The Syrian Dialogue Center, in collaboration with Organisation Alamman, is delighted to finally publish the English version of their paper “No Covering, No Protection: the Hidden Aspect of Women’s Lives in Camps”.

The study explores the uncharted territory of life in #camps. It focuses on the daily lives of camp residents, especially #women, and their unsatisfied humanitarian needs. The category of women has a tremendous societal impact on the one hand, but it is all the same vulnerable on the other hand. Hence, addressing what influences female residents becomes of vital importance.

Executive Summary

The population of the areas under the control of the opposition and revolutionary forces is roughly estimated at 6.7 million. Camp residents make up 23% of the population, with almost 68-70% residing in regular camps under the supervision of humanitarian organizations. The rest, who make up nearly 30-32%, live in informal camps.

Females comprise roughly 53% of the camps’ total population, and adult women comprise 27-32% of the camps’ population. The Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch camps host more women and children than other regions. At the same time, the number of males there is half their proportion in Idlib and rural Aleppo camps.

In addition to the suffering that casts a shadow on the entire population of the camps due to poverty, need, and harsh weather conditions, women suffer doubly from factors that may be considered invisible or downplayed. Camps almost have a new social and administrative order with special characteristics. Residents have assumed specific roles and had societal power relations whereby various groups have emerged as vulnerable categories, including women. This extreme environment and new social order and roles have thus made life harder for women. One should note sociocultural considerations that translate into responsibility for family care and children’s upbringing at a time when the fundamentals of such duties are nearly non-existent.

One of the significant issues women face is perhaps the intrusion of privacy inside and outside tents. The large number of family members residing in the same tent makes preserving privacy, even the slightest degree of privacy, almost impossible, particularly for women, adults or adolescents; children to a lesser extent. Moreover, whether canvas tents or tents made of blocks with a canvas roof, tents are by nature not soundproof and do not provide the protection required for families in general and women in particular.

On the other hand, most women in camps have to use shared service facilities such as toilets and bathrooms. Apart from being inadequate in numbers, these facilities lack several minimum standards and indispensable specifications that are required for women’s privacy. Furthermore, they are unequipped to secure women’s needs to look out for themselves or their families, meet hygiene or purification standards, or wash.

Concerning the hygiene aspect, the camp environment is not healthy or habitable in the long run. Effects on women are more evident due to the frequent use of shared sanitation facilities, shortages of safe drinking and cleaning water, the absence of healthy and balanced nutrients, and the constant exposure to places that are considered habitats of bacteria and parasites. Such places are loci for the spread of diseases and bites of insects, mosquitoes, rodents, scorpions, and snakes.

In addition, 37% of mothers in camps suffer from malnutrition. The apparent increase in childbirth rates in camps and the frequent and closely spaced pregnancies affect women’s health, especially with no medical or gynaecological care in camps and the inability of medical centres to provide services as required.

Immoral behaviours are emerging and unmistakably increasing in some regular and informal camps, whether in Idleb and rural Aleppo or the areas under Turkish control. They vary from cases of women harassment, such as visual harassment, verbal harassment, physical harassment and sexual harassment in some instances, to child abuse cases, predominantly sexual abuse. Taking drugs, especially pills, is widespread in some camps. Men and women of different ages are victims, initially as drug-takers and later as dealers and vendors. They find in drugs an alternative space to escape the awful reality and past traumas.

With the increase in unemployment rates in the north of Syria and the limited employment opportunities, many women are pushed to work irregularly due to poverty. For instance, women work in harvesting corps for minimal wages or in rubbish dumps, exposing themselves to health risks that might be fatal or make them vulnerable to exploitation.

Regarding the types of humanitarian intervention organizations carry out in regular and informal camps, most organizations work in food security, shelter, health, water, sanitation, education, and protection. They try to secure basic needs, despite the annual decline in the volume of external grants and the increase in the deficit rate in covering services required for the different sectors.

Despite these efforts, one can observe that all other sectors and needs have been disregarded, besides the failures of local and international organisations in some aspects. For example, one can highlight the poor management of sanitation, as workings in this sector are still inconsistent with the minimum standards for humanitarian response set by the United Nations. No changes, modifications, developments, or maintenance works have been made in spite of the increase in population and the surge in displacement. Health standards, environmental standards, and mandatory standards for designated groups are also not respected.

Furthermore, humanitarian workers, especially the executive staff, are accused of corruption and exploitation, especially of families with no breadwinner or widowers. No projects put residents’ experiences and capacities to use to empower them, particularly women in dire need.

The impact of feminist, women-oriented organisations or organisations concerned with empowering women is not visible. One expects that such organisations would prioritise women in camps, the poorest and most vulnerable segment among targeted segments, especially with the support and attention given by western actors. Nonetheless, organisations have directed their efforts towards topics of less priority, targeting more empowered and stable segments.

The policies integrated into most humanitarian organisations’ proposed projects comply with the sponsoring parties’ vision. Sponsors have imposed restrictions on funding shelter projects. These organisations have not made good use of the interest of western sponsors in women-related issues. Women in camps have not been portrayed as a vulnerable segment that needs to be empowered in daily life, supported, and given better living conditions. The attention of Arab sponsors has not been directed to issues that affect Muslim and Arab women, violate their privacy, and influence their values and their children’s, to encourage them to fund projects geared towards mitigating negative effects on women.

The current pattern of humanitarian response in the north of Syria has partially consolidated a new order of values and social perceptions, especially in camp communities. This phenomenon appears to be more pronounced among women. A large swath of women has become accustomed to a poor lifestyle and yielded to the conditions they live under without resisting, attempting to change, or seizing opportunities that might help them rise.

These issues and obstacles emerging from camp life bear social effects that will materialise and affect Syrian society in general and women in particular, especially without anticipating any rapid intervention that addresses current social problems.

Due to the situation in camps, poverty rates, vulnerability and exploitation of women are expected to escalate. Numbers of large families without breadwinners are also likely to increase, in addition to the rise in childbirth rates with poor parenting and neglect. These harsh conditions may lead to an increase in domestic violence, whether spousal violence on the wife, father-to-children violence, or mother-to-children violence, along with the rise in “underage marriage” among boys and girls, the increase in school dropout, child labour, moral corruption and crime rates, such as drug trafficking and “honour crimes”, and the rise in numbers of children of unknown parentage in the north of Syria.

It should be noted that women’s suffering in camps is not unforeseen. Furthermore, life experience in camps is neither temporary nor about to end. Living conditions do not appear to have changed or improved in previous years; on the contrary, the situation has worsened and created negative implications, new problems and complexities, which clearly indicates that past approaches to deal with the problem have proved futile and need to be reviewed and developed.

This paper puts forward a host of recommendations to address emerging problems or mitigate their effects. Other segments should not be overlooked, although some recommendations are devoted to women-related aspects. Should the situation in camps remain the same, this will bring about significant negative effects. There is an urgent need to implement well-thought-out interventions that could contain problems and make the most out of the inhabitants’ abilities.

To read the paper fully Click here