RAQQA, Syria (North Press) – With great sadness, the 32-year-old Ibtisam al-Ali, a pseudonym for a woman from the city of Raqqa, north Syria, wonders how and where her child is now, after she abandoned him, nine years ago, near a garbage dump near al-Rashid Park in central Raqqa, a week after his birth.
She was 23 years old at the time, when she fall in love with a young man from the same city. Though he proposed to her several times, her parents refused to marry their daughter to him.
One night in 2013, the girl decided to elope with the young man, a while later she got pregnant leading her lover to abandon her after he discover about the pregnancy.
Since running away and getting married without the family’s permission considered a shame, the young mother-to-be resorted to one of her relatives in the city to hide for fear of being killed by her family members under the name of honor crime.
“I spent the entire gestation period in the house of my relatives, and when I gave birth to the baby I tried to contact with the father to tell him that he had a baby, but I did all in vain.”
During the last few years of the Syrian war, babies have been found abandoned on the streets, in mosques and even in trash bins.
Most of the cases are attributed to impoverished parents unable to support their children, and they are not necessarily born of adultery as some call them. Deaths of children due to starvation and cold weather have also contributed to the increase of such cases, according to reports.
Sometimes, an explanatory piece of paper is left with the infant in which the parents justify their practice or write the phrase “a legitimate child”.
Between mid-October 2021 and the beginning of January 2022, the Child Protection Office in the Raqqa Civil Council documented seven cases of child abandonment. anyway, no accurate statistics have been available so far for all cases.
Circumstances forced me
Al-Ali narrated to North Press the moments when abandoning her baby saying, “I was walking and going to throw it, my heart was breaking, imagine I had to throw a piece of my soul, and I would no longer know anything about it, I did so because my difficult conditions left me no other choice.”
After that night, the mother knew nothing about her baby, “I don’t know whether he is in Raqqa or not, alive or dead. I wish I could see and embrace him again.”
Later on, al-Ali married again, after reconciling with her family, and gave birth to two other children, “My husband knows everything about my first marriage and the baby I abandoned.”
According to the Syrian Law of Personal Status, person of unknown descent includes a child of unknown filiation who lacks a legal caregiver, a child that is lost and that, owing to its age, physical or psychological impairments is unable to provide information about his/her parents and whose parents are hence untraceable.
The civil registry will name the child of unknown filiation and assign assumed names for the parents and for the grandfather so that the name of the grandfather can be used as the child of unknown filiation’s surname.
The child of unknown filiation may be given the family name of its foster family upon a request made by the head of that family and the approval of the person of unknown filiation after reaching 18 years of age; and his/her surname will then be amended accordingly.
Adopting children
Securing a normal life for these children within families able to provide them with all the health conditions is a “dream” since the society treats a war orphan or children of unknown filiation as foundlings, Khadija al-Awad, a specialist in psychology and counseling, said.
Care centers often have negative impacts on psyche of these children, especially with the presence of five or more children sometimes under the protection of one surrogate mother, therefore, “they receive inadequate rehabilitation,” She pointed out.
Under the title of “respecting privacy of children and families, and for fear of bullying,” the Child Protection Office in Raqqa did not allow the correspondent of North Press Agency to visit one of the families that adopted one of the children registered in the office.
“The office coordinates with families, which want to adopt children, necessitating the need to take care of the child’s needs according to official documents,” Amira al-Hassan, co-chair of the office said.
A Case Management Department within the office is responsible for conducting a full study of the situation of families applying for adoption, and identifying whether the family is able to adopt the child and take care of him/her or not, according to al-Hassan.
I don’t want your child
During the Islamic State Organization (ISIS) era in Raqqa, brothers of Fadila Muhammad, a pseudonym for a young woman from Raqqa, despite her young age at the time, forced her to marry an ISIS member.
However, due to the battles erupted between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and ISIS, her husband fled Raqqa while she was pregnant, and left her with her family.
Muhammad tried to communicate with her husband after she gave birth to the baby, but all he said was “I do not admit that I am the father, I don’t want you and your baby, do not call me back.”
Twenty days later, and on a cold winter night in early 2018, Muhammad abandoned her baby in front of a store in the middle of Tel Abyad street in the city center of Raqqa.
“I am the one who abandoned her baby, I put it in the street at midnight, I was forced to do so because my family didn’t want it.”