Amnesty International, Syrian Camps

On a recent visit to a camp near Atmeh, just inside Syria near the Turkish border, some 21,000 people were sheltering amid hellish conditions.
Heavy rain leaked into the tents and had turned the clay soil into thick slippery mud, raw sewage flowed between the tents. The food being distributed was insufficient and of very poor quality and large numbers of people complained of medical conditions for which they were receiving no treatment.

To read on go to:  http://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/campaigns/syria%E2%80%99s-internally-displaced-%E2%80%93-%E2%80%98-world-has-forgotten-us%E2%80%99

Images of living conditions in the Syrian Camps

Living conditions in the camps

Who Are They?

Who Are They?

This is an extract from a poem called Who Are They?, This details some thoughts on the government and if they truly care about helping. Although it was not written for this purpose I believe it has some relative points.

Who Are THEY?

Who Are THEY?

THEY live among us

and THEY say

THEY are apart of us

while THEY live apart

from us.

I think

THEY look down on us

and THEY secretly

hold us in contempt

Yet THEY seek our approval

Regularly

THEY say THEY work for us

BUT do THEY really?

 

 

This caught my eye and I believe it to be very thought provoking

- Luke Dickinson

POV diary

Syrian Refugee camp diary (POV)

Dear Diary,

This is my first entry, I just reached the camp it has taken me many days, many cuts and bruises to reach here. My name is Mohammed I heard that some other people from my town were heading here so I hoped that maybe I'd see them... they didn't get close. Luckily though I was granted a miricale, I found my uncle, we were never too close but he's the one link I have back to my home, my family.

Everything.

I've given everything to get here, I'm barely sixteen, I should be out with my friends playing football but... no. They're saying they want me to go into mainstream camp education, but I've got priorities, my uncle has fallen ill, coughing and spluttering all the time. But I can't let him go, I stay on the corner of our row of tents a 'street' of sorts. I stand and sell cigarettes hoping that we can bargain with the money earnt so that I can buy something, anything! Just to help us get through the winter.

It could be worse, although not by much,

I never make a decent profit but combined with the rations my uncle and I get given, we survive. The charity workers help us but can they truly empathise with us and tell us that we're truly safe? I don't know, oh god... my uncle's throwing up blood I need to go for help now!

The Syrian Camps, how we could help

The Camps And How We Could Help

The camps are places full of struggle: a woman left wondering what happened to her husband, a man living with the guilt of leaving someone behind, a child that will never stop crying.

What does that make you feel? Anger towards those that forced the families to flee from the war? Sorrow to the children whose lives disappeared at the impact of a bullet? Or maybe this will just be seen as another charity based spill out on to the internet. It doesn't matter. It doesn't  make it any less true, the anger and the sorrow is still there.

The point of all of this I'm going to detail on the other hand is simple "what can we do to help?" We have the capability to feel all of this when we see a photo, a video, an article in the newspaper. Yet we do not have the capability to put those feelings in to action towards where they matter, their lives. The conditions that people live under in the camps are ridiculously sub-standard, for example...

Their houses are made from canvas, their bathrooms are made of plastic and chemicals and their shops are nothing more than sticks and tarpaulin. Refugees need far more resources to help their lives and one day to help them be reintroduced into Syria once the conflict is over. The camps need willing volunteers for the charity UNICEF to help those who want to live and lead as full of a life as possible.

This maybe a short post but I only did this to raise some thoughts for everyone, think about what we could do to help them. :)

-Luke Thomas Dickinson :)