Syria among “most dangerous places on Earth” for children: UNICEF
Baku, March 11 (AZERTAC). The number of children affected by conflict in Syria has more than doubled in a year, from 2.3 million to over 5.5 million, the United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF) revealed today in a report entitled “Under Siege. The devastating impact of three years of conflict in Syria on children”.
One Syrian minor in ten - or more than 1.2 million - have been forced to seek refuge in neighbouring countries, while the number of displaced minors inside Syria has more than tripled in one year to three million.
“After three years of chaos and conflict, Syria is among the most dangerous places in the world for a child. Thousands and thousands of children have undergone amputations or lost their lives and practically every aspect of their childhood” from home to school to their loved ones, reads the document. The report makes a prudent estimate of at least 10,000 children killed, and recalls episodes in which children and pregnant women were deliberately wounded or killed by snipers. Particularly hit are the roughly one million children and teenagers who survive in areas of Syria under siege or that are difficult for humanitarian assistance to reach. One refugee Syrian child in ten must work instead of going to school, and precocious marriages now concern one girl in five among refugees in Jordan.
The report warns that the future of the 5.5 million Syrian children are at risk: violence, the collapse of health and education services (about three million school age children are not in school or 40%), severe psychological stress, and economic impact are likely to “devastate a generation”, the report said.
The UNICEF report said 2 million children needed some form of psychological support or treatment while a total of 5.5 million children were affected by the conflict - some of them inside Syria and others living abroad as refugees.
This is more than twice the number of children affected by the conflict in March 2013, when UNICEF estimated it had impacted 2.3 million young Syrians.
The number of children displaced inside Syria has risen to nearly 3 million from 920,000 a year ago. Meanwhile, UNICEF said the number of child refugees has grown to 1.2 million from 260,000 since last year - 425,000 of them under 5 years old.
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