Zaatari children mark conflict anniversary, urge world to stand with Syria

MAFRAQ — Three years on, civil unrest that began with the arrest of schoolboys for spraying anti-regime graffiti in the Syrian city of Daraa near the Jordanian border and escalated into a full-scale civil war, no side is willing to lay down their arms.

The conflict has claimed around 140,000 lives since March 2011, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, among them, at least 10,000 were children, the highest child casualty rates recorded in any recent conflict in the region, according to UNICEF.

Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq have taken in the majority of the 2.5 million Syrian refugees fleeing the conflict, with around 600,000 of them officially living in the Kingdom, UN figures show, but unofficial figures suggest they could amount to one million.

"Two million Syrian children are in need of some form of psychological support while a total of 5.5 million children have been somehow affected by the conflict," UNICEF's deputy representative in Jordan Michele Servadei told The Jordan Times at an event marking the third year anniversary of the conflict at the Zaatari Refugee Camp late last week.

Around 100 children living in the camp, some 100km northeast of Amman and a few paces from Syria, joined a worldwide vigil, dubbed #WithSyria, releasing red balloons inspired by British artist Banksy’s stencil depicting a girl holding a heart-shaped balloon.

A minute-and-a-half long charity video created by the artist for the anniversary was screened in the camp.

Based on his graffiti, the animation shows a Syrian girl hovering over a war-torn Syria holding on to her balloon and passing destroyed buildings and children kneeling next to dead bodies.

Other children and adults, each holding on to red balloons, gradually join her ascension while British actor Idris Elba’s voiceover asks those watching to "stand with Syria".

Thousands of people attended similar vigils in more than 40 cities across the world, including London, Paris, New York and Moscow, according to activists from Oxfam.

“We commemorate the third anniversary of the Syrian war, which we hope would be the last,” Karl Schembri, the regional media manager for Save the Children, told The Jordan Times at the event.

“People all over the world are voicing their anger and infuriation at the length of the conflict. There are at least one million Syrian children who fled the country mostly with their families but sometimes even alone. Millions are displaced inside Syria, living besieged and prevented from reaching humanitarian aid,” the activist said.

UNICEF estimates that the number of children displaced inside Syria has risen to nearly 3 million from 920,000 a year ago, with 323,000 children under the age of five in besieged areas or ones that are hard for humanitarian aid workers to access.

“Many children have died in Syria not because of the violence but because medical aid could not reach them. We call for 'humanitarian pauses' in areas of Syria under siege so that aid convoys could reach those in need and evacuate civilians caught in the conflict," Schembri added.

Zaatari Refugee Camp Manager Kilian Kleinschmidt said it would have been impossible to imagine the crisis protracting for so long three years ago.

“Who would have thought in 2011 that millions of people would have fled the country? As we speak children are suffering inside and outside Syria risking to become a lost generation,” Kleinschmidt added at the event.

Zaatari has been growing from its inception as a desert camp of 5,000 to the Kingdom's fourth largest population centre, currently hosting around 100,000 residents, with children and women making up the vast majority.

Thirteen-year-old Youssef from Daraa told The Jordan Times he had forgotten how long he had been living in the camp.

“I have come here with my mum, brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, my dad is still in Syria," he said. 

"I miss my school and friends back home, but I met new friends in Zaatari. I go to school every day and, in the afternoon, we rehearse Shakespeare’s 'King Lear'. My role is King Lear himself,” Youssef added.

A daily average of 600 Syrians cross into Jordan, according to the UNHCR, putting a strain on the camp’s facilities, but especially on the host communities, where about two-thirds of the refugees and 80 per cent of the children reside.

“All humanitarian agencies are waiting for the opening of the Azraq camp — a facility designed to host up to [130,000] refugees in the eastern Jordanian desert whose opening has been delayed several times," Servadei said.

"What has been done in Zaatari has been incredible," the UN official said.

"We are more worried about the risk of exploitation and neglect in the host community rather than in Zaatari, as the more people stay in Jordan without livelihood, the more destitute they become, thus making use of wrong coping methods like early marriages or child labour.”

Humanitarian agencies called on the international community to help put an end to the crisis.

“We first must bring an end to the conflict, this is what we are all here for today, to say that this must be the third and final anniversary of the conflict,” Andy Baker, Oxfam regional manager for the Syria crisis, told The Jordan Times.

“As the vast majority of refugees are not in camps but scattered throughout the country in tents or in former settlements, it is very difficult to provide them with all the support they need regarding water, sanitation and hygiene, as well as access to the funding to be able to buy and pay for the necessities of life,” Baker said.

Oxfam has a memorandum of understanding with the Syrian water ministry to help supply water and sanitation inside the country to internally displaced people, he added.

“We have been able to work, install generators and pumps and rehabilitate existing systems in and around Damascus and now coming up to Homs and other areas. We are working to ensure theses projects meet the needs of the community on both sides of the line reaching so far over half a million people.”