the orphaned children, and the pain of bereavement

the orphaned children, and the pain of bereavement

the orphaned children in Syria have carried a burden that grown-ups cannot bear, their lives became senseless after losing the breadwinner, taking responsibility for supporting their families.

The ongoing war in Syria has caused the loss of thousands of orphans to their parents. According to statistics from the Syrian Human Rights Network, there were 227,413 civilians killed between March 2011 and 2021.

Orphaned children in Syria and the suffering of displacement…

Instead of being in the arms of their parents under the roof of their home, the Syrian children found themselves displaced in the streets and between tents. There are no accurate statistics of the number of orphans in Syria, wherein 2018, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated nearly 1 million orphans and stated that 90% of them were uninsured.

The organization adds that 10% of Syrian children have lost one or both of their parents due to the war, and today, with this war entering its tenth year, these numbers have risen, and the suffering of these children has increased with the successive waves of displacement and the financial and health situations in the region.

About 680,000 children live in camps in northwestern Syria, a large percentage of them are orphans who find it difficult to acclimate to life and suffer from major psychological, health, and financial crises, as most of them cut school. And they confront problems in ensuring the necessities.

Orphaned children and psychological crises

The ongoing war in Syria has negatively affected the mental health of children. Save the Children estimates that the next generation in Syria will grow up suffering from psychological trauma that is not easy to treat, and from nervous trauma that has caused them stress, manifested in aggressive behavior.

Orphanhood is known to have negative effects on the child in the early stages of his life. The experience of losing one or both parents is one of the harshest experiences that makes them feel weak, alone, and insecure.

The younger the child, the greater the impact of the event on him, especially in the loss of the mother who accompanies the child in his childhood and works to take care of him.

The orphan child has additional health, psychological, educational, and social needs, and the responsibility to satisfy those needs and care for the orphan child lies first with the foster family, as it needs material capabilities and awareness of the needs of the orphan child and the psychological crises he is going through and how to deal with them.

the responsibility rests secondly with the surrounding community and the state. The society in which the orphan child lives helps alleviate his crises.

 Orphanhood pushes Syrian children to work

The scene of Syrian child labor in northwest Syria has become clear, as most factories and industrial workshops employ many children, after the ten-year war, economic difficulties and the absence of breadwinners pushed them to work.

To secure a living, many children are forced to engage in strenuous occupations that pose a serious threat to their lives, after the child has become the sole breadwinner for his family due to the loss of one or both parents, and one of the causes of child labor is the absence of thousands of children from schools.

UNICEF said in a report between 2019 and 2020 that about 2.5 million Syrians inside Syria and 750,000 children in asylum countries are out of school and that the Corona pandemic has deprived thousands of children of their school seats, with the economic crises, parents are pushing children to work and learn professions instead of receiving education.

Deficiency in sponsoring systems for orphans in northern Syria

The Turkish Orphanage Foundation revealed in May 2021, according to the Turkish “Anadolu” agency, that there are 1.2 million orphaned children in northwestern Syria, and that these orphans need a great deal of support amid the huge needs of orphanages in the region.

The file of orphans in northwestern Syria suffers from a lack of support and organization, as the projects provided by humanitarian organizations are unable to cover the needs of all those orphaned children, while many of them did not receive the monthly sponsorship projects.

Most of these children live in camps designated for orphans and widows, while the available orphanages contain a relatively small number of them.

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