Nine out of 10 people living in the squalid camps for the internally displaced in north-west Syria have been made homeless multiple times, according to a new survey.
February’s devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, which killed tens of thousands of people, compounded an already desperate situation with an estimated 98% of Syrians living in camps left without safe shelter, according to a report by Action for Humanity (AFH).
The Syrian civil war, which marked its 12-year anniversary on Wednesday, forced an estimated 1.8 million people into 1,420 camps within Syria. The survey of 263 internally displaced families in north-west Syria found that 92% of internally displaced households had been made homeless multiple times since the conflict began. Two-thirds (64%) had been displaced between four and seven times, while 23% said they had been displaced eight times or more.
Hani Habbal, from Aleppo, works as a frontline responder in northern Syria, overseeing humanitarian projects for AFH. He said: “As a Syrian, the past 12 years have been heartbreaking for me. So many of our people have been killed, injured and lost their homes.”
On top of that, the earthquake then “destroyed or damaged their accommodation or made them feel that it was unsafe”.
Habbal added: “Many have lost their homes multiple times. When the war started, people were in places like Damascus, Dara, all across the country, and were displaced when the fighting came to their town or village. They fled for their lives to places like Aleppo, like Raqqa, to be displaced once again to places like Idlib, only to be displaced once again when fighting arrived there.
“In some extreme examples, people have had to leave their homes over 20 times. Can you imagine a life where you and your family have been forced to be homeless, in fear of your lives, four, five or six times? This is the reality for millions of people in north-west Syria.”
David Miliband, the head of the International Rescue Committee, attacked the international community’s “loss of attention” to Syria. “Limbo is no lifestyle for millions in the north-west,” he said in a statement.
“The earthquake in February was a reminder that a forgotten crisis is not a resolved crisis. It exposed the graphic truth about life for those left stranded by the war: they are at the mercy of events, trapped by circumstance and vulnerable to shocks.”
As well as concerns over violence, exploitation and child labour in IDP camps, the UN said in November that people are under threat from deadly strikes in the conflict.
