Syrians in Egypt pose petitions and appeals at the door of the UNHCR
Cairo – Mohamed Abuzaid – North-Press Agency
“We do not want financial help; our dignity does not allow … we just want to help us return to Alexandria (northern Egypt).”
This was part of distress presented by Fayez Darwish (a Syrian resident in Turkey, five years ago) to the UNHCR in Egypt, asking that the UNHCR, which he described as “having humanitarian values that known to assist vulnerable families facing death”, to help him to return to Egypt.
Darwish’s story, which he narrated in his appeal to UNHCR, is summarized that his family and he were living in Egypt five years ago, after their escape from the raging war in Syria.
They had to travel on a short visit to Turkey to farewell the rest of the family members before traveling to Europe. However, after the farewell of their relatives, they were prevented from entering Egypt and returning to their house and work, so they remained in Turkey since five years. They hope that UNHCR facilitates their return to Egypt. He said, “We do not want anything else, just to return, and we would be as we were the happiest family on earth.”
Darwish appeal is one of the many appeals and calls made directly to UNHCR, through its official Facebook page that concerned with refugee affairs’ on the social network. These complaints and appeals include many cases; each of them has its own sufferings, hoping UNHCR to solve the problems, especially health problems.
Distress call
The young Syrian Ahmed Salem, in his appeal to UNHCR, told the story of his mother, who needs to have emergency eye surgery, who is registered at UNHCR, and applied for the operation request eight months ago, but she received no response till now and she became threatened with the loss of sight totally.
Kamal Kamal suffers from a chronic disease (arthritis, coloenteritis with ulcers and bleeding). Although he is registered at UNHCR for assistance to refugees, including Syrian refugees, he has not been able to get the appropriate treatment until now.
He was receiving it from UNHCR, but it has stopped following new changes and the transfer of UNHCR-assisted clinics.
Kamal told North-Press that, he has not received the medicine from UNHCR since the end of 2018 and he is forced to bear its cost now, which adds additional financial burdens, stressing that he submitted more than one complaint to UNHCR, and he is waiting for a response or solving his problem.
Many people with chronic diseases are among the regular visitors to UNHCR’s agencies and its cooperating clinics, and even on its pages on the social media, they make urgent appeals and complaints for medication or surgery.
This was spotted by North-Press in direct communication with a number of cases, or through direct appeals made by some to UNHCR through its official page on the social media, and in front of cooperating clinics.
Complaint
Many Syrian refugees also complain that UNHCR does not respond by telephone, which is a repeated complaint that was shared by a number of them through the UNHCR page on Facebook; including refugee Vicky Adam, who said, “There are more than one number, but no one answers the phone and even they answer, let them, for example, say I cannot help you, I will tell the concerned party.”
Mohammed al-Sheikh (a Syrian from the Damascus countryside who lives in Egypt) says in his complaint to UNHCR that he makes “more than 50 attempts every day to communicate with UNHCR, to renew the yellow card (registration card as a refugee in Egypt) about a month ago, to no avail.”
Among the appeals also monitored was a complaint by Hadi al-Ansari (a Syrian refugee in Egypt), in which he said, “We have been registered with UNHCR since 2016 and we have not received any humanitarian or food assistance; our situation is very difficult, and no one has contacted us to settle in a third country, I am an old man with cardiac, vertebrae, roughness of the knee, prostate, irritable bowel and other diseases, and my wife is diabetic, over 60 years.
In addition to that the manner in which the United Nations staff deal with us is extremely careless and grossly disrespectful,” he said.
North-Press tried to communicate with UNHCR to find ways to deal with those agencies and efforts to solve communication problems, but received no response.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said in a previous statement published on its website, that the Syrian influx exhausts the efforts of the health services in the host countries, especially those suffering chronic diseases.