Tag Archives: Afghans

Drought drives desperate Afghans to marry off children for money – U.N

An internally displaced Afghan girl stands outside her tent at a refugee camp in Herat province, Afghanistan October 14, 2018. Picture taken October 14, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail - RC1633CE5420

By Jared Ferrie

PHNOM PENH (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Afghanistan’s worst drought in decades has driven tens of thousands of people from their homes and is pushing families to marry off their children in exchange for dowries in order to survive, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

About 223,000 people have been uprooted from their homes in the drought-hit western provinces of Herat, Badghis and Ghor this year, according to the U.N. children’s agency (UNICEF).

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Afghan families have been skipping meals, selling off livestock and moving to cities where it is easier to access aid and services.

Some displaced families are taking even more drastic measures, according to UNICEF, which documented 161 child betrothals or marriages in Herat and Badghis between July and October. Of those, 155 were girls and six were boys.

“The drought is the worst in decades,” UNICEF spokeswoman Alison Parker told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Children are becoming the collateral.”

Families receive a bride price that can ease their financial woes, having lost their livelihoods and assets, said Parker.

Many drought-hit families have had to borrow money to pay for transport, food or healthcare, the United Nations said.

The charity World Vision reported that half of households it surveyed in Badghis in September said child marriage was a measure taken to put food on the table in times of drought.

About 11 million people – almost half of Afghanistan’s rural population – will be facing “severe acute food insecurity” until February, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system used by charities to measure hunger.

“Years of civil conflict and instability, as well as the severely degraded condition of much of the land, have compounded the impacts of the drought,” said an IPC report from August.

In addition to those forced by drought to leave their homes, conflict between the government and an array of armed groups, including the Taliban, has uprooted at least 282,000 people so far this year, according to the United Nations.

The 17-year war has also devastated Afghanistan’s education system, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, an alliance of aid agencies that includes UNICEF and Save the Children.

With a rising number of attacks on schools, teachers and students, the number of children who are not in education is increasing for the first time since 2002, the agencies said.

(Reporting by Jared Ferrie @jaredferrie; Editing Kieran Guilbert. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

In Greece, refugee women and children live in limbo

Faten 25, (L) from Syria, sits at the edge of the beach beside her sister-in-law near their tent outside the Souda refugees camp in Chios Island, Greece, June 10, 2017. "It's taking too long. This slowness to reunite families scares me," Faten said. "We have nothing to do all day long, we just sit by the tent which I share with my sister-in-law, a friend and her daughter."

y Zohra Bensemra

CHIOS, Greece (Reuters) – Thousands of refugee woman and children are living in limbo in Greece, waiting for the day they will be reunited with their families in other European countries.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says nearly 75,000 refugees and migrants stranded in Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Western Balkans are at risk of “psychological distress” caused by existing in a prolonged state of transit.

About 60,000 refugees and migrants, mostly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, have been stuck in Greece for over a year after border closures in the Balkans halted the onward journey many planned to take to central and western Europe.

More than a quarter are children and over half the new arrivals have been women and children, according to U.N. data. Men were the first family members to flee to Europe in previous years, leaving others to follow.

“Despair is haunting me at the moment,” said Soha, a 23-year-old Syrian who lives in a tent on the island of Chios with two her two-year-old daughter and other Syrian women.

In the camp, next to the ruins of an ancient castle, overcrowded tents are pitched on the edge of the pebbled shore, and rats roam among the garbage. Women say they are too scared to leave their tents at night, fearing harassment.

Like other women, Soha declined to give her last name or be identified in photographs, fearing it could affect her application to join her husband in Germany.

Family reunification can take between 10 months and two years, UNICEF says, making life particularly hard those left behind.

The uncertainty caused “significant psychological distress and anxiety for children and their families, setting them back for years to come”, UNICEF Regional Director Afshan Khan said.

A one-year-old girl smiles as she sits with her mother, Ibtissam, 22, at the Souda Refugee Camp in Chios island, Greece, June 10, 2017. "I was one month pregnant with my daughter and my son was one year old when my husband migrated to Germany." Ibtissam, who is from Raqqa said. "I feel devastated, at the moment I can’t apply for family reunification because I have to wait until my husband gets his asylum document.... I feel depressed but I have to keep holding on for my children."

A one-year-old girl smiles as she sits with her mother, Ibtissam, 22, at the Souda Refugee Camp in Chios island, Greece, June 10, 2017. “I was one month pregnant with my daughter and my son was one year old when my husband migrated to Germany.” Ibtissam, who is from Raqqa said. “I feel devastated, at the moment I can’t apply for family reunification because I have to wait until my husband gets his asylum document…. I feel depressed but I have to keep holding on for my children.” REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

“I spend most of the day alone,” said Farhiya, a 23-year-old Somali who lives in a volunteer-run camp on Lesbos island.

“The other refugees don’t speak English and I don’t speak Arabic. It’s hard to live alone,” she said. Farhiya applied to join her husband in Austria seven months ago while still pregnant, but has not heard back, she said.

In Athens, 36-year-old Khalissa, who fled Syria with her three young children, spends her days in a drop-in center run by a UNICEF partner, a brief respite from her problems.

She colors in hearts representing her feelings about the past, present and future. The past is blue for sadness, the present brown for fear and the future, in which she hopes to reunite with her husband after two years, yellow for happiness.

Ultimately, she longs to go home.

“If Syria becomes as before the war, I will return home,” she said. “We must return home.”

(Writing by Karolina Tagaris, editing by Ed Osmond)