This week, we are sadly arriving at the 8th year of the war in Syria, a war that has destroyed the nation and the lives of millions of people. Perhaps you’re not seeing so much about the conflict in the media anymore, but it persists and, worse, its consequences persist too.
Each year more people are being forced to leave their homes, communities, jobs, families and everything they’ve built and dreamed of. More than half of the Syrian population have been forcibly displaced, whether as internally displaced people or as refugees. The vast majority are living in neighbouring countries like Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
This vast majority are also living in extreme poverty with less than 6 BRL (around £1.15) a day in refugee camps without adequate structure for families. And in these homes, as is always the case in all armed conflicts, women and children suffer the most.
Women continue to be vulnerable and successively threatened by extremist groups, whilst girls have lost their childhood being forced into marriages with older men.
Consequently, children born during the war don’t know what it is to live in peace and without fear. They don’t know what it is to have a normal life where they can go to school, because there is no school for all of them. They don’t know what it is to play freely in the streets and parks of their cities, because they’re in refugee camps. Their bodies and their emotions bear the scars of the bombings they’ve suffered over the years.
Every war is cruel and has devastating effects wherever it goes. For us, it is almost impossible to understand the grave consequences of this conflict in Syria and in the lives of all its citizens. But as a country which has received a small, very small, community of Syrian refugees, we can affirm that they remain determined to rebuild their lives and dream of when they can go back to their homeland to rebuild it.
Even if we’re not seeing or hearing anything about this war, it doesn’t mean that it’s over, and it doesn’t mean that its horrendous consequences have disappeared. It also doesn’t mean that we have already done enough. There is certainly much more we can do to help our neighbours.
That’s why we continue to hope for peace in Syria and to find ways to repair all the damage that these eight years of war have done.
Salam Suria. Salam Surien.
André Leitão is Executive President of Compassiva
