Igor Urizar teaches Syrian refugees to ski on the slopes of Iraqi Kurdistan. Credit: Nuzha Ezzat/IPS.

By Jewan Abdi
PENJWIN, Iraqi Kurdistan, Feb 16 2014 (IPS)

No one here has heard of the Sochi Winter Olympics. But the snow conditions are perfect in these Kurdish mountains of Iraq and 11-year-old Syrian refugee Hassan Khishman is thrilled to glide on skis for the first time.

“It’s brought back the good times with friends in Syria,” the Syrian Kurd boy tells IPS after sliding down a tiny slope.

Located on the Iranian border around 300 km northeast of Baghdad, the mountain village Penjwin was known as a major hub of refugees fleeing Saddam Hussein’s campaigns. Smugglers’ caravans still cross these rugged border valleys with all sorts of goods packed on mule backs. Mines continue to pose a major concern."I only hope that they will be able to do this again, or any other activity that helps bring back their childhood - even if it is just for a few hours.”

But the area where locals have been skiing has been carefully chosen to avoid cruel surprises. War is becoming a distant memory for these highlanders. For some children like Hassan, the slopes have thrown up a happy surprise.

The youngsters have been brought here from refugee camps at the initiative of ski instructor Igor Urizar – a Spaniard who set up Iraq’s first ski school here – to help them escape the bitter memory of war.

“We fled Syria because of the war. There were many among us who died, and the food became very expensive,” says Hassan who left his native town Hasakah and crossed the border almost a year ago.

He now lives in the Arbad refugee camp in Suleymania province, 260 km northeast of Baghdad. It is one of six refugee settlements in the Kurdish autonomous region.

According to the UN, over 200,000 Syrian refugees have taken shelter in Iraq’s stable northern region. Huddled in tents, they’re all facing one of the coldest winters ever recorded in the region.

Helin Kaseer is three years older than Hassan and could identify those who forced her family to flee Girke Lege, a Kurdish village.

“We left Syria eight months ago because of the growing presence of Islamists in our area. There was a lot of fighting and several of my friends were kidnapped, so we couldn’t go to school,” explains the girl.

For her, too, the chance to ski has come as a “huge surprise”. She wishes there were more opportunities because “many more children from the camp wanted to come, but did not get the chance.”

Urizar, the man who initiated the skiing opportunity for the children, explains why the other children had to be left out.

“We have just enough equipment for a few dozen. Besides, getting the necessary permission for them to leave the camp for just one day has been a real nightmare,” says 38-year-old Uzirar, who planted the seeds of skiing in a place as improbable as Iraq.

Before his first visit to Penjwin in 2010, Urizar was a ski instructor in the northern Spanish region Navarra where every year about 5,000 schoolchildren enjoy a week of skiing in the Pyrenees.

With the support of the Tigris Association, a Basque-Kurdish NGO, his dream to export this project to the Kurdish mountains seems to be on the right track.

Local villagers as well as government officials are thrilled with Iraq’s first ski school here, and the second set up in Ranya, 430 km northeast of Baghdad.

Falah Salah, the Tigris local coordinator, ensures that the skiing project continues with the personal backing of Hero Khan, the wife of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, for the second consecutive year.

Salah is planning to run for the Iraqi parliament in elections in April, so he’s passing on the baton to Khalid Mohamad Qadir, head of Penwjin’s Youth Centre.

“Three years ago, Tigris invited us to the Pyrenees to check the possibilities of cross-country skiing as part of sustainable development,” explains Qadir, as he tries to manage a bunch of anxious children waiting for their turn.

“Over the past two years, the Roncal Valley Ski School has trained young Kurds who are now teaching a growing number of visitors in our area. Most of them are Kurdish but we have recently had people from France and Holland too,” he says.

After putting on his boots over three pairs of socks, Mohamed Ibrahim is ready. The 13-year-old native of Tirbespiye, 600 km northeast of Damascus, smiles but says that nothing can help him forget what he witnessed in Syria.

“The jihadists began to harass and kill us in our area. There was no food, no oil. So we left just at the first opportunity to escape. I’ve never been so scared in my life,” he tells IPS.

As the children jump on a bus back to the camp, just before the sun sets behind the snow-capped peaks, Urizar seems relaxed. It has been a hectic and stressful week due to bureaucratic hurdles and rain forecast which, thankfully, proved wrong.

“I cannot help thinking that these kids will have to sleep in those tents again,” says Urizar, drying the skis before putting them away.

“I only hope that they will be able to do this again, or any other activity that helps bring back their childhood – even if it is just for a few hours.”

Ziad Ali and his family in their ‘home’ in Switzerland. Credit: Ray Smith/IPS.

By Ray Smith
LUCERNE, Switzerland , Jan 25 2014 (IPS)

Switzerland facilitated family reunification for Syrians in September. So far, more than 1,100 Syrian refugees have benefited from the programme, while thousands are waiting at Swiss embassies in the region, hoping for a similar chance. Surprised by these numbers, Switzerland put an end to the programme.

Several European countries responded to an appeal by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees  (UNHCR) last summer to admit Syrian refugees. Switzerland announced it would accept 500 “especially vulnerable refugees” over three years.Either Swiss authorities were surprised by these numbers, or considered their humanitarian action short-lived.

Further, the country that hosts about 2,000 citizens of Syrian origin pledged to open its borders for their relatives. By the end of November, Swiss embassies in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan had granted 1,600 Syrians a three-month entry visa.

At least 1,100 of these have already travelled to Switzerland. A further 5,000 Syrians have applied for appointments at Swiss embassies to file similar visa requests.

Either Swiss authorities were surprised by these numbers, or considered their humanitarian action short-lived. Already in early November, they introduced bureaucratic hurdles: Swiss-based Syrians who had invited their relatives now needed to meet certain financial requirements.

“Looking at the size of an average Syrian family, these requirements constitute a killer criteria,” said Beat Meiner, secretary-general of the Swiss Refugee Council (SFH). “Few of the Swiss-based Syrians have enough money to clear these hurdles.”

Meiner’s warnings fell on deaf ears. Even worse, a month later Swiss Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga cancelled the family reunification programme entirely. “We assume that most of those Syrians who are entitled to apply for entry visas and face immediate distress have made use of our eased visa requirements,” she argued.

Ashti Amir, a Kurdish Syrian who fled to Switzerland for political reasons more than a decade ago and now runs the charity SyriAid, has a different perspective. Since September, he managed to get the families of one of his brothers and sisters to Switzerland. Amir told IPS that he still had two brothers and his parents back home in Aleppo and wanted to get them to Switzerland, too.

“Escaping from there and travelling to an embassy abroad is not only difficult, but very costly,” he said. Amir knows dozens of other compatriots who have relatives in danger in Syria whom they want to rescue.

Another sister of his as well as a sister-in-law are stranded in Istanbul with their families, waiting for an entry visa to Switzerland. They had applied for an appointment before Switzerland cancelled its reunification programme, and Amir is optimistic that they’ll finally be granted a visa.

“But if not: where should they go? Their long stay in Turkey has eaten up their savings.”

SFH’s Beat Meiner says that many Syrians have embarked on a dangerous trip to Swiss embassies in the Middle East, assuming they can successfully apply for an entry visa there. “Some of them are blocked now: they may neither come to Switzerland, nor return to Syria,” he says.

He’s convinced that Swiss humanitarian action could have been prolonged and that considerably more human lives could have been saved.

Besides that, Switzerland also hesitates to treat about 2,000 asylum requests by Syrians who had fled to the country individually rather than as families. Some of them have been waiting three to four years for a decision.

IPS met Ziad Ali and his family in central Switzerland. Originally from Malikiyah in the northeast of Syria, Ali moved to Damascus as a youth, where he earned his living as a taxi driver. “As a Kurd in Syria, you took any job you may get anywhere,” he says.

Before he fled the country, Ali worked in Idlib region as a gardener. He was arrested at a demonstration in Qamishli and then tortured in a prison in Deir az-Zour in Syria.

After his release, escaping the country appeared to him the only option. His wife and their two children reached Switzerland in June 2011, while Ali followed in January 2012.

Ali says the fate of his sister and his father, who were arrested by the Syrian regime in 2011, is constantly on his mind. He hasn’t heard from them since then.

His daughter Fatima and his son Mohamed go to school locally and already speak better German than Kurdish. A year ago, their youngest brother Azad was born. The family lives in a barracks established for asylum-seekers, occupying three rooms.

Their asylum request is still in limbo, leaving the family in constant insecurity about their destiny.

Moreno Casasola, secretary-general of the refugee rights organisation Solidarité sans Frontières, says that asylum requests of Syrians are mostly put aside by the Federal Office for Migration. Like any other European country, Switzerland fears that answering asylum requests positively would attract even more Syrian refugees.

Federal Office for Migration spokesperson Michael Glauser acknowledges that asylum requests of Syrians aren’t treated with priority. He denies, however, any decision moratorium. Glauser asserts that Syrian asylum-seekers enjoy Switzerland’s protection – and for the moment haven’t been sent back to Syria.

Ziad Ali and his family, along with other Syrian asylum-seekers, have protested in front of the Federal Office for Migration in Bern, demanding a speedy decision on their request. Getting at least temporary official admission would give them a perspective for the next few years and facilitate hunting for a job.

Despite his desperation, Ziad Ali hopes for a positive outcome. He says he wouldn’t mind returning to Syria once the war has ended, if Kurds were treated fairly. “But the longer my children live here, the more difficult it would be for them to return.”

A Palestinian family from Yarmouk camp in Syria now living on the fringes of Ein el Helwe camp in the south of Lebanon. Credit: Mutawalli Abou Nasser/IPS.

By Mutawalli Abou Nasser
BEIRUT, Jan 6 2014 (IPS)

Over the past year more than 50,000 Palestinian refugees have fled violence, chaos and destitution in Syria to seek sanctuary in Lebanon. The vast majority have found themselves living in dire poverty, and trapped in chronically insecure existence.

Denied assurances of legal residence many are unsure if and how they can continue to live in the country into the New Year.

“Who, I mean really who from the Palestinian families can pay 200 dollars for the papers for every family member? If the average family is five people, then that is 1,000 dollars. This is impossible as we know most Palestinian refugees aren’t even sure how they are going to feed their children one day to the next,” Mahmoud Assir Saawi, president of the Council for Palestinian Refugees Fleeing from Syria told IPS.

Such sentiments are reiterated time and time again within the squalid camps and overcrowded ghettoes throughout Lebanon. Palestinians arriving from Syria find themselves in an administrative and bureaucratic morass hobbled by decades of troubled history and war that offers them scant security.

Many of the Palestinian refugees from Syria will have originally been uprooted from their homeland in 1948 upon the creation of the state of Israel, or during the six-day war in 1967 when the Israelis comprehensively defeated the neighbouring Arab armies. New war has exacted its toll and around half of their communities in Syria have fled once again.

Lebanon has received most of this exodus, and of Syria’s neighbours it is perhaps least able to accommodate the influx.

The presence of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon has always been a highly divisive issue, with many Lebanese blaming Palestinians for the role they played in the nation’s rancorous civil war from 1975 to 1990. The arrival of large communities of their compatriots this past year has further exacerbated existing fears and prejudices.

It is perhaps for this reason that the arriving Palestinians have been classified as ‘guests’, ‘migrants’ or ‘displaced people’. To afford them the more apt title of ‘refugee’ would bring with it legal obligations, most notably under the Geneva convention, which Lebanon would struggle to realise.

Fears of Palestinian, and even Syrian refugees settling in Lebanon permanently, and thus shifting the precarious sectarian balance within the country, are common and are regularly aired in the media and by politicians. As such the refugees’ status remains vulnerable and their sanctuary insecure.

Securing residency papers remains one of the biggest problems for Palestinian refugees from Syria. Upon arrival Palestinians fleeing war and hunger are only granted a one-week visa in Lebanon, which then must then extend.

In the overcrowded and destitute Chatilla Palestinian camp in Beirut, refugees from Syria have staged sit-ins at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) offices. The international organisation was already struggling to provide basic services to the approximately 420,000 Palestinian refugees already living in the country before the outbreak of the Syrian crisis. UNRWA has been tasked by the Lebanese government with extending these services to the new arrivals.

Palestinian journalist Maher Ayoub from Yarmouk Camp in Damascus knows first hand about the vulnerability of life in Lebanon. On a recent trip to renew his papers he was ordered to leave the country within the week, despite assurances from the Lebanese government that it would not throw out any refugees.

Faced with incarceration in Lebanon or a perilous return to Syria, he has taken refuge in one of the Palestinian camps Lebanese security services are not allowed to enter under an agreement reached at the end of the civil war.

“Where can I go? What can I do? I have no options now,” Ayoub told IPS.

Many other Palestinian refugees distrustful of the security services or fearful of being unable to pay their annual visa renewal fees are seeking cover within the camps. The reality is a life of incarceration in chronically overcrowded hovels of destitution where unemployment is rife.

“We know they are our brethren and we must help them but this is becoming untenable,” said Abu Ahmad, a Lebanese-Palestinian resident from Chatilla camp. “I used to get at least a week’s work every month but now there is nothing. Every day we are seeing problems in the camp because of the desperation and the lack of work. People are even starting to pull weapons on each other. We need more support.”

A UNRWA report showed a shortfall in the organisation’s budget by 68 million dollars. The different Palestinian factions have proven unable to absorb the strain.

For the Palestinians fleeing Syria’s war the struggle looks set to continue in 2014 as they try to build a semblance of stability in their lives.

Children in Beirut's Shatila refugee camp. Credit: Rebecca Murry/IPS.

By Rebecca Murray
BEIRUT, Dec 28 2013 (IPS)

As refugees from Syria continue to pour into Lebanon, the majority of children are not going to school, spurring concern that they will become a ‘lost generation’.

Awad, 12, and her little sister Eman, 10, are among the vulnerable new arrivals. Having fled Damascus after their father was killed, they settled with their mother in a squalid room in overcrowded Shatila refugee camp.

Originally built for Palestinian refugees in 1949, the makeshift camp now shelters a new wave of impoverished Syrian refugees searching for affordable housing, Palestinians fleeing Syria, and migrant workers.“We only eat one meal a day that our mother cooks, in the evening."

“We were meant to move in with our grandfather, but he died when we got here,” explained Awad. “We felt very far away from home and afraid.”

Their mother remarried, but her Lebanese husband soon abandoned her, leaving her pregnant and penniless. “We now have a problem paying the owner rent – we have no money,” said Awad.

The two sisters stay home all day, leaving only three times a week to visit a local NGO for activities like drawing and a rare opportunity to mix with kids their own age.

Mostly they rely on their colouring books to keep themselves entertained. They lack schoolbooks, television and a social life to occupy their time.

And the girls are hungry. “We only eat one meal a day that our mother cooks, in the evening,” admits Awad. “Today we will eat the leftovers from yesterday.”

Zuhair Akkawi, a social worker at the Beit Atfal al-Summoud community centre, which runs activities for Palestinian and Syrian children in Shatila, says they are overwhelmed.

“There is a very big problem – there are so many refugees from Syria,” she said. “Maybe during Ramadan we can help with food. Some charities send us meals to give. But otherwise, we are overstretched.”

Out of the more than 1.1 million Syrian child refugees worldwide, 385,000 are registered in Lebanon with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

In an alarming report, ‘The future of Syria: Refugee children in crisis’, the agency says that 80 percent of the 270,000 school age Syrians in Lebanon are not getting an education.

“The low enrolment rate is linked to a range of factors including school capacity, cost, transportation and distance, curriculum and language, bullying and violence, and competing priorities such as the need for children to work.”

Lebanese law states that education is free and compulsory until age 12. Recent legislation has upped the mandatory age for education to 15 years, but it has not been implemented.

UNHCR says the refugee influx has had an enormous impact on Lebanese schools. “In some schools,” the report said, “the entire dynamic in the classroom has changed. Not all teachers have been trained to work with refugee children suffering from psychological distress. Coupled with a lack of adequate resources, some Syrian students complained that the quality of education they receive in public schools is poor.”

Syrian psychologist Khalil Yosef counsels Syrian children in Lebanon’s northern city Tripoli. He says that among the obstacles preventing Syrians from staying in school are expenses, the need for children to work instead, and the Lebanese curriculum, half in French or English. Syrians, with their Arabic-only education, can’t keep up and often drop behind, or drop out.

Then there is bullying. “Syrian children were being harassed by Lebanese students,” Yosef said “They told me they didn’t want to go to the same school.”

Now the area’s overcrowded Lebanese schools have produced a separate afternoon shift for Syrians after Lebanese students finish at lunch, where they learn from a translated Arabic curriculum.

Yosef says the children are often traumatised by violence in Syria, and have difficulty adjusting to the challenges of insecure lives in Lebanon.

“They are aggressive towards other students and the teachers themselves,” he said. “They don’t listen, skip classes, and when it comes to attending school in the afternoon, it’s hard because the whole day’s routine has to change. They return home from school at night.

“What is positive about this is they have a routine. That’s good for limiting their hyperactivity, and engaging them.”

Fatima, 11, is a Palestinian who fled from Homs with her family. Her father, a house painter, cannot find work in Beirut and all their relatives stayed behind in Syria. “I felt very lonely when I got here because I had no friends. It took time,” she said.

She now attends a school for Palestinians run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and stumbles over the English-Arabic curriculum. She relies heavily on her mother and neighbours to tutor her after school.

“My father says he needs his children to be in school. It’s important to be there, and not in the streets.”

This road through the Zaatari refugee camp has been named Champs Elysées. Arab men come scouting around here for virgins. Credit: Liny Mutsaers/IPS.

By Annabell Van den Berghe
ZAATARI CAMP, Jordan, Nov 6 2013 (IPS)

Amani has just turned 22. Two months ago she fled from the civil war in Syria and left her house in capital Damascus. After a dangerous nightlong trip she arrived at Zaatari, the refugee camp just over the border in Jordan, where her parents and two sisters had already lived for over a year.

In Damascus she had lived together with her husband and five children in an apartment in the old city centre. Like many Syrian girls she got married when she was still a child. She had just turned 15 when she found the man of her dreams and decided to wed.

“In Syria things are different,” she tells IPS. “Girls get married very early; it is a tradition. But it doesn’t mean we are all married off to strangers. I got to choose my husband and he got to choose me. We could never be more happy than when we were together.”“I have seen Jordanians, Egyptians and Saudis passing by the tents in search of a virgin to take along. They pay 300 dollars, and they get the girl of their dreams.”

Five children later, the civil war broke out in the country she loved but whose unfair policies and corrupt government she disliked. Living in the capital where the government of President Bashar al-Assad was still in control did not make life easier for her and her family.

Her husband took up arms from the first days of the armed revolt and joined the Free Syrian Army. Soon, he became leader of one of the biggest battalions fighting the regime in Damascus.

Amani herself was also fighting with the rebels, despite the five children she had to look after.

“Women aren’t as strong as men, but sometimes they are more strategic. One can’t work without the other.” But a deadly attack on their apartment killed her husband and four of her children.

Amani escaped and only managed to save her youngest daughter.

“When I heard the regime’s air jets approaching, I hid my little daughter underneath the sink of our kitchen. She just fit in the small space next to the garbage. She was just a baby. The other kids had run to their dad to seek protection. And I, in panic and to see what was going on, ran into the street.

“Seconds after reaching the street an explosion destroyed the entire house. Within the debris I could only find my little baby.”

After the tragedy, Amani took the dangerous trip from Damascus to the refugee camp. But life in Zaatari was anything but a respite.

“We are locked up like monkeys in a cage. The moment you walk into the camp, there is no way out any more.”

The camp is overpopulated. A sea of tents spans 3.3 square kilometres, accommodating 150,000 refugees – three times the number it was built for almost two years ago.

The artificial settlement in the middle of a dry desert is afflicted by sandstorms and disease. The little humanitarian aid that makes it to the camp cannot reach all the people who need it. Those who want bread, or blankets to protect themselves against the bitter cold, have to buy them from the few individuals that receive this aid for free, and then sell it illegally.

An entire underground economy has taken root in the camp. The struggle for food is fierce, and only a lucky few earn enough money to sustain a family.

“I work seven days a week, at least 10 hours a day, for an NGO that takes care of the smallest children here in the camp. After working an entire week, I get three dollars. With an ill mother, an elderly father and a baby to take care of, this life is untenable,” Amani says. “My older sister and her husband still have all their children, thank god, but this means five extra mouths to feed.”

Nourishing a family of ten with only three dollars a week quickly became impossible. Amani brought her younger sister, Amara, to work at the same NGO. But doubling the income was still not enough to take care of all of them.

There was only one way to get money quickly, a route that many families took before Amani did – and that was to as good as sell one of the girls. Amani sent off her younger sister Amara, 14, to some sort of marriage.

“It isn’t rare in Syria to marry at the age of 16. Most Arab men are aware of this, and often come to Syria to find a young bride. These days, they come to find them at the camps, where almost everybody is desperate to leave.

“I have seen Jordanians, Egyptians and Saudis passing by the tents in search of a virgin to take along. They pay 300 dollars, and they get the girl of their dreams.”

Amani says she had no choice. “I knew she wasn’t in love, but I also knew that he would take care of her. I would have sold myself, but Amara was the only virgin in our family. We had to sell her, in order to allow the rest of us survive. What else could I do?”

Amara was married to a Saudi man that passed by their tent and asked her father for her hand. That was after he had met Amani, who had told him of the family’s financial desperation and that her younger sister was still not married off. With this marriage Amani secured critical money for her family – at least for the time being.