FEATURE
Syria’s refugee children have escaped the bombing but not their trauma
Unable to forget the traumatic events they bear witness to; refugee children are safe from the bombs and bullets but not from the memories that follow them.
Fourteen-year-old Malak was just seven when her home was raided by armed men in Daraa, Syria. She watched in horror as the group beat her uncle and dragged him out of the house. Those moments, whilst hiding under her bed, would be the last time she would see or hear from him.
Shortly after, the family made the decision to flee Syria and embark on the perilous journey south to neighbouring Jordan.
“When we first arrived, we slept in a tent, but we felt safe,” says Malak’s mother, Rehab. “There were no bombs here and that first night in the camp, I slept better than I had for nearly two years.”
But it wasn’t long before Rehab started to notice signs of her daughter’s trauma. “After just two days in the camp, a police car drove past us and upon seeing men in uniform, Malak grabbed her younger siblings and hid them in their tent.”
Malak began to have recurring nightmares about armed men storming her house in the middle of the night and taking her family. “She soon became quiet, defensive and withdrawn,” says her mother.
Like Malak, many of Syria’s children have been forced to witness life-changing events such as the loss of a family member, as well as having to endure prolonged stress caused by disruptions to education and often multiple displacements.
These traumatic events and the toxic levels of stress they produce can have a severe and lasting impact on a person’s health and wellbeing. It can be particularly detrimental to children and their physical, social and emotional development.
According to a 2014 report from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, repeated exposure to toxic stress can result in a number of stress-related disorders affecting both mental health such as depression, anxiety disorders, and drug abuse. As well as increasing the future risk of physical health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and stroke.
Sana facilitates sessions as part of the Better Learning Programme (BLP), NRC’s flagship psychosocial support intervention for children in crisis-affected communities.
“Malak was very quiet when she joined my class, but eventually she started to open up,” says Sana. “She stayed behind after class one day and told me about her nightmares. She told me that she was struggling and she needed help.”
Sana is from the same area of Syria as Malak. A former primary school teacher, Sana fled Syria and arrived as a refugee in Jordan just one month after Malak. Keen to be of service to her people, she applied to work at NRC’s Learning Centre in Zaatari Refugee Camp as soon as it was constructed.
“I witnessed the crisis. I saw the bombs, the death, the suffering. I too have children. They faced this crisis,” says Sana. “I see every child in my class as my own children, and I feel compelled to help them.”
Psychosocial support can provide a lifeline to children unable to escape the intrusive memories of a war that has waged for nearly a decade in Syria. “The BLP helps children learn practical skills to manage their stress,” says Sana.
An evaluation by the University of the Tromsø in 2016 showed that 67% of children attending the BLP sessions in Palestine reported a full reduction in trauma related nightmares. A more recent 2019 evaluation of the BLP in Jordan showed that children who had participated in the programme had reported a 62.5% improvement in their overall wellbeing.
“I feel good now that the nightmares have gone away,” says Malak. “The breathing and safe space exercises that I learnt in the BLP sessions have given me hope for the future. Now I want to be a scientist. I like the idea of doing experiments — the process of trying something again and again until finally you succeed. Just like in life.”
Psychosocial interventions like the Better Learning Programme save children long after they have fled war, but despite the ever-increasing need, funding for these programmes remains low.
“The Better Learning Programme helped Malak win her fight against the nightmares, but children are witnessing unprecedented levels of violence across the region. Unless we tackle this widespread trauma at the scale it is happening we risk losing an entire generation of children in the Middle East,” says Camilla Lodi, NRC’s Regional Psychosocial Support and Social Emotional Learning Adviser.
NRC Jordan has been providing the Better Learning Programme to children living in Azraq and Zaatari refugee camps since 2015. The BLP has since become an integral part of the educational support services it provides in both camps, with over 8600 children aged between 6 and 15 benefitting from the BLP sessions in 2019 alone.
To find out more about the work of the Norwegian Refugee Council, please visit www.nrc.no
