Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Number of Non-registered Increases in Syria | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
Select Page
Media ID: 55357187
Caption:

Asheqa holds her unregistered seven-month-old daughter Nour inside their tent in a refugee camp in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir


London- Even before the war ends in Syria, the agony of non-registered children has come to surface as on the most complicated consequences of the war. It is actually aggravating as the number of non-registered increases in the opposition-ruled regions as well as regime-ruled ones.

Fatima, a Palestinian refugee in Syria, said that she was not able to register her grandson, now 4, because his father was lost in Yarmouk Camp before registering his marriage in the court.

The kid has nothing to identify him and can’t enroll in a school.

Raifa, now 30, suffers same problem ever since she got married to a Kurdish man who is not registered. Once the revolution broke out in Syria, the husband left Raifa and their daughter Jinan, then 1, to Hasakah and disappeared there. Raifa said that she tried every possible way to register her marriage but she failed and Jinan now doesn’t go to school.

After five years of chaos, displacement and destruction, the problem of unregistered continues to aggravate and now includes hundred thousands of Arab Syrians. Media sources reveal that there are hundreds of unregistered children in Deir ez-Zor Governorate who are subject to be deprived from their civil rights and the right to education.

A woman succeeded in escaping Deir ez-Zor with her kid to Damascus but failed to register him. She was asked to return to Deir ez-Zor and register there in the regions seized by the regime and besieged by ISIS. The woman had to pay SYP400, 000 to finally get all the official documents she needed.

There are only 32% of 70,000 Syrian births registered officially, according to figures provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Lebanon.