Editorial: Aid for Syria's forgotten vitally needed

Opinion

We need you to help The Forgotten Millions. The Herald and World Vision are running a major campaign to raise funds and help the millions of children left homeless by war in Syria. With your help we can make a difference to the children and their families in desperate need throughout this region.

When we see or read of people displaced by civil war they seem a long way from our experience. We seldom realise that their lives were not so very different from ours. Syria was a modern place. Its population was educated, urban and enjoyed the normal comforts and services that, like New Zealanders, they took for granted. Law and order there was enforced by a secular regime that brooked no opposition but otherwise did not interfere in family life and business.

Then came an "Arab Spring", an eruption of democratic aspirations across the Middle East that shook but could not shift the Syrian regime. More ruthless than most, more willing to wage war within the country, the regime dug in and the insurgency became dominated by religious jihadists.

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As the war ravaged city after city normal life became impossible. Millions of Syrians made the aching decision to leave everything they had - homes, careers, schools, businesses, wider families and communities - is search of safety. Many of the Syrians that New Zealand reporter Rachel Smalley has found in refugee camps across the border in Lebanon were lawyers, teachers, dentists, accountants and the like. They left probably hoping they could soon return, but as the conflict enters its fifth year with no sign of respite they have become the forgotten millions.

The Herald in association with World Vision is publishing Smalley's reports on their plight and appealing to New Zealanders for funds that might ease their present lives a little. In the camps they are no longer at risk of bullets and shelling but they are struggling to find enough food, shelter and other necessities. They are living on dirt floors under tarpaulins and tents. At this time of year it is cold and wet. They huddle around stoves for warmth.

They earn what they can from menial work outside the camp but many of the girls, Smalley reports, are making more permanent arrangements for their safety and survival. Her stories of girls as young as 14 giving up long hopes of a career for a marriage arranged by their parents are heartbreaking. Families are using marriage money to pay rent or buy food, consoling themselves that their daughter is safer away from the camp and better off with the family she has joined.

The World Food Programme provides refugees with a monthly allowance to help pay for rent and food in the camps. Under the pressure of numbers fleeing Syria and other current conflicts, the allowance was reduced last year from US$31 ($42) to US$19. Obviously any additional funds that can be raised by charities are desperately needed. World Vision is providing mattresses, blankets, kerosene heaters and water as well as contributing cash to the World Food Programme.

Donating money to people displaced by war is not a solution to the problems that have torn their homeland apart. Aid does not feel as effective as a military intervention, either taking a side or as a neutral peace-keeping effort. But aid for the refugees is needed too. After four years it is the least we can do.

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You can make online donations, phone donations and offline donations.

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