FROM OUR REPORTER
GAZIANTEP — Sor survivors, perhaps because a father, mother or sister protected them with their own bodies. Or simply because that’s how it had to go. Eyes wide open on that world that was about to swallow them and instead made them re-emerge from the darkness. They are the children – even newborns – pulled alive from the rubble. Saved, narrated, immortalized, a hope to cling to, provided that they arrived alive in the hospital after the rescue.
There’s a then.Aya, the “miracle” of Afrin, a newborn girl pulled alive from the rubble in northern Syria still attached to her mother’s umbilical cord, was initially entrusted to the care of the hospital director who treated her. “Give her up for adoption”, was immediately the cry of the world when that body of hers, so small as to be supported by one hand, came out of the dark. Then Aya’s great-uncle Salah al-Badran took her in even though her own house collapsed. And now Aya lives in a tent with him and 11 other people, says theAp.
Tariq Haidar, 3, was pulled alive from the rubble of his house in Jandaris, northern Syria, 42 hours after the earthquake. Then, the hospital where the doctors were forced to amputate his left leg. Malek Qasida, a nurse who takes care of him, told the Reuters: “They pulled out his father and two of his brothers before him, dead†. Then the bodies of his mother and a third brother were extracted.
Aya and Tariq are just two. Information on the exact number of children left without parents is still unclear. The families of 263 children pulled from rubble in Turkey could not be reached on Friday, according to the Turkish Ministry of Family and Social Services. Of these, 162 continue to receive treatment in hospital, while 101 had been transferred to the relevant units of the ministry and hospitalized. On the other hand, it is impossible to have any certain data from Syria.
There are few orphanages in Turkey, very few in Syria, despite the war. Here, when a child is left without parents, he tends to be raised by other relatives. The fact that families are large is a determining factor. That’s why according to Unicef emergency expert Joe English, adoption should never take place immediately after an emergency. ‘Until the whereabouts of the parent or other close family members can be verified, the child is considered to have living close relatives,’ he explains. It is therefore essential to identify the cases. Mainly because as a result of these types of disasters, displaced children, especially those unaccompanied or separated from their families, are vulnerable to violence, exploitation and abuse, including the risk of trafficking or gender-based violence. And this is how the aftermath risks becoming even more painful, as if it wasn’t already painful enough to be pulled out of that darkness of rubble, fear and dust.