Yasmin washes dishes in the derelict restaurant room in which she and her extended family now live in Lebanon. Photo by Sam Tarling/Oxfam

In honor of World Refugee Day on June 20, this week we will be sharing a series of blog posts highlighting the stories of refugees from Syria, where an escalating crisis has forced millions to flee their homes.

“Have you been to Syria?” asks a woman who gives her name only as Yasmin. It’s not her real name. She is too afraid to share that one—afraid of what will happen when she and her family return from their exile in Lebanon to Syria, a Syria she may no longer recognize.

Yasmin’s longing for that place—and all that’s been lost—makes me catch my breath as I read her words.

“We lived in a lovely old town,” she continues. “It had a big vegetable market where you could always get lots of fresh vegetables. It had many historical buildings. They were so beautiful. Now they have all gone and you won’t have a chance to see them. It was bombed one year and two months ago.”

I picture the terrible waste, the history that’s now a heap of rubble. I imagine being the mother of young children—as Yasmin is—and the terror they lived with as the bombs fell. When their house was hit, they fled to Damascus. When the bombing started there, too, they left for Lebanon and the dark, damp room that now houses eight of them. There is no running water. Their room serves as kitchen, bedroom, living room, toilet. Read the rest of this entry »

Girls collect water from a tap in Zaatari camp, Jordan. Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

By Matt Herrick, director of media and public relations at Oxfam America.

“Syria, my beloved country, will I ever return to you?” –Reema, a child refugee from Syria

Maybe it’s because my neighbors see the wreckage in Syria as generic flotsam—just some shapeless stuff forced to the surface of their attention, somehow connected to the general instability sweeping parts of the Middle East since the Arab Spring uprisings.

Maybe my friends missed the news about a massacre of children, women and men in the Syrian village of Baniyas a few weeks ago, its images so graphic that most media outlets retreated to banal prose to illustrate yet another terrible chapter in the Syrian conflict.

None of my relatives read The Atlantic magazine’s story of Syrian girls as young as 10 sold into marriage by their families, and called to say, “OK. I understand. How can I help?”

In fact, not many people have called at all.

Today, Los Angeles Times foreign affairs reporter Paul Richter wrote about the flat-lining fundraising around the crisis unfolding in Syria—funds that would otherwise go directly to delivering life-saving aid to refugee families. Now the world’s largest humanitarian disaster, lack of interest from Americans …

… reflects the murky nature of the Syrian war. It also serves as a rough gauge of public sentiment on a crisis that has frustrated the Obama administration for more than two years. … The reasons for the public’s reserved attitude are clear. Syria’s civil war involves multiple armed groups, none of which appears entirely sympathetic in American eyes.

In today’s Ottawa Citizen, in an article titled No one cares about Syria, columnist Terry Glavin tried to drive home the scale of this emergency, and concluded the following:

As a humanitarian crisis, Syria is worse than the Kosovo War of the late 1990s and the Haiti earthquake of 2010 combined.

A few weeks ago, I sat across from Ray Offenheiser, president of my own organization and a man with decades in development and relief work, as he spoke to a Foreign Policy magazine reporter about the scale of need. He dropped two candid thoughts on Cable blogger John Hudson: Syria’s crisis, in terms of scale of need, is one of the largest he’s ever seen; and humanitarian organizations including Oxfam cannot raise money to deliver aid to a growing number of Syrian refugees who need it. These people in need are mostly kids, he said.

Kids.

I have one. He’s 3 years old. He is home with my wife, his mother.

Brutalized, displaced and denied a future, the plight of Syrian children is a non-story, especially in the American media. More than half of all refugees are children. Many of the dead—which the UN today reported number 93,000—are kids or their mothers, those who were unable to flee across the border into neighboring countries to seek refuge. Others may succumb to diarrheal diseases without access to safe, clean water.

Syrians are suffering terribly and they need your help. What’s happening in Syria and surrounding countries is a humanitarian disaster of staggering proportions, and Syria’s children are bearing a disproportionate burden in this violent conflict.

Oxfam is working today to protect families who have fled their homes from the risks and indignities of displacement. We are providing access to shelter, food, water, and sanitation – critical aid that is in dangerously short supply.

You, too, can help these children and their families by donating now.

It’s not confusing. It’s not murky. It’s crystal clear: Syrians need our help.

Maysa Abdel Razaq al Akhras and her children sit in the dilapidated apartment that is now their home in Lebanon. Photo by Sam Tarling/Oxfam

When the UN launches the biggest humanitarian appeal in its history— as it did today for $5 billion—it’s hard to ignore the urgency behind the record-breaking number.

For countless Syrians, who have endured two years of brutal conflict, that urgency is a daily reality. With their homes bombed and their jobs gone, where will they live? How will they get food, water, medicine?

“We are witnessing the daily human wreckage of a country tearing itself apart,” said Jane Cocking, Oxfam’s humanitarian director. “This is the world’s most pressing humanitarian crisis. The scale is staggering and getting worse.”

The UN estimates that more than 1.6 million refugees have now fled Syria to seek safety in neighboring countries. They have arrived with virtually nothing and face huge obstacles in meeting the needs of their families. Inside Syria, an estimated 4.25 million people have been displaced.

“Our house was bombed. It’s all gone. Nothing left,” said a woman who is too afraid to offer her name. She is now living in a small room—about 8 feet by 20 feet—inside an unused restaurant in Lebanon. Seven other members of her extended family are crowded into the dark, damp room with her. There is no running water. And the family can only afford to eat one decent meal a day, with whatever is left-over providing meager fixings for a second.

“Is no one in America, Europe watching the news? Are they not seeing what is happening to us?” she asked. Read the rest of this entry »

In a crisis as complex and humanly devastating as Syria’s, numbers tell only part of the story:  Of the estimated 1.5 million people who have fled the country, more than half are children. That’s more than 750,000 young refugees from one place.

It’s a number that shocks for a fleeting moment—until it’s bumped aside by the next: 4.25 million people displaced inside Syria.  And the next : 6.8 million within the country in urgent need of assistance.

The enormity of these numbers obscures the reality behind them. They are crisis stats, a tidy way to help categorize an emergency and park it in a part of your consciousness where you can be aware of it, but not deeply bothered by it—until you hear the words of Reema, a young Syrian poet and refugee, read in the audio slideshow above by Natasha Milet-Carty, a young American school girl.

Reema, who is afraid to reveal her true identity, speaks for every child wrenched from the security of home and confronted by unbearable destruction. And in Natasha’s narration, you hear the longing and loss of that generation. The fighting has destroyed Reema’s house, her school, her dreams, she says.

But one thing it can’t kill is love.

“All I want is to live in my country in freedom,” writes Reema. “Syria, my beloved country, I love you.”

Learn more about how Oxfam is helping Syrian refugees and donate now to support these efforts. Read the rest of this entry »

1. There’s a crisis within a crisis.

Refugees from Syria living in Zaatari camp in Jordan. The camp now houses about 100,000 people. Photo: Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

Many of the stories we’re hearing about the war in Syria actually overlook a fast-growing emergency: millions of ordinary Syrians have had to leave their homes to escape the fighting. In many cases, families had to leave home with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and now struggle to obtain basics like food, water, shelter, and medical care.

2. More than five million people have had to flee their homes.

Refugees reach Jordan after having just walked across the border from Syria. Photo: Anastasia Taylor-Lind/Oxfam

Most of these five million displaced families remain in Syria, where nearly a third of the population is in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. However, more than 1.5 million refugees have fled across borders to neighboring countries like Jordan and Lebanon. (To put it in perspective, that’s roughly the same as if every woman, man, and child in the state of New Hampshire had to leave home and take refuge in Massachusetts and Vermont.)  The UN predicts that the number of refugees could rise to three million by the end of 2013.

3. At least half of the refugees are kids.

Children from two families who were neighbors in Syria before they fled the war in February. They now live in a makeshift shelter in Lebanon. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

UNICEF estimates that at least 50 percent of the refugees from Syria are children under 18. Many had to drop out of school, like Reema, a bright 12-year-old whose home was destroyed by an air strike. Her family now lives in a small, windowless shelter in Lebanon. “I was at school when it was bombed. Some of the children were killed … We left because we were afraid of the bombings in Syria,” Reema said. (Read some of the poems Reema wrote about her experiences.)

4. Most refugees are not living in camps.

Judi and Mohammed Yousef in their family’s temporary home: an abandoned shopping center in Lebanon. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

While Jordan’s Zaatari camp is now home to more than 100,000 refugees from Syria, 70 percent of the refugees in Jordan are living in urban communities. In Lebanon, there are no camps in place for refugees, so families are scattered among 1,200 different locations—like the abandoned shopping center near Tripoli, pictured above, where 90 Syrian families have built makeshift homes in bare tiled rooms that used to be stores. Read the rest of this entry »

On your “live an amazing life” bucket list I highly recommend adding “take the boat taxi across Lake Kivu from Goma to Bukavu.” It’s a high-speed dart across a beautiful and nearly pristine body of water shared with traditional fishing boats and bounded by Rwanda on one side and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on the other. You’ll skim along the water in a boat that rides so low that you’ll actually be partially underwater for the sensational ride.

But before you go you should read this week’s story called “A Day in the DRC” by Armin Rosen at The Atlantic. Full disclosure: Oxfam helped fund his trip to Goma and environs to report on what he saw. Full disclosure: When we asked him to go, I didn’t care at all what he wound up writing. Full disclosure: he’s a damn good writer and you should hear his take on a region that has seen unspeakable crimes, still sees them, and yet still lives.

“I set out with James [a local tour guide] … to see things that had no overt connection to the eastern Congo’s many tragedies; to gather evidence that life here is more than just displacement and conflict, even in a city this battered, ” writes Rosen.

Children collect water from lake Kivu, near Goma, in late 2012. Photo: Kate Holt/Oxfam

“Even in war, people try to live their ordinary lives,” James tells him at one point. “It’s a reflection of the Congolese people. Even if you go to a death ceremony, people will cry. And then they start to relax – to laugh, to sing.”

The whole piece goes on like that. Really, it’s a great read.

Rosen’s story is the first I have read (and probably you too) that includes mention of a cobbled-together foosball table or teenagers breakdancing on the floor of a former church. These images are, really, the whole point of asking a great writer if he’d be interested in spending some time in an amazing place and telling readers about it.

You see, I’d argue that there’s quite an appetite, especially within the US media, for the stories about a brutal Africa. For the Africa of wars and child soldiers. For poverty and militias. Fascinating, necessary, stories all, and we need them to be told. And goodness knows that had some of these stories been told 10 or 20 years ago in this very place, some of the tragedies that people experienced might have been avoided. But we also need the foosball stories, the breakdancing stories, and the everyday life-in-the-world stories.

This is the Goma that I know. It is a place filled with people dealing with a sometimes brutal history, an too-often brutal present, and figuring out the best place to breakdance or kill a few hours playing foosball. It’s sticking your hand out the window of a boat, dragging your hand across the water, and marveling at one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

OxfamBuzzList is a blog series about the movies, books, articles, music, and more that have Oxfam staff and supporters talking. We welcome guest contributions.

Oxfam’s Jane Beesley is in northern Lebanon documenting the stories of Syrian refugees. She recently profiled Reema (not her real name), a 12-year-old refugee, in a blog post titled The girl whose face you’ll never see (concerned about her safety should she return to Syria, Reema asked that her face not be photographed). A bright student, Reema spoke candidly about the loss of her school, which was destroyed in the conflict. Below is Beesley’s latest update.

Reema holds the notebook with one of her poems. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

A couple of weeks ago I met Reema. When we left, we gave her with a notebook, pencils, and pens.

At the cash-for-rent distribution I saw her mother, who told me Reema had drawn a picture of me. We went back and found that she had also written two poems. The translations below are “rough” as the poems are written in an Arabic that is likened to Shakespearean English. I hope to go back with a new notebook so I can borrow the one she’s been writing in to photocopy the original Arabic.

Reema is writing more poems. She says she is better at that than drawing. She is happy for us to share her poems and was really pleased that so many people, around the world, knew her through the blog.

Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

Here are the rough translations:

Poem 1
Syria
Our hearts love you
How your children love you
How the memory would forget you
We will be back soon, to remove the tears on your cheeks
We will return one day to our mothers to kiss the soil and the flowers
Lovely Syria, we will be back soon.

Poem 2
When I take my pencil and notebook what will I write about?
About my school or my house
I am deprived from living in my house and school
My school, when will I visit you again
To take my bag and run to you
Destruction has replaced you and taken the place of your ringing bells
and without the students

My house, my flowers, I miss you
My Syria, when will I return back to you?

I have dreams that I can’t achieve and make come true
And all I want is living with you in freedom
Syria, my country, I love you.

Reema’s family are among the 50,000 refugees displaced by the crises in Syria who are receiving cash transfers from Oxfam to help pay rent; the transfers are worth $150 per household per month for two months. Up to 150,000 people will also be receiving vouchers for food and hygiene items.

Learn more about how Oxfam is helping Syrian refugees and donate now to support these efforts.

Oxfam’s Jane Beesley is in northern Lebanon documenting the stories of Syrian refugees.

Shoes belonging to Reema (not her real name), 12, a refugee from Syria living in Lebanon. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

Today I met a girl whose face you’ll never see because she’s too scared about what will happen when she returns to Syria.“I don’t want my photograph to be taken because I’m afraid that when we go back something might happen to us.” If I quoted her on everything she said you would say I made it up. She’s 12 going on 25.

She lives on the first floor of a house, in Lebanon, still under construction. There are piles of rubble and concrete all around, no windows, no comfort. She sleeps in a small “room” with her parents and four siblings.

I’d just finished talking with someone else when she came up and started talking to me in a mixture of English and Arabic. The first thing she says is, “I was at school when it was bombed. Some of the children were killed. We all ran away. We left because we were afraid of the bombings in Syria. When we saw the bombing of the school we thought they bombed all schools all over the world.” It feels like one of the saddest things I’ve heard.

“I miss my friends,” she says, “I miss my teachers. I miss my classes, my English classes, my Arabic classes, my music classes. Now I’m just sitting here every day.” Her mother adds, “She gets bored a lot and keeps crying. I don’t let the children out on the street because I don’t want them to have problems with other children and I’m scared they might fall and get hurt. I don’t have money for any medical treatment.”

The girl continues, “‘I don’t have a pencil, no paper, no nothing. I wake up in the morning and I see children going to school and I cry, why don’t I have the right to go to school? And I sit here and I remember our home back in Syria before the fighting.”

Looking around the small area that is now home, she points and says, “We moved sand and stones from here with our own hands so we could try and have some kind normal living here. There are a lot of rats. I’ve seen them. We get sick because of them.”

A year ago her home in Syria was destroyed by the bombing. In the time that followed they moved from place to place. Each time the fighting got worse the family moved on. Eventually they spent three months living underground with no electricity.

The few belongings that Reema’s family managed to take with them after their home in Syria was destroyed by an air strike hang on bare walls inside the partially constructed building that is serving as their home. Photo: Sam Tarling/Oxfam

She’s the most articulate 12-year-old I’ve met. I’m told, “She was at a school for bright students and was in the top class.” Without a shadow of a doubt she loved school; repeating again the classes, teachers and friends she loved, and saying how so many children died. “I have no idea what has happened to my friends. I don’t know if they are here in Lebanon or in Syria.” When her school was first bombed, “…it was only a small corner so we continued going to school but then it was bombed again and no one was able to go back.”

We look at the tiny space they have for cooking. She looks at me and apologizes: “I’m sorry I’ve forgotten the word in English.” She means kitchen. For the rest of our time together she keeps apologizing. “It’s been a year now since I went to school and I’m forgetting many things. The teachers used to take me to other schools to represent my school. As well as classes I used to teach myself English by reading English books.”

Before leaving she says, “I loved my city. I loved my school. I loved my friends. I loved my teachers.” Her final words are, “Will you come back and visit us?”

Oxfam is providing vulnerable families, including Reema’s, with cash to help them afford safe housing and other essentials. Learn more about how Oxfam is helping Syrian refugees and donate now to support these efforts.

Read more about Reema here.

We see headlines about the conflict in Syria on a daily basis—but something is missing from those news stories. Most cover the violence… bombings, chemical weapons, civilian deaths. But they rarely mention the families uprooted by the conflict. For more than 1.4 million Syrians, surviving the war has meant fleeing their country. They are now homeless, living in foreign lands like Jordan and Lebanon.

Last week, National Public Radio gave us a window into the lives of Syrian refugees living in Jordan. Middle East correspondent Deborah Amos visited the Za’atari Camp, home to more than 100,000 Syrians at any given time. Oxfam’s Caroline Gluck showed NPR how Za’atari has become a city unto itself–one that no one would create if they had the choice. Oxfam is working in the camp to support refugees who need basic services like water and sanitation.

Amos’ story introduces us to Liqaa, a 26-year-old refugee living with her husband in the camp and expecting her first child. She scrapes together ingredients to make Syrian food in their camp trailer in an effort to create normalcy in their life, which has been turned completely upside down.

Listening to Liqaa’s story, you can imagine walking in her shoes. Homeless, afraid, and living in a foreign country, I think I would crave something as familiar as hometown comfort food as well. The basic things that we take for granted are the things that Liqaa and her fellow refugees are living without while also enduring the trauma of escaping (and surviving) violent conflict. Listen to the story below, and then let us know what you think.

You can meet more refugees like Liqaa by following Oxfam on Twitter and Instagram to see the latest photos from the crisis.

Learn more about how Oxfam is helping Syrian refugees and donate now to support these efforts.

The Syrian refugee crisis is escalating at a breathtaking pace. In early March the UN estimated that four million people in Syria were in urgent need of assistance; by late April, the number had shot up to 6.8 million.

And more than 7,000 people are fleeing to neighboring countries every day.

But aid providers are struggling to raise funds for this emergency, and there are serious obstacles to reaching people in need within Syria.

In a new report, “Overtaken by Need,” Oxfam lays out the latest facts and figures and warns of the consequences of neglecting this human-made disaster.

Numbers only hint at what’s happening on the ground, though, so our colleagues in the region have also sent us pictures of people they’ve met—a reminder that every one of the millions affected is a human being with a story.

Like Samira (see below), a widow and mother who fled with her family to Lebanon. “We decided to come to Lebanon because of the fighting that was taking place,” she said. “We couldn’t get any food anymore, we couldn’t live our lives, we lost our jobs, and we worried that we couldn’t stay alive.”

Now she is safe from the weapons of war, but not from the elements: her family spent the frigid winter in a homemade shelter built of cinder blocks, cardboard, and plastic sheeting. And day and night she keeps a vigil. “I just can’t stop thinking about how to feed my children and how to protect them.”

Learn more about how Oxfam is helping Syrian refugees and donate now to support these efforts.