SOOHÊR EL-IDLIBÎ

Idlib- Domestic violence has become a deepening issue in northern Syria due to ongoing war. Among the biggest reasons for the increase in violence are poverty, unemployment, and conflict in marriages. According to UNICEF, four out of five people in Syria live below the poverty line, pushing children into extreme survival measures, like child labor, early marriage, and recruitment into the fighting to help their families make ends meet. According to UNICEF, more than eight million Syrian children are in need of assistance in Syria, where over 6.7 million people have had to leave their homes.

At least 29,661 children have been killed in Syria since March 2011, according to the report of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR). The father of a six-year-old Syrian girl named Nahla al-Othman chained up his daughter for several months because his wife asked for a divorce. According to the reports we received, she died after suffering from the lack of food and mistreatment by her father. In Syria, unfortunately, many children are subjected to domestic violence.

“Her father killed her”

38-year-old Selma El-Haci, who is a neighbor of Nahla al-Othman in the Faraj Allah camp, northern Idlib, said that what happened to Nahla al-Othman is heartbreaking. Stating that the people who saw how the girl was chained up, didn’t try to save the girl, Selma El-Haci said, “Nahla died because of her father. He did this because he wanted to make his wife do whatever he wanted.”

Two-and-half-year-old Yaman al-Rayan is another child who survived his father’s violence at the last moment in the town of Al-Dana. The injured child was taken to a hospital for treatment.

Her three children were subjected to violence by her husband

32-year-old Siham El-Awad told us that her three children were subjected to violence by her husband. “Their father is mentally ill. He always inflicts violence against us. I and my children are still subjected to violence by him,” she told us.

Sihaö El-Awad is another woman subjected to domestic violence. “My husband inflicts violence against me and my children when we have financial problems,” she said.

80% of children subjected to violence

Sociologist Amal El-Zeatur told us the rate of violence against children is 80 percent in northern Syria. “The economic crisis is one of the main causes of violence.”