Jewish groups launch program to aid Syrian refugees living in Jordan

[Sunni Man]

Jewish humanitarian organizations are due to launch an aid program for refugees from the Syrian civil war living in Jordan within the coming weeks. The program will focus on children in the Zaatari refugee camp in northern Jordan, where close to 150,000 refugees have arrived over the last year.

A coalition of 14 Jewish organizations, mainly from the United States, have established the Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief in an effort to aid the victims of the Syrian Civil War, which has been raging for over two years. International aid organizations estimate that over one million Syrian citizens have already fled the country and their number is growing by the day. Around a third of the refugees have crossed over into Jordan and similar numbers are now in Lebanon and Turkey.

The Jewish coalition, which is being coordinated by the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) from its New York headquarters, initially considered focusing its activities in Turkey, but the Ankara government responded that it did not need external help. (The possibility of working in Lebanon was ruled out for security reasons).

Jewish groups launch program to aid Syrian refugees living in Jordan - Middle East - Israel News | Haaretz

 

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Survival Sex - Syrian Refugees Resort to Prostitution...

In Lebanon, Syrian Refugees Resort to 'Survival Sex'
July 29, 2013 — Three-quarters of the Syrian refugees who have fled to Lebanon, because of the continuing fighting in their home country, are women and children. They make up a highly vulnerable population that’s easy prey as economic distress is forcing more and more Syrian women and girls to consider prostitution.

They are turning to prostitution in order to secure money and food for their families, say aid workers, who argue the women have little choice but to resort to what they describe as "survival sex". Rima ZaaZaa of the Lebanese charity Solidarity and Development said, with no end in sight to the Syrian refugee influx, extreme poverty will force more to trade their bodies for money and food. “There are certain shelters that are known that the prostitution percentage is very high in these shelters, whether in Ain Helweh camp or in Sadaya, in different areas they are known. A lot of prostitution is taking place,” explained Rima ZaaZaa. More than 600,000 Syrians have registered with the United Nations in Lebanon as refugees but the Lebanese government estimates there are more than a million already in the country. By year’s end there could be two million, placing impossible strains on the resources of a small country mired in economic problems and on the international aid community.

Unlike the governments of Jordan and Turkey, the Lebanese government has refused to build new refugee camps to house Syrian refugees. With Syrian women and girls scattered throughout Lebanon in shabby rental accommodations, makeshift shelters, and abandoned buildings, aids groups say they often face sexual harassment and demands for sex from landlords, store owners, and Lebanese officials. Afana, a 26-year-old mother of two young children, said it is not uncommon even for male aid workers to demand sex. She explained through a translator what happened to her at one charity. “In one of the NGOs he told me if you accept to sleep with me, if we can have sexual relation, every time I have any kind of access to assistance it will be yours. I will have your name on it. So I started crying and went out of the NGO,” she recalled.

A homeless Syrian woman and her children are seen along a street in Beirut, July 22, 2013.

Lebanese officials describe reports of increased prostitution and the trading of sex for assistance as exaggerated, claiming they are isolated cases. They say few women are being trafficked, pointing to figures from the Internal Security Forces showing there were 27 trafficked women in 2011 with exactly the same number reported last year. But this is missing the point, aid workers said. They agree organized criminal trafficking isn’t large scale in Lebanon. What has become endemic is women and girls are being forced by their circumstances to resort to street-walking and survival sex and the aid workers say many men are happy to exploit their plight seeing them as fair game, they added.

Qass Em-Saad of the Lebanese branch of the aid organization Developmental Action Without Borders says Syrian women and girls are so desperate they are selling themselves for as little as 10,000 Lebanese pounds - about $7 - outside Ain Helweh, the Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon where more than 20,000 Palestinian Syrians have sought refuge. “Here we have a lot of cases but also because of the taboo and because of the Islamist factions that we have inside the camp the people they are afraid to talk about these things but if you go outside the camp you will see those Palestinians and Syrian girls or women who suffer from poverty, they are going outside the camp and they practice these sexual activities,” said Saad. Saad’s group is trying to train the Lebanese police to see these women as victims rather than as offenders.

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5,000 fleeing Syria every day...

UN: 5,000 Flee Syria Every Day; 28% of Population Driven From Homes
September 3, 2013 -- According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today, there are now 2 million Syrians who have fled their country as refugees and another 4.25 million who have been displaced from their home, but remain within the country.

The combined 6.25 million Syrians who are either refugees or displaced from their homes equals 28% of the Syrian population of 22,457,336 Additionally, the UNHCR said that "an average of almost 5,000 Syrians" were fleeing the country every day.

The UNHCR also predicts that by the end of 2013, about 10.25 million Syrians will need aid, including 3.5 million refugees and 6.8 million “Syrians inside their country, many of whom will be displaced from their homes.” Those 10.25 million people would equal 46% of Syria’s population.

The UNHCR said that, as of the end of August 2013, 2 million Syrians were refugees in neighboring countries: 110,000 Syrians were in Egypt; 168,000 Syrians in Iraq; 515,000 in Jordan; 716,000 in Lebanon; and 460,000 in Turkey.

The UNHCR also said that 4.25 million people are displaced inside Syria/ According to the UNHCR, 52% of the refugee population (or 1.04 million) are children ages 17 years or below.

UN: 5,000 Flee Syria Every Day; 28% of Population Driven From Homes | CNS News

See also:

Syria crisis: UN says more than 2m have fled
3 September 2013 ~ More than two million Syrians are now registered as refugees, after the total went up by a million in the last six months, the UN's refugee agency says. More Syrians are now displaced than any other nationality, says the UNHCR.

France and the US are continuing to push for military action over alleged chemical weapons use by Syrian forces. There are suggestions that President Barack Obama may be planning much wider action than the limited strikes that have been publicly proposed. The reports emerged as senior US politicians were set to speak before a congressional committee, to rally support before a vote expected next week on whether the US should launch military action. Tensions remain high in Syria and the surrounding region.

Russia said on Tuesday that it had detected two ballistic missiles being launched towards the eastern Mediterranean coastline, sparking speculation of a connection to the Syria crisis. But Israel later confirmed that it was a joint US-Israel missile test. The BBC's Richard Galpin in Jerusalem says tests like this are usually planned long in advance, but it is still a sign that the Israeli military is taking very seriously the possibility that US air strikes on Syria, if they do happen, could lead to retaliatory attacks on Israel - either by Syria itself or by its ally, the Shia militia Hezbollah in Lebanon.

'Lost generation'

Tent city now home to 130,000

The UNHCR said in a statement on Tuesday: "Syria is haemorrhaging women, children and men who cross borders often with little more than the clothes on their backs." Around half of those forced to leave are children, UN agencies estimate, with about three-quarters of them under 11. Just 118,000 refugee children have been able to continue in some sort of education, and only one-fifth have received some sort of counselling, with agencies warning of a "lost generation" of child refugees ill-equipped to help rebuild Syria in the future. Lebanon has received the highest number of refugees, at 700,000, even though it is the smallest of Syria's neighbours and one of the least able to cope.

There is now thought to be one Syrian refugee in Lebanon to roughly every six Lebanese. Jordan and Turkey have taken in the second and third highest numbers respectively. As well as those who have left the country, a further 4.25 million have been displaced within Syria, the UNHCR says, meaning that more people from Syria are now forcibly displaced than from other country. Pointing out that more than 97% of Syria's refugees are being hosted by countries in the surrounding region, the UNHCR said the influx was "placing an overwhelming burden on their infrastructures, economies and societies". It appealed again for "massive international support" with the crisis.

More BBC News - Syria crisis: UN says more than 2m have fled