AMMAN: The number of children affected by Syria’s war doubled in the past year to 5.5 million, the UN said yesterday, a heartrending picture of an entire generation on the verge of being lost.
And in a report entitled “Under Siege — the devastating impact on children of three years of conflict in Syria,” the UN children’s agency Unicef warned that the situation was likely to get worse.
“Cut off from aid, living in rubble and struggling to find food, many Syrian children have been left without protection, medical care or psychological support, and have little or no access to education,” the report said. “In the very worst cases, children and pregnant women have been deliberately wounded or killed by snipers,” it added.
One million children are now trapped in areas of Syria that are under siege or that are hard to reach with humanitarian assistance, and some two million children are in need of psychological support or treatment, the report said. “For Syria’s children, the past three years have been the longest of their lives. Must they endure another year of suffering,” asked UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake.
Hamida Lasseko, UNICEF’s deputy representative in Syria, said witnessing children’s suffering and trauma in Syria was heart wrenching.
Lasseko described a five-year-old girl whom she and Unicef workers had found wandering around Homs when the evacuation of besieged areas of the central city began last month. “Her mother had died in shelling the day before,” she said.
The report said “the future of 5.5 million children inside Syria and living as refugees in neighbouring countries hangs in the balance.”
AFP
