A large number of children aged between one day and 15 years, who have lost their families in Arab war-torn states, were kidnapped or fled to other areas where their whereabouts remain unknown. In Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and South Sudan in particular, regular armies and the US-led Global Coalition to Counter ISIS have been engaged in confrontations with terrorist organizations, in addition to militias fighting each other on the ground as well.
"They are fleeing definitely life-threatening situations," said Daniel Abate of aid group Save the Children, which helps reunite lost children with their families. Odds of the young ones being reunited with their families remain slim.
While it is a grim reality for children forcibly separated from their parents, the outlook for those who remain with their families is no less grim either. That is because the crisis is a long-standing one that arises from the “cycle of conflict”. A report, released by U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa in March 2013, highlighted the crisis. As millions of children inside Syria and across this region witness their past and their futures disappear amidst the rubble and destruction of this prolonged conflict, the risk of them becoming a lost generation grows every day, UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said while launching the report. Those children were deprived of access to education, health care and learning skills that help them become production members of the community.
Moreover, a large number of children who were born during the conflict in Syria were not registered at birth in official records, and even some of them were registered without revealing the names of their fathers who belong to the armed opposition. Mothers of the newborns dare not tell the truth for fear of arrest, according to several reports. This segment of children is growing in areas under the control of the Bashar Assad regime. The concern was voiced on August 14, 2015 by United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura when he said, “We are having a whole generation of Syrians, young kids, who have seen only war.”
Children of Mosul
Children caught in conflict zones in the Arab region become more vulnerable due to poverty and insecurity. Accordingly, they fall as victims to exploitation and recruitment by terrorist organizations, criminal groups and militias. Particularly in Mosul, hundreds of Iraqi children suffered from this severe situation over the past nine months of intensifying confrontations between ISIS, on the one hand, and the Global Coalition and Iraqi government forces, on the other.
According to a July 22 statement by UNICEF,
“Children in shock continue to be found, some reportedly among the debris or hidden in tunnels in Mosul. Some children have lost their families while fleeing to safety… Families have been forced to abandon their children or give them away, they are now living in fear, alone. Many children have been forced to fight and some to carry out acts of extreme violence.”
Syrian children too suffered from the same horrors. Sajjad Malik, country representative in Syria for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in statements delivered on July 13, 2017, said that there is a conflict going on to eradicate ISIS, “but in the process we should try to protect civilians.” Even after the military endgame in Raqqa, people will have to grapple with a humanitarian crisis and severe trauma. Many children now fear the sound of aircraft, he added.
Furthering the complexity of the issue of lost children in Arab conflict zones is a group of factors, of which the following stand out:
Complex Armed Conflicts
1- The complexity of Arab armed conflicts: Children are the most severely affected from the ongoing armed conflicts in the Arab region. For instance, the refugee crisis in South Sudan, around 1.8 million people fled their villages and towns over the past four years, making it the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world. The United Nations says that one million of those refugees are children, and of that number about 75,000 were either separated from their parents or without any family at all. Locating family members of lost children in the chaos of South Sudan is difficult, because some families fled to Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, and beyond. The war in South Sudan has severely impacted the lives of children where a fifth of them were forced to join the exodus of refugees. Aid workers say they regularly see South Sudanese children straggling across the border, often accompanied by an adult stranger, but sometimes on their own.
Cubs of the Caliphate
2- Children as fuel for survival of terrorist groups: Recruiting children in Syria and Iraq by parties involved in conflicts for frontline combat has been on the rise. ISIS’ youngest child soldiers called “cubs of the caliphate”, in Syria and Iraq, are either orphans, abandoned or kidnapped.
More poorly-paid refugee children bored of working for long hours at factories are joining battles to receive appealing remuneration. Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister and current UN Special Envoy for Global Education, stated, “Displaced children are more likely to become the youngest laborers in the factory, the youngest brides at the altar, and the youngest soldiers in the trench.”
Roving Armies
3- Recruiting Children for parallel armies: For instance, militias, and in particular the multi-ethnic but predominantly-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), are recruiting children through public speeches, cyber radicalization and providing attractive salaries and arms as well as combing military training with religious extremism and a deep sense of belonging.
Emboldened by the lack of justice and accountability, the so-called Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) - a Shiite paramilitary group better known as the Hashd al-Shaabi- kidnapped children in Saqlawiyah in Iraq’s al-Anbar Governorate in 2016. Similar militias did the same during military operations carried out to retake Fallujah, the largest city in the mainly Sunni al-Anbar, as well as in surrounding areas, from ISIS. These militias separated the children from their families and moved them to abandoned residential buildings and shops, seized their IDs, mobile phones and all their belongings. The whereabouts of these child victims is unknown to date.
Criminal Networks
4- Children are lured into crime: The phenomenon of gangs of so-called street children involved in theft and begging became evident in Syria, especially in the years after the outbreak of the conflict in 2011. It should be noted here that the Syrian law prohibits children under 15 from working and allows only younger children - between 15 and 18 years of age- to engage in certain jobs under specified conditions. However, due to the ongoing war and loss of breadwinners, hundreds of children between 6 and 15 years have participated in the labor market.
Memories of Violence
5- Children’s resistance to return to their families: In some instances, it is the lost children themselves who resist reunion because they believe that would mean a return to the excessive and traumatizing war from which they escaped, as was the case in South Sudan. In other instances, it is the parents themselves who give up their own children because they believe this would provide them with a new opportunity for a new life.
Punishment by Society
6- Certain segments of society in conflict zones would reject some children because of the affiliations of their families: Among them are children whose families are suspected of supporting ISIS, which murdered thousands of people, displaced families and destroyed infrastructure in its areas of control. This perhaps explains why the families of jihadists are kept in isolated locations inside Iraq, where a whole new generation of ostracized children exists. In some cases, when relatives are located, some decline to adopt those children.
Limited Capabilities
7- Lack of organizations providing various services to children: There is lack of international and regional relief agencies that offer specialized health services and psychological care and support in particular. The problem is further compounded by governments’ lack of adequate funds and infrastructure required to counter the huge challenges facing Arab conflict-hit countries.
Nonetheless, a few organizations continue to provide aid in conflict zones. The Libyan Red Crescent (LRC) center in Misrata, western Libya, offers psychological and medical rehabilitation orphans and other children from Tunisia, Senegal, Nigeria, Niger and Somalia, who lost one parent or suffered from various degrees of undernourishment, lack of water and medicine, fits of panic caused by the sounds of shelling and bullets, and sustained serious injuries to their heads, chests or feet that require prosthetic limbs in some cases.
Concerted Efforts
Successful solutions to the issue of lost children in conflict zones in the Arab region require long-term efforts through a group of measures that can be summarized as follows:
1- Resolving chronic conflicts. This path is difficult to pursue currently due to the complex nature of conflicts. This complex nature is driven from various factors including local parties of conflicts, issues revolving around power and wealth, intervention by regional parties with various agendas, a huge network of conflict economies taking shape as well as the inability to put an end to conflicts. Thus, such factors prolongs and undermines any prospects of settlement.
2- Government forces recapturing areas from armed and violent non-state actors. However, the ability of regular forces to defeat these actors is not enough to solve all problems facing civilians. For instance, the end of the battle for Mosul is not the end of the ordeal for civilians. The humanitarian situation will not only remain grave, but also could worsen, according to a statement issued on July 19 by Norwegian Refugee Council, an international organization helping the relief and rehabilitation efforts in the Iraqi city.
3- Creating more agencies involved in children protection that can work on reuniting lost children with their families. Their mission begins with locating lost children in destinations of inflows of civilians and setting up registration centers. Mobile teams, specialized in child protection, visit households in these areas to reach the legal guardians (mothers, fathers and brothers).
4- Cementing ties between UNICEF, UNHCR and the Save the Children organization to reduce the impact of crises facing conflict-stricken children and infants in particular. When it is difficult to locate their families or relatives, lost children can be temporarily housed with other families or transferred to care homes after approval by the relevant government. In case all these steps failed, an adoption program would be pursued.
5- Using social media in supporting the search for children’s families. Photo of the involved children can be published along with his/her full name to appeal for help in locating any of their family members.
Legacy of Conflicts
A persistent major challenge facing international aid and children’s agencies operating in conflict-hit Arab countries is to protect children lost in conflicts or separated from their parents. The issue has long-term consequences for involved countries. In addition to damaged infrastructure and deteriorating economies, there remains the issue of how to recover child soldiers recruited to fight on the front lines for terrorist organizations and militias and heal their hidden wounds and psychological trauma.
