proudly named “Deaf Planet Soul” charity is bringing smiles to hard-of-hearing Syrian children and their parents in Lebanon on a two-week long mission to treat hearing loss. Most, though not all, have been affected by the Syrian war.

But for many of the young patients, it’s the first time they have sat down with therapists and audiologists for treatment.

“When people think of refugees, they think of cut-off limbs and brain injuries, and all these visible things,” said Zaineb Abdulla, a therapist and the vice president of Deaf Planet Soul. “They don’t think about the invisible results of war. They don’t think that this kid who can’t hear really needs help.”

The team of five audiologists, therapists, and a student met with children in clinics around Lebanon in the charity’s first humanitarian relief mission.

In a makeshift clinic above a gas station in al-Marj, Gregory Perez, a mental health professional and the president of the group, used sign language to communicate with deaf, seven-year-old Jana Faour, a Syrian-Palestinian girl raised in Lebanon.

Her parents don’t have the funds to enroll her in a school for deaf children, so her mother is teaching her Arabic Sign Language from what lessons she can find online through Google.

Jana, who usually depends on her doting younger sister to be her voice, was thrilled to be able to sign with someone new. Though Perez signs in American Sign Language, the two found they knew many words in common, and they began to communicate silently and excitedly.

Jana looked up at her parents and beamed.

“It’s the first time someone sees to what I want, which was to have Jana meet with a therapist, to work with her personality instead of just her hearing,” said her mother, Samar.

Perez said he founded the charity last year to “empower the deaf and help the deaf community be more independent.”

He was working “16 hours a day” in two mental health jobs in Chicago when one closed down.

“It was a group home for emotionally disturbed deaf kids, and when the company shut down, the kids were dispersed across the state,” said Abdulla on Perez’s behalf.

Perez and Abdulla are both deaf. Perez can speak only haltingly, but Abdulla, who lost her hearing in adolescence, speaks fluently.

They are role models for their young patients, many of whom have never met a deaf professional before.

Aya’s mother, Kinaz Khatib, set off for Germany in 2015, crossing the Mediterranean to southern Europe by boat, hoping to secure the right to bring her children over.

Aya, sitting in a pumpkin-colored sweater with her siblings and cousins in an unfurnished apartment, said the family was waiting for the “papers” to be allowed to reunite.

Her hearing loss has made the separation especially difficult. She had been having a hard time hearing her mother on the phone, her grandmother Hayan said. She was also doing poorly in school.

But with her hearing aid, and her hair tied back in purple band, Aya cracked a smile.

“How are you?” Aya asked her mom. “I miss you.”

Her mother told her the hearing aid looked very nice on her.

They talked a little longer, then Kinaz said goodbye. It was time for Aya to pack her bag and go to school.

The Deaf Planet Soul team held workshops for children over 10 days in different locations in Lebanon. They returned to Chicago on March 16 and say they want to raise funds for another mission.

“This is a forever project,” said Perez.

 - Associated Press

Fonte: Khaleej Times

Some 400,000 Afghans have been forced from their homes since the beginning of the year. © UNHCR/Edris Lutfi

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is alarmed by the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan today. As widespread fighting intensifies, the United Nations in Afghanistan continues to call for a permanent ceasefire and a negotiated settlement in the interests of the Afghan people.

The human toll of spiraling hostilities is immense. The United Nations Assistance Mission has warned that without a significant de-escalation in violence, Afghanistan is on course to witness the highest ever number of documented civilian casualties in a single year since the UN’s records began.

We are particularly worried about the impact of the conflict on women and girls. Some 80 per cent of nearly a quarter of a million Afghans forced to flee since the end of May are women and children.

Nearly 400,000 were forced from their homes since the beginning of the year, joining 2.9 million Afghans already internally displaced across the country at the end of 2020.

Ongoing fighting has been reported in 33 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

The overwhelming majority of Afghans forced to flee remain within the country, as close to their homes as fighting will allow. Since the beginning of this year, nearly 120,000 Afghans have fled from rural areas and provincial towns to Kabul province.

UNHCR is urging the international community to urgently step up its support to respond to this latest Afghanistan displacement crisis.

Our teams, as part of the broader UN effort, has assessed the needs of almost 400,000 internally displaced civilians this year. Responding initially to the most critical priorities, we are providing food, shelter, hygiene and sanitary kits and other lifesaving assistance, together with partners.

UNHCR is calling on countries neighbouring Afghanistan to keep their borders open in light of the intensifying crisis in Afghanistan.

An inability to seek safety may risk innumerable civilian lives. UNHCR stands ready to help national authorities scale up humanitarian responses as needed.

In the context of generalized insecurity in many parts of Afghanistan, it is increasingly clear that Afghans outside of the country may have international protection needs. UNHCR calls for all states to ensure they are able to seek safety, regardless of their current legal status.

Given the dramatic escalation in conflict, UNHCR welcomes the actions now taken by several states to temporarily halt deportations of failed asylum-seekers and ensure access to asylum procedures.

For more information on this topic, please contact:

• In Bangkok, Catherine Stubberfield, stubberf@unhcr.org, +66 65 929 8062
• In Geneva, Shabia Mantoo, mantoo@unhcr.org, + 41 79337 7650

Fonte: UNHCR

An Eritrean teenager who fled from a refugee camp hugged his brother at Heathrow Airport after five years apart.

by Hillary Chabot August 13, 2021

Refugees who experience violence in the North American cities where they’ve sought asylum suffer from devastating, long-lasting mental health issues—and those issues can impact them just as deeply as the violence they faced in their home country, says Carmel Salhi, assistant professor of health sciences.

In a new study, Salhi and his colleagues examined Somali refugees’ exposure to violence in their new communities, finding that their exposure to violent experiences was both persistent and prevalent in the very places they sought safety. This so-called “post-resettlement violence” had a larger association with mental health issues than their original exposure, Salhi says.

Salhi studied feedback from 383 Somali refugees now living in cities such as Boston and Minneapolis. The study is part of a multi-year, combined effort by Northeastern’s Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research and the Refugee Trauma and Children’s Center at the Boston Children’s Hospital designed to research disparities in healthcare for refugee populations.

Left, Alisa Lincoln, Professor of Health Sciences and Sociology. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University. Right, Carmel Salhi, an assistant professor of health sciences. Courtesy Photo.

How did you decide on this line of research?

One thing that struck me while I was working with refugees is that it’s a population that’s highly exposed to violence, and yet the impact of violence after resettlement is something that is pretty under-studied.

Were you surprised at the amount of violence these refugees experienced in the places they sought asylum?

Based on my work with other refugees, I knew they would likely experience some violence, but I didn’t realize it would be more than half of the people we spoke to for this study. The other major shock was how much more it mattered than war exposure. No violence is good, but I didn’t expect that what the refugees experienced in North America would be as bad as what they were fleeing from.

What kind of violence do these refugees encounter?

Well, before they resettled the most common sort of violence is that they are forced out of their home. Like, physically forced. Some have been beaten or severely injured or they may have witnessed a loved one go through that. The refugees living in the U.S. reported incidents where they were beaten or robbed at gunpoint. So you can imagine the impact of that on a population that experienced this kind of thing before coming to the West.

Where are they experiencing these incidents?

They occur in or around people’s homes or in their neighborhoods. And what we know from the qualitative work is that they experience a lot of discrimination in complex ways, because they are refugees, they’re Black, and they are Muslim. So they were experiencing discrimination across a really wide spectrum of categories.

How can the communities where refugees resettle address these issues?

I think there needs to be more investment in communities that take on refugee populations, both in the systems that support refugees specifically but also in the communities themselves, because ultimately the goal is that the refugees become invested parts of the community. Also, this is really something that mental health providers need to be more attuned to, because I think in general the focus is on what sort of trauma these refugees experience before they came to the U.S. We need to pay attention to the challenges they experience after they have resettled.

For media inquiries, please contact Marirose Sartoretto at m.sartoretto@northeastern.edu or 617-373-5718.

Source: News @Northeastern