{"id":67195,"date":"2021-11-04T19:30:03","date_gmt":"2021-11-04T19:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/npasyria.com\/en\/?p=67195"},"modified":"2021-11-04T19:30:48","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T19:30:48","slug":"displaced-women-in-syrias-derik-forced-to-work-outside-leaving-children-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/npasyria.com\/en\/67195\/","title":{"rendered":"Displaced women in Syria\u2019s Derik forced to work outside leaving children alone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

DERIK, Syria (North Press) \u2013 <\/strong>Ayoush Nazim, a 43-year old widow, displaced from Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) city and lives in Derik-based Newroz camp, northeast Syria. Every day, she commutes to a restaurant in Derik to make bread in order to sustain their family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Difficult livelihood conditions, inflation, and the increasing supplies of their sick children are all reasons why Nazim and other women are forced to leave their children alone in the camp and work outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other women preferred to work in harvesting and different crafts.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nazim, is a mother of three little girls, the eldest is 10 years old. She is too concerned that her little girls might get sick in the winter season as she will not be there to turn on the kerosene heater for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo 1<\/strong>  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nazim arrived to the camp around a year ago and soon found a job in collecting vegetables. However, the low daily wages she got prompted her to search for another job. Finally, she managed to make paratha (flat bread fried on a griddle) in a restaurant in the city of Derik. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nazim and two other women collaborate in making 1,000 loaves of paratha every day for only 7,000 SYP (approximately $2) per day for each of them.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nerwoz camp includes 817 displaced families and 4,173 individuals from different parts of Syria: Afrin, Sere Kaniye, Tel Abyad and Tel Tamr countryside, according to the camp’s management.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The camp was founded in 2014 to shelter refugees from Shingal (Sinjar), north Iraq, during the ISIS attacks on their area. Later, when ISIS was defeated, all the refugees went back home and were reunited with their families. Then, in October 2019, the camp re-sheltered IDPs from Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad during the military operations carried out by the Turkish forces and their backed opposition factions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have to work<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nazim’s duty in the restaurant is to roll dough in small circles, a job she has to do since she does not have any other income to provide for her family. Yet, her daily wage does not cover expenses of medication and the surgery operation one of her daughter needs given she was diagnosed with tonsillitis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Last week I bought my daughter medicine for 20,000 SYP (equivalent to $4) and I paid the doctor 7,000 SYP (equivalent to 2$) and now I got nothing left with me,” she said.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lack of humanitarian aids has worsened the livelihood situation in the camp. All the IDPs in the camp used to receive food baskets every month but now they receive them every two or more months, the IDPs complained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There is deficiency in the mechanism of distributing aids to the IDPs especially by the advent of winter. The closure of cross-border points in the face of humanitarian assistance have affected negatively the IDPs who are likely to suffer humanitarian and medical crisis,” Sheikhmous Ahmad, co-chair of the Office of Refugees and Displaced Affairs of the Autonomous Administration of North and Ease Syria (AANES), earlier said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harsh conditions<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Zahra Mahmoud, a displaced woman from Sere Kaniye, complains the aids she receives are too little. “The 18 loaves of bread we get every day are not enough for 9 members of my family.”  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mahmoud has two disabled children whom she leaves alone in the tent and goes to a restaurant with her eldest daughter to work as dishwashers for 11 hours a day. Each one of them gets 3,000 SYP (equivalent to less than $1) plus one bundle of bread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo 2<\/strong> <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like other displaced women, Wasila Ismael, 37, from Sere Kaniye, is forced to work to provide for her two little girls whom one of them suffers heart problems and has to have a weekly medication for 16,000 SYP (approximately $4).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The women who work in the Derik-based restaurant also suffer transportation difficulties since they finish work in the evening, according to one of them.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We start work as soon as we get to the restaurant. It is very cold in there. As we complete 1,000 loaves of paratha, we feel exhausted,” Wasila Ismael said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“As for my husband, he is a daily hire employee. Sometimes he is lucky and finds job but sometimes he is not,” she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I am too concerned my two little girls get hurt when they are alone in the tent. Few days ago, I came back home and the neighbors had rushed my one of my girls to the clinic for an injury she got in her leg,” she noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reporting by Solnar Muhammad<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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