Syrian children in 2021 | Lost generation, disempowered and robbed of identity

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR)

 

The United Nations, since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was issued, has been calling for promoting its most prominent principles of freedom, justice and peace for all mankind, children, women and men. Most countries have joined that declaration, but a few have continued to adhere to its principles. The declaration stipulates the importance of extending particular care to children based on the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1924.

 

The United Nations states that any child, by reason of their physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth.

 

According to the article-54 Convention on the Rights of the Child, every child is proclaimed to all rights and freedoms without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. However, Syrian children have been deprived of these rights since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011.

 

The innocent Syrian children who do not understand the meaning of wars and conflicts should have been happily and peacefully living and playing, while schools should have been their first destination, but their tragic conditions of war, destruction, and displacement have spoiled their childhood happiness and replaced it with sorrow, despair and horror.

 

The Convention on the Rights of the Child in article 1 define a child means every human being below the age of eighteen years.

 

Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict demands in article 7 parties shall cooperate in the implementation of the present Protocol, including in the prevention of any activity contrary thereto and in the rehabilitation and social reintegration of persons who are victims of acts contrary thereto, including through technical cooperation and financial assistance. Such assistance and cooperation will be undertaken in consultation with the States Parties concerned and the relevant international organisations.

 

Neither Al-Assad regime forces nor the other military groups, regardless of the areas of control, have adhered to these articles. On the contrary, that ignored its application.

 

Syrian children are young by nature, too young to live in tragedies and tears. However, the difficult Syrian conditions have turned children into adults with a responsibility that exceeds their mental capacity and age, and brought them into the front lines in the face of dangers and miseries.

 

One third of Syrian children bear the greater part of that ongoing tragedy. Many reports have been focusing on the seriousness of the negative effects of the war in Syria on children at all levels.

 

SOHR has documented the death of 359 children under age of eighteen since early 2021. The deaths are categorised as follows:

 

• 137 killed in mine and bomb explosions.

 

• 14 killed by unknown gunmen.

 

• 73 killed by regime forces shooting and raids.

 

• 19 killed in different conditions and by different methods including tribal and family clashes and indiscriminate shooting.

 

• Seven killed by ISIS.

 

• Nine killed in unknown conditions.

 

• 61 killed due to deteriorated health conditions.

 

• Four killed in booby-trapped vehicles.

 

• Eight killed by Turkish Border Guards (Jandarma).

 

• Four killed by SDF.

 

• Ten killed in Turkish attack.

 

• Seven killed in Russian attack.

 

• One child killed by Jihadists.

 

• Three killed in Israeli attacks.

 

The large number of deaths indicates the horrific magnitude of the tragedy and the damage inflicted on the Syria children and their future. Children were deprived of their right to life, their innocence was distorted, and they were left suffering the woes of war, bombing, and orphanage without a father, mother or a breadwinner amid a gloomy present and an ambiguous future due to poverty, war and conflicts that deprived them of receiving different shape of care or secured living and put one third of Syrian children in critical conditions. Meanwhile, we do not see immediate intervention especially from those who claim to defend children’s rights and those who trade in their tragedies and tears.

 

Syrian children live among the dangers of landmines, shelling and raids, and their hands tremble because of the coldness in a harsh winter in plastic-ceiling makeshift camps waiting for a better life, after being let down by this uncaring world that only condemns and remains in different and unwilling to find or impose a solution on regime authority, opposition, and factions which opted for the force of arms and the policy of violence and murder, while international and regional interests seemingly don not understand the innocence of children..

 

The sufferings of Syrian children went beyond the fear of death when they hear the sounds of bombs, lose their identity, live in starvation that weakened bodies and made it more vulnerable and receptive to all diseases They were deprived of education, carrying school bags and wearing their uniforms. Their sufferings reached terrifying levels where children join war, armed conflicts and are recruited and trained to carry weapons and serve under banners of hypocrite factions and organisations which claims protecting the land and honour. Such practices have been observed for years and SOHR has exposed them to the whole world and warned against using children in conflicts that they have nothing to do with it.

 

The war created a marginalised generation that knows nothing about life except for weapons, bombing, revenge and battlefields. Many sides on the mad battlefields also sought to rob their homeland and portrayed it in a gloomy, vague and tasteless place where they can only smell blood and death, and seethe tears of orphans and the bereaved.

 

It is painful for a child to be born in an environment tainted by the fire of war, hatred, division, ideological enmity and division. The Syrian children’s miseries begin early because their families could not provide them with secure and stable life and the simplest living essentials like a home that shelters them from the summer heat and the winter coldness or food.

 

The most painful thing for a child is to grow up in an environment without a home address, title or value where they cannot live their childhood or learn, in a displaced or deported family because of the war, continuing life with internal psychological struggle, and questioning the tragedies and reasons behind the displacement of their family.

 

Today’s victims will be destructive weapons in face of those causing the ongoing conflicts and chaos that wiped out the best days of lives, snatched smiles, and assassinated their dreams to live like other children in the world.

 

The deteriorating economic situation piles more misery and suffering on children due to ongoing conflicts and the continuous sanctions. Children find themselves forced to join the labour market at a nearly age and experience exploitation and coercion.

 

On the other hand, children unconsciously engage in armed conflicts via recruitment into militancy, with delay of care providers to support, rescue them, and facilitate their enrolment in schools.

 

A Lebanese researcher described the children produced by the Syrian war as a “lost generation.” This generation that was born during the war and lived the hard conditions of asylum and displacement, lacks the simplest basic essentials of a decent life. It is worth noting that children and their families who live in areas of conflicts, are more exposed to recruitment and exploitation and suffer deprivation, displacement and starvation.

 

No one can ignore the tragedy of the children in Al-Hawl camp that hosts the families of ISIS members. Those children are also victims of war, and are “time bombs” ready to explode anytime as they are saturated with terrorist takfiri ideology. Those families require immediate intervention to extricate them out ofa hellish environment and then to work on rehabilitating and repatriate them to their original countries, because the difficult conditions in Syrian now would not ensure fair trials for their families in accordance with international human rights laws, away from revenge and violence.

 

SOHR cannot stress enough the importance of protecting children harmed by armed conflicts and providing them with appropriate care that is guaranteed by international conventions.

 

SOHR warns against the exploitation of children in conflicts as fuel for war and depriving them of their right of safe living and education that are universal rights. SOHR also holds all conflicting parties responsible for the dreadful situation of children and women, the most vulnerable part of society.

 

SOHR would like to remind the world once again that the rights of Syrian children are violated by all parties which deliberately bomb schools and deprive children of their right to education, and ignore and condone the sexual and economic abuse of children by their employers who exploit the difficult conditions of children that forced them to work to support their families who are unable to provide even food.

 

SOHR calls on the international community to take concrete actions to improve and protect the welfare of children in Syria, and pledges to continue documenting all violations committed against children and exposing the perpetrators, no matter their identities or affiliations.

 

The Syrian Observatory would like to point out that all information and figures mentioned in this report have been documented and updated until the date of publication.