WORLD_ Syrian refugees’ lives begin as they end: in poverty and limbo

TheNational


A young girl leans against a shack in the Abu Khaled Al Sarout refugee camp in the town of Bar Elias, Lebanon. Winter weather has flooded the farmland that the camp sits on with pungent wastewater. Josh Wood for The National

Syrian refugees’ lives begin as they end: in poverty and limbo

Josh Wood Foreign Correspondent

March 2, 2015 Updated: March 2, 2015 12:39 AM

BAR ELIAS, Lebanon // At both the start and end of life for many Syrian refugees in Lebanon, there is simply nowhere to go.

In the muddy farmland on the outskirts of this town in the Bekaa Valley, those who have fled the war across the border have been settling down for years. The refugees hoped their stay in Lebanon would be short, but today there is a certain feeling of permanence as the pace of life in exile sets in.

Refugees are born here and refugees die here. But when they die, there is confusion over where to lay the bodies to rest. And when children arrive into this life of limbo and poverty, the vast majority risk becoming stateless.

Mafida Yousef Abdul Rahim’s husband passed away two months ago in Bar Elias after battling kidney failure for years. She knew it would be impossible to bury him nearby.

“We just know from what people say that they would not let you bury a Syrian here,” she said.

The family asked around but was told that the local cemetery was full. For several hundred dollars – a huge sum for chronically underemployed refugees – they were told they could perhaps buy a grave plot owned by a local.

Luckily, Mrs Abdul Rahim’s family has friends who own land a half-hour drive away.

“They donated the grave for us, just as a brother or son [of theirs] died, because we did not know what to do with the body,” she said.

Mohammad Awad Mohammad, a 52-year-old refugee from Quneitra in the Golan Heights, faced a similar dilemma last year.

“My mother got sick – I was afraid that if she died there would be no place to bury her,” he said.

Mr Mohammad sent his ailing mother back to Syria where she died and was buried. Afraid that he would not be allowed to return to Lebanon, which has limited refugees’ access to its borders, he did not attend the funeral.

Bar Elias has taken in more than 35,000 refugees according to the United Nations. The town’s mukhtar, or local and administrative leader, Ahmed Shehab, puts the number even higher – maybe 50,000 or 60,000 he says, but nobody really knows.

Sitting under the snow-covered Mount Lebanon range, some live in makeshift huts alongside shallow ponds of wastewater. Others cram into sparsely furnished apartments.

The town had just 35,000 Lebanese inhabitants before the conflict in Syria started.

Mr Shehab said there is no ban on refugees burying their dead in the town, it’s just that the cemetery is too full.

“There’s not even enough space for the residents,” said Mr Shehab. “If there were spots free, they wouldn’t say no.”

At Bar Elias’ cemetery – which sits on a steep hill surrounded by the town – it’s easy to see that space is at a premium.

Bodies are buried where plots fit: at angles crammed between other graves and on inclines, jammed in like puzzle pieces above the city. Sometimes, Mr Shehab said, more than one body is buried in the same grave.

Nabila Mohammad Al Amar, a 38-year-old refugee, is one of the few Syrians in Bar Elias who was allowed to bury a loved one in the cemetery.

Mrs Amar fled Sayyida Zeinab in Damascus’s southern suburbs after shelling caused her family’s house to collapse on top of them. She moved into a hotel with her husband and three children, but after that building became under fire, they finally abandoned Syria for Lebanon.

“We thought we were running from bombing and pain, but we got more pain here,” she said.

In Lebanon she became pregnant with her fourth child. In November, a few days into the ninth month of her pregnancy, she gave birth prematurely in a pharmacy. The baby was kept under observation in the hospital for 24 hours before being released back into her care.

Ten days later, the baby was dead.

“It was a very normal ten days, and then he passed away,” she said. “What can we do? It’s what God wants.”

Doctors told her it was a blood-borne virus that the baby contracted after birth.

When she went to town to seek a burial for her son, Mrs Al Amar was told there was no place to bury him. With the help of a lawyer, she pleaded for a plot at the cemetery, saying the baby’s body – even smaller than most newborns – would not take up much space. Eventually the child was granted a tiny plot. She washed the dead infant and wrapped him in a white cloth before her husband brought the boy to the cemetery.

But for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, uncertainty doesn’t just come at the end of life, but also at the very beginning.

Of the 42,000 Syrian refugee children born in Lebanon, the UN estimates that 70 per cent – or almost 30,000 – do not have birth certificates.

By lacking birth certificates, there is a significant risk that these children will end up stateless. Beyond just being without a nationality on paper, statelessness can greatly affect the lives these children will lead.

“If you don’t have your civil documentation papers, it makes access to services and rights such as education and health more difficult,” said Julie Dube-Gagnon, legal coordinator with the Norwegian Refugee Council.

For parents who do have the necessary paperwork to register their children, the task is still lengthy and difficult and involves trips to a number of local and federal offices. The final step involves a visit to the Syrian embassy – a daunting trip for many who fled the regime’s strikes.

After an unregistered child turns one year old, the process becomes even more complicated and involves the court system, said Ms Dube-Gagnon.

Two-month-old Nazik, cradled by her mother Abeer Salloum in a tent in Bar Elias, faces the looming threat of statelessness. Nazik is Mrs Salloum’s fourth child and her second lacking documentation. Mrs Salloum has an appointment with staff from the UN’s refugee agency in a month’s time for advice on navigating the complex process for registering her children in Lebanon. But she is not optimistic that it will help them: other refugees tell her that getting documentation “is impossible”.

Mrs Salloum says it would be easy to register her daughter’s birth in Syria, but she is too afraid to go back. “There’s no way I’m going back to Homs,” she said. “It’s destroyed.”

Without documentation, the future looks bleak for refugee children like Nazik.

While Mrs Salloum’s two youngest children will be given food if they remain in Lebanon, they will receive “no education, no health care”, she says.

foreign.desk@thenational.ae

***

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