اخبار سوريا اليوم – وطن نيوز
سوريا اليوم – اخبار سوريا عاجل
W6nnews.com ==== وطن === تاريخ النشر – 2024-01-24 01:33:00
It was not the first time that the child Ahmed (10 years old) was exposed to bullying (which is a higher form of harassment and takes a violent turn between peers) from his peers because he is an undocumented person, which is a term for someone who does not have a name in the official civil records, as a result of his mother’s marriage to a foreign member of the ISIS organization before his death, but this time the matter was different. Ahmed was late for some time to join the morning class in the camp school where he was studying in the third grade, so the teacher began This time, by bullying him, he said to him: “You are children of ISIS, there is nothing good among you and you must not learn.” The child’s mother says that her child returned home crying after the accident, and told his mother the details later. After that incident, all attempts to return him to school were ineffective, and he entered the labor market in the hands of a mechanical teacher. The legal status of undocumented children (not registered in official departments) or of unknown parentage allows others to identify them, It is easy for them to be exposed to bullying, especially from peers at school or on the street, and in some cases from more aware societal groups, as in the case of the child Ahmed, who shares a tent in the Kili camp cluster with his mother and his family, which consists of three children and a girl. Arya Haji, executive director of the Nextory platform for development media, says: “Ostracism as a result of concealment of enrollment inevitably leads to an increase in school dropout,” and despite the fact that school dropout is Child labor is one of the prominent phenomena that has emerged in conflict situations, but the motives differ among them. Legal discrimination as undocumented people, in addition to the social stigma resulting from labeling children as “children of ISIS,” are matters that worry mothers in particular. Ahmed is ten years old, from a Kuwaiti father who came to Syria to join the ranks of the so-called immigrants in ISIS, and a Syrian mother who was only thirteen years old when she gave birth to him. The husband was killed, and Ahmed’s mother, Susan, married. Once again, from a Moroccan “immigrant” in the ranks of the organization, who was also killed. Thus, she left behind two children from her first husband and a boy and a girl from the second husband, all of them without civil registration. Ahmed, who could only bear the reality of school for one academic year, represents a large segment of war victims or war-born children. He opened his eyes to a dispersed reality without identification papers and moving from one place to another, until he eventually settled in the Killi camps in northwest Syria, since 2020. While Ahmed fled from school to the labor market to work in the hands of a mechanic, the matter becomes more difficult in the case of girls. For example, Umm Sultan (38 years old), returning from Al-Hawl camp in northeastern Syria, resorted to not sending her three daughters (the eldest is eight years old) to schools because they do not have identification and are without restrictions, and although a local organization has offered them services to facilitate the procedures for enrolling in schools, Umm Sultan says The issue of identification is a major problem for them, as the issue is not limited to enrollment in schools only. Rather, this legal situation worries them, as they are not registered in official records. These are legal problems that grow with children, and it seems that concealing the record weakens the parents’ resolve to send their children to school, even if they have the opportunity to do so. In addition to this is the social stigma, especially for girls, as Umm Sultan says that society does not accept my daughters, and even stigmatizes them as “children of ISIS.” Her family does not accept them, after she married an ISIS member from Al-Muhajiroun, who was from Morocco, before there was no news of him in the battles. “Ostracism due to concealment of enrollment inevitably leads to an increase in school dropouts.” Rojin Shawish, a psychotherapist at the Jiyan Organization for Human Rights, says, “Stigma can lead to isolation, isolation, and loss of social contact, and this applies to girls in Umm Sultan’s case, as the family lives on the assistance provided by some organizations.” Batoul (a pseudonym) was left to her fate after she lived with her mother until she reached school age. Her mother, Reem, was able to leave the camp in 2021 as part of the exit trips from Al-Hawl camp organized by the camp administration from time to time, but she disguised herself for the little girl Batoul and said that she was not her daughter, says Ibrahim Al-Ali (a pseudonym), one of the displaced people of Deir ez-Zor, who narrates Batoul’s story is that the mother abandoned her daughter, because she saw her as a burden, as she was unfettered, and it was difficult for the mother to manage her life with her, so she decided to abandon her, and the mother then fabricated a story saying that she had adopted the child and not her daughter. The phenomenon of abandoning children, who naturally become unfettered, appears clearly in most camps, but it usually affects newborns, especially from extramarital relationships, except Abandoning children after they grow up is not considered a phenomenon, and Ibrahim believes that the mother may be honest or not, but things become difficult outside the camp for a person without identification. Camp residents do not need a lot of official identification, as they manage their affairs with the papers that the camp administration gives them. However, life outside the camp is difficult and children need identification that links them to their fathers and mothers, a process that requires a lot of money and time. Registration is a Syrian administrative term that refers to the absence of the person concerned in official records. Syrians have known it since what is known as the exceptional census conducted in Al-Hasakah Governorate in 1962, which resulted, in addition to those stripped of citizenship, of the undocumented, whose number, according to a human rights report, reached more than forty thousand, even after the legal status was corrected for more than half of the total number before 2011. However, with the development of the circumstances of the Syrian situation and the difference in control forces, and the entry of transient organizations such as ISIS. Which included in its ranks thousands of foreign fighters, it played a role in the marriages of foreigners to Syrians, leaving among its behind a group of people born during the war who did not possess any official documents, and this category is the category of undocumented people. When ISIS extended its control over large areas of Iraq and Syria between the years 2014 and 2017 until March 2019, marriages took place between fighters and girls from residents of the region, and they resulted in births, but no documents were provided. Thus, the category of undocumented persons was born, or the category of unidentified people who were found without a father or mother following battles, or abandoned children, while the vast majority reside in Al-Hawl camp, the most famous and largest camp in northeastern Syria, where 56 thousand people live, 50% of whom are children under 12 years old, according to the United Nations Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Affairs Coordinator in Syria, Imran Reda, while the camp administration says that the total number of children in Al-Hawl camp is 36,279 children. In addition, some of those who left the camp or who fled after the battles live in various areas in northwest and northeastern Syria. According to the official institutions that the investigation preparers met, they say that there are no legal impediments preventing the undocumented from studying. They need to resort to the Age Estimation Committee to estimate their ages and be satisfied with a civil affairs paper and obtain a civil registry certificate in the areas of northwestern Syria subject to the Salvation Government in Idlib and the Interim Government in the countryside. Aleppo, and a paper from the local council (the commune) in the areas of northeastern Syria subject to the Syrian Democratic Forces: “Unregistered is a Syrian administrative term that refers to the absence of the person concerned in official records.” However, the concealment of the registration and the difficulty of obtaining documents from the civil registry affiliated with the Syrian regime push many families to remove their children from schools, where there is no future for the children, since they are unregistered, and this is what happened with Umm Abdul Rahman, who returned from Al-Hawl camp and whose husband was arrested. As a member of ISIS, she was unable to register some of her children with her detained husband, for fear of the security and legal repercussions that might befall her. She refrained from sending her undocumented children to school, and sent her 11-year-old son to the labor market, while leaving her daughter at home to help her with household chores. Child Labor and ViolenceIn the sprawling Al-Hawl camp, which has an area of 3,100,00 square metres, the children’s parents do not see any future for their children, so They do not send them to schools that aim, at a minimum, to bring children beyond the threshold of illiteracy in addition to providing safe spaces for children, especially since they link the education process to its subsequent completion in government schools, which is extremely difficult without documents. If that happens, they will not obtain certificates. This leap forward for the children’s future prompted Aisha, 22 years old (a pseudonym), not to send her son to any school in the camp, and to be content with a course for memorizing the Qur’an and the principles of reading, and her 10-year-old child works. Years of pulling a cart to transport things inside the camp, earning very little from it. Aisha finds it more useful than enrolling in vain in schools where he will not be able to obtain any certificate no matter how long he stays there. Outside the camp, things become more difficult, as the social stigma that haunts the children of ISIS members or the returnees of Al-Hawl camp pushes children or their families to distance themselves from schools, but they do not always choose the labor market, because they may resort to militarization, conscription, or being dragged into the camp. To drug abuse and drug promotion for males and early marriage (in some cases 12 years), as Arya Haji says that there is a societal legacy of rejecting children, whether they are undocumented because they are the children of foreign elements or of unknown parentage, which constitutes a long-term threat with regard to the ease of recruiting these children, whether through their recruitment by various military parties to terrorist organizations, or the cumulative effect of the state of marginalization and ostracism on their condition. Psychological treatment, and thus the ease with which they engage in criminal acts, drugs, and early marriage. Psychotherapist Shawish confirms that social stigma may push children either into isolation, introversion, or aggression and resorting to extremism. Deferred solutions. Hafidha from the city of Al-Bab in the eastern countryside of Aleppo wanted her son to graduate from school and enter the labor market to support her, as she does not find a future for him, especially since he does not have any papers. Proof of proof, in which he would be granted an academic certificate in the uncertain future under the conditions of war, and the high cost of transaction trackers and brokers contributed to postponing thinking about the matter, but her son Amer was able to study for a year and a half before he became fed up with his reality, as unlike his mother he did not think much about certificates as long as he was playing with the children, but his peers who were winking at him and throwing social stigmas at him, such as telling them that he was an ISIS, finally pushed him to the final decision to leave school. And engaging in the labor market. “The undocumented category is considered one of the most destitute groups born in the war.” Amer now works in an iron scrap factory. He is only ten years old. He trades iron morning and evening for a small wage, but he says after wiping the rust from the iron that stuck to it: “Praise be to God that I was successful in getting this job. “Despite the long period of time, and the difficulty of working in the country, no one describes me as the son of ISIS.” The category of undocumented people born during the war is considered the most destitute group, and it is increasing day after day. The problem becomes more apparent with increasing age, engagement in daily life, and the question of education, issuing travel documents, ownership, etc. The matter is not only related to foreign births, but is emerging in refugee camps outside Syria in Lebanon and Turkey, and the political conditions that prevent hundreds from registering their children with civil registries. Lawyer Abdul Aziz Hassan believes that these legal problems and correcting the legal situation is not easy, as we are talking about thousands of individual cases that are dealt with individually each time, in addition to the fear of many people from visiting the Syrian regime’s departments for fear of being arrested for political backgrounds, similar names, or being wanted for reserve service. Also, the lack of statistics for these cases is one of the things that increases the complexity of matters if solutions are agreed upon between the parties. Community activist Muhammad Al-Hassan says that it is the duty of the de facto authorities in Syria. Conducting statistics through its institutions and issuing identification cards for them and their families, in order to facilitate matters more, whether in their daily transactions or later in facilitating the matter in political or other consensual solutions.
