RAQQA, Syria (North Press) – Fatima al-Nasser, 47, an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) from the eastern countryside of Homs Governorate, was unable to send her children to school despite begging her to send them and save them from illiteracy.
The woman lives in a squatter camp called al-Dahmoush in the southern countryside of Raqqa, northern Syria. The camp’s residents suffer from the lack of livelihoods and dire living conditions due to the scarcity of relief aid.
The lack of aid or its complete cut-off from some camps, including al-Dahmoush, in addition to the lack of schools, forced the IDPs to deprive their children of education and send them to work to help their families to get through the hardships of life.
In al-Dahmoush camp, and other squatter camps in Raqqa countryside, you would see children aging around 15 who do not know how to write or read.
The IDPs in the camps of Raqqa fear that their children may stay in this situation for a long period of time. If so, they worry that this would pave the way for building an illiterate generation.
Al-Nasser told North Press that her children cry every day because they cannot go to school, but it is not only them as thousands of children in these camps suffer from the same issue.
It seems that sending her children to school is “out of reach”, due to the lack of a nearby school and, moreover, going to school means abandoning their current jobs, which is the only source of income for the family.
There are 58 squatter camps in the countryside of Raqqa. Most of the IDPs living in these camps were displaced from the areas held by Syrian government such as Hama, Homs, Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor.
These camps house about 90.000 IDPs, comprising 16.165 families, according to an official statistics obtained by North Press from the Office of Camps and IDPs Affairs in the Raqqa Civil Council which is affiliated with the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).
The AANES was first formed in 2014 in the Kurdish-majority regions of Afrin, Kobani and Jazira in northern Syria following the withdrawal of the government forces. Later, it was expanded to Manbij, Tabqa, Raqqa, Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor after the SDF defeated ISIS militarily there.
These IDPs complain about lack of humanitarian aid provided to them in light of harsh living conditions in the camps.
Mnawwar al-Majid, head of the Office of Camps and Displaced Affairs in the Civil Council of Raqqa, said that illiteracy among children is a result of the absence of education in these camps.
He noted that education programs are implemented in only 12 out of the 58 camps located in Raqqa countryside.
The closure of al-Ya’rubiyah (Tel Kocher) border-crossing more than two years ago has exacerbated the bad living conditions for the IDPs in Raqqa and other areas in northeastern Syria.
Ali Shadid, 40, an IDP from Homs countryside who lives in al-Dahmoush camp, believed that a “dark future” is awaiting children as they keep growing up illiterate.
Shadid, too, did not send his children to school, saying, “We have no capacity as long as there is no school or educational point, let alone the state of poverty we live in the camp.”