SYRIA: UNICEF Executive Director meets Iraqi refugees

Record ID: 279140

  • Title: SYRIA: UNICEF Executive Director meets Iraqi refugees
  • Date: 28th June 2009
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) THEODORA TSOVILI, CHILD PROTECTION SPECIALIST, SAYING "We put a lot of energy and effort on how to develop system, the model itself. We wanted to cover as many needs as possible so we needed to think a lot, to come up with solutions to provide capacity building to Syrian and Iraqi, to Syrian professionals and volunteers but also to Iraqi volunteers."
  • Embargoed: 13th July 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVAA2ZL58QWLU84DUPNHALTH617W
  • Story Text: UNICEF Executive Director, Ann Veneman, visited a community centre founded by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) and UNICEF Syria in the Syrian city of Jaramana on Saturday (June 27), to find out about the experiences of Iraqi refugees there.
    During her visit to Syria, Veneman will hold meetings with child-support groups and groups developing youth projects, as well as visiting centres set up to help refugee families overcome the stress related to their situation.
    Veneman said she was impressed with the work of the Jaramana centre which is helping refugees adapt to the changes in their lives.
    "What it's done, it has helped to create networks of people, whether they're adolescents, they're mothers or they're children. That have brought people to gather into a social structure within the communities here in Syria. And I think that is really helping them all to cope much better with the transitions that they've made in their lives," Veneman told reporters.
    The Syrian Arab Red Crescent and UNICEF signed a six-month cooperation agreement to provide humanitarian support to women and children refugees in March. The agreement covers a budget of half a million U.S. dollars and will fund five child-friendly spaces in the centre of Damascus and in the city's suburbs.
    The money will also be used to fund three child protection and psychological support units to help Iraqi refugee children cope with the changes in lives.
    Although refugee communities were benefiting from the facilities, Child Protection Specialist, Theodora Tsovili, said the centres still faced planning problems and had problems training staff.
    "We put a lot of energy and effort on how to develop system, the model itself. We wanted to cover as many needs as possible so we needed to think a lot, to come up with solutions to provide capacity building to Syrian and Iraqi, to Syrian professionals and volunteers but also to Iraqi volunteers," she said.
    The five centres in Damascus organise activities to stimulate the development of mothers, adolescents and children in affected communities. The centres also have links with several psychosocial support and child protection clinics to help the families.
    Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, some 1.2 million Iraqi refugees have settled in Syria, half of them are children, according to official UN figures.
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