A War They Cannot Forget

They have witnessed unspeakable horror.

Most Syrian refugee children will struggle for the rest of their lives with the atrocities they have witnessed. During registration interviews in Tyre, Lebanon, two UNHCR registration assistants, Tatiana Nassar and Therese Sarkis, invite children to draw. Both women have backgrounds in psychology. Every day, they see at least one or two children they can identify with acute distress or depression.

Children as young as four and five draw graphic images of guns and bloodshed, revealing horrible memories that cannot be supressed.

While some Syrian children have endured physical injury, very few have escaped the psychological wounds that come from living in the midst of a war.

Over the past nine months, Sheeraz Mukhaimer, who works with one of our partners, International Medical Corps (IMC) in Jordan, has worked with more than 90 Syrian refugee children. She recounts that a number of children have not only seen their family members killed before their own eyes, but they have then helped to move and bury them.

“This is impossible to forget,” says 15-year-old Taha, who saw seven corpses lying on the ground near his home in Damascus, Syria. “It is like someone has stabbed me with a knife when I remember.”

UN agencies and partners provide psychosocial support to refugee children in Jordan and Lebanon, such as individual and family counselling and recreational activities at registration centres.

There is a serious gap in the availability of state-run mental health services and the thousands of children who need help rebuilding their lives. It is said that “time heals all wounds.” For these children of war – forced from their homes and victims of unspeakable loss – time alone will not be enough to heal their trauma.

When our staff saw this child's drawing, they were reminded of the children in Darfur and what they drew to share about their experiences. The pictures were similar.

The situation in Syria is devastating!

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(Source)