Netrika Mudgal
Amity University, Noida
The beginning of the Syrian civil war in March 2011, marked the huge amount of conflict that eventually killed thousands of people and ultimately turned the nation apart and as a result, it set back the standard of living of the lives of the people for years. Now it’s the 10th year and the Syrian refugee crisis is known as the largest refugee displacement crisis of all time. Nearly 5.6 million Syrians are refugees in Syria itself and another 6.2 million people are displaced within Syria. This war has destroyed crowded cities and horrific human rights violations are widespread. Half of the Syrian population is in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
Syrians who have already endured almost a decade of war and displaced are now facing unprecedented levels of hunger leaving millions of people acutely vulnerable to COVID-19. The last three months have raised the spike of these tensions between the Syrian refugees themselves as they urgently need assistance in any way possible. As mentioned by the UN refugee agency the number of vulnerable refugees who lack basic resources to survive has dramatically surged as a result of the public health emergency. And with the new crisis which has arrived due to the pandemic, it is more difficult for the Syrians to survive while taking other safety precautions in the mind.
Syria crisis: Hunger spreading amid Covid-19 and Economic collapse
Syrians have already faced displacement almost for a decade of war and are now facing unmatchable levels of hunger leaving many people vulnerable to COVID-19. The restrictions imposed due to the covid-19 collapsed the Syrian pound and a large number of families in Syria are no longer being able to put food on the table or cannot even make enough money to afford their necessities.
The Brussels conference which was held on 30 June 2020 hosted by the EU and UN aimed at raising funds and agree on policy changes that will help Syrians inside the country and in the region. The agencies like Oxfam, Humanity & inclusion, the International rescue committee, and the Norwegian Refugee council warn that unless funding and humanitarian access are increased many Syrians including those living as refugees in the region will be pushed to the edge of starvation. Almost a decade of war has thrown Syrians into a series of despair that keeps worsening every year. International assistance is needed now more than ever. Water is scarce and the health and civilian infrastructures are decimated.
In the northeast, the first cases of Covid-19 were confirmed over a month ago which ultimately resulted in concerns over a lack of preparedness. Lack of Covid-19 testing capacity chronically understocked health facilities and the main water pumping station which serviced 460,000 people regularly being out of commission which continue to be the daily reality. Like in the northwest taking measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus is especially difficult in the many overcrowded camps and informal settlements across the region.
Aid provided by United Nations:
International agencies are calling on global leaders to scale up financial support in comparison to previous years for Syrians in their country and those displaced in the region so that they can have a chance not only to survive but to rebuild their lives in safety and dignity. The united nations security council called for renewing the Syria cross-border resolution for northwest Syria for 12 months and to re-authorize access to northeast Syria to ensure that vulnerable people can receive lifesaving assistance. More access to those in need is crucial right now so that the humanitarian community can support families as they struggle through pandemic and the economic crisis that is sweeping across the country.
Impact of Covid-19 on Employment of Syrians
The Covid-19 crisis has resulted in a high number of permanent and temporary job lay-offs, especially among informal workers. The majority of the respondents in Syria were permanently laid off as a result of the Covid-19 crisis. Sixty percent of the Syrian refugees were permanently laid off and 31 percent were temporarily laid off. Those who were permanently laid off from their jobs were in agriculture and construction. This may be explained by the irregular and casual nature of work in these sectors. Higher lay-off rates were found among workers who lacked written contracts as well as among independent and self-employment workers.
In Jordan, one-third of the Syrian workers had lost their jobs permanently due to the crisis. While 35% of all Syrians who were in employment before the crisis lost their jobs permanently. Further, workers with a written contract have lower anticipation of losing their jobs 40% compared to those with a verbal agreement 57% or no contract 59%. Similarly, more workers with irregular types of employment 59% are concerned about the risks of losing their jobs as a result of the ongoing crisis. This again highlights the fact that workers in informal employment are most vulnerable and most affected by the crisis.
Reduction in household income-
The visible effects of lockdown measures include reduction and losses in wage income for the surveyed workers in Jordan and Lebanon. In Lebanon, the results show that income in March 2020 decreased by more than two-thirds for both Lebanese and Syrian workers compared to their average monthly income in the previous 12 months. 94% of the employed respondent from both nationalities reported large wage reductions.
Before the lockdown in Jordan, the average monthly income during the past 12 months had been 368 Jordanian Dinars while the average income in March 2020 was reduced to 215 Jordanian Dinars. This decline in income was attributed to reduced working hours as well as some workers being dismissed from their work permanently. Income loss is more pronounced for Syrian refugees; whose average income fell below the set monthly minimum wage of 220 Jordanian Dinars. This is partly explained by the temporary nature of work agreements obtained by large shares of Syrian workers. This implies that the COVID-19 pandemic substantially affects household income and more proportionately those households whose members are working in informal arrangements.
Food and Shelter-
Syrians have been facing an unpredictable hunger crisis with over 9.3 million people lacking adequate food while the country’s coronavirus outbreak has emerged. The UN world food program has helped these refugees by raising the foodstuff to over 1.4 million in the past six months. It is the highest number ever recorded. Food prices had also soared by more than 200 percent in less than a year due to the free-fall in neighboring economies of Lebanon and Covid-19 lockdown measures in Syria.
The growing hunger in Syria could trigger another mass exodus unless donor countries send more funds to alleviate hunger and the international community ensures aid shipments that could reach the war-derived countries.
Medical problems-
Evacuees frequently have complex clinical issues including physical wounds and mental injury. In United Nations, they regularly face helpless lodging and clean conditions, troublesome work conditions, lacking sustenance, and out-of-reach clinical consideration. The most pervasive afflictions are skin, stomach-related framework, and respiratory ailments just as injury-related mental and mental problems. Moreover, as a lower-center salary nation with a steady working-class, numerous Syrians have persistent medical issues including hypertension, diabetes, and malignant growth.
Negative ways of dealing with stress, for example, youngster work, kid relationships, and so forth add to the weights confronting displaced people, setting up the ground for intergenerational transmission of weaknesses. These difficult conditions imply that infections like polio that had been once in the past annihilated, have had episodes which, however, contained, underline the innate dangers. There are additional difficulties around perpetually drug safe strains of tuberculosis spreading with tuberculosis having just expanded inside Syria and neighboring nations.
Education sector-
Syrian displaced person kids in Jordan are defying obstructions to train that develop more intense as they progress into auxiliary instruction. Each kid has the option to quality essential and auxiliary instruction. However, just a fourth of optional young Syrian exile youngsters in Jordan are taken to school.
As archived by Human Rights Watch in this report, the fundamental driver of progressively lower enlistment of Syrian displaced people in Jordan is destitution, absence of moderate and safe transportation, the low quality of training in schools for Syrian youngsters, the low benefit of proceeding with instruction for Syrians given their restricted proficient open doors in Jordan, authoritative obstructions to enlistment, and absence of facilities for kids with inabilities. Inability to guarantee auxiliary training for dislodged youngsters and teenagers denies them the abilities they need, stops future financial chances, and dangers sabotaging monetary turn of events. Schools can be defensive and sustain expectations, and kids with optional instruction are normally more advantageous and likelier to look for some kind of employment as grown-ups and get away from neediness. Youngsters who drop out are at an expanded danger of kid work, kid marriage, sexual brutality, being caught in destitution, and being enrolled by radical outfitted gatherings.
Inequalities in the education sector-
Syrian exiles were taken a crack at 76 of Jordan’s 1,175 auxiliary schools: 65 in have networks, and 11 optional schools in the primary evacuee camps, Zaatari and Azraq, as per a Sussex University investigation of the latest accessible information (from 2017-18). The measure of guidance understudies get can vary by up to 34 percent, contingent upon the school. In the camp schools, exercises keep going for 30 to 35 minutes; in twofold move schools in Jordanian host networks, exercises keep going for 30 to 40 minutes; in practically all ordinary schools, exercises keep going for 45 minutes, given testing of 100 schools with almost 48,000 understudies, under an EU-supported program to improve the nature of instruction. Throughout 10 years of fundamental training, the disparities between camp schools and normal schools add up to three years of guidance. In the evacuee camps, young men dwarf young ladies in each class level, and in second-move schools in having networks, a normal of 18 Syrian young men and only 14 young ladies were joined up with class 10, as per the Sussex University study. In schools with both Jordanian and Syrian understudies, Syrian young ladies’ enlistment surpasses Syrian young men’s enlistment by class 10. More exploration is expected to decide the purposes behind these striking aberrations.
Syrian just as Jordanian youngsters with handicaps face extreme snags to training, with hardly any comprehensive and open government-funded schools. Jordan was the main Arab nation to approve the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and has passed an inability rights law that is comprehensively defensive on paper, yet its 10-year methodology to make instruction more comprehensive tries to enlist just 10% of the complete number of young kids with incapacities by 2031. Syrian kids with handicaps are in extreme danger of being barred from optional training, yet deficient information has been gathered about this in danger gathering.
