Homesick, lonely, sleepless; these are the lucky child refugees

[Sally]

Sad what these children are going through. What is to become of so many who are in a strange country on their own?


Mon, May 09, 2016

Homesick, lonely, sleepless; these are the lucky child refugees
The scale of the struggle faced by young arrivals trying to adapt to a new country is revealed as Britain prepares to accept more unaccompanied youngsters
By Mona Mahmood / The Guardian




Illustration: Yusha
Kawkeb Hassan has started sucking her thumb again. It is a comfort thing. The nine-year-old wakes in the night crying and misses school a lot. Her brother Rassim, who helped her escape the perils of Damascus for the uncertainties of a future in Vogtei, central Germany, is worried.

“She watches cartoons, but if there’s a scene where children are having meals with their parents she bursts into tears and switches off the TV,” he said. She eats little.

“She keeps asking me to take her back to her parents in Lebanon,” he said.

Things are little better for 11-year-old Ali al-Shafa’i, who is trying to settle in Gothenburg, Sweden, after an epic 3,219km journey across Europe from Syria. His uncle and chaperone bought him a bird — a curlew, to be precise, but when they were out one day, the neighbor’s cat ate it. Ali was inconsolable.

“I was so upset I can hardly restrain myself whenever I see the cat,” he said, “but I couldn’t touch it because I like cats too.”

More than 370,000 child refugees arrived in Europe last year, about 90,000 of them unaccompanied, the vast majority from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea and Iraq. However, after treacherous sea journeys, monumental hikes and the dangers of the road, the hardest bit might yet be ahead: settling in.

Insomnia, homesickness, separation anxiety and culture shock unsettle all but the most robust souls, according to interviews conducted with child refugees by the Guardian in recent weeks. And though they might have left the bombs and militias behind, there are new threats.

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Homesick, lonely, sleepless; these are the lucky child refugees - Taipei Times?

 

[waltky]

... and we'll have a hot time in the old town tonight...

As refugees suffer, UN throws a grandiose humanitarian summit
May 23, 2016 - While tens of millions of people endure displacement, starvation and violent death from long-running wars and unexpected disasters, the United Nations is hosting an international humanitarian summit, hoping to shake up a tottering global aid system. But the much ballyhooed summit is taking place without President Obama or Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

The U.N.’s top humanitarian relief official, Stephen O’Brien, has described the two-day Istanbul meeting, which continues through Tuesday, as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to set in motion an ambitious and far-reaching agenda to change the way that we alleviate, and most importantly that we prevent, the suffering of the world's most vulnerable people.” Whether the rest of the world agrees about the consequences of what the U.N. calls “the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit” is another question. Along with Obama and Putin’s absence, the conference will be missing representatives from one of the world’s most successful and dynamic relief organizations, Medicins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders, which pulled out of the summit earlier this month, calling it “a fig leaf of good intentions.”

MSF declared it “no longer had any hope” that the U.N. gathering “will address the weaknesses in humanitarian action and emergency response, particularly in conflict areas or epidemic situations” which are its own focus. (MSF says it has had more than 50 of its workers killed in combat zones so far this year.) “Our core competency is not squarely at the center of the agenda,” says Jason Cone, executive director of MSF’s U.S. section. While acknowledging the summit has other aims, he underlined a concern that the U.N. aid system in many areas “is not reaching the needs of the people,” and is “really far removed from the day-to-day reality of most refugees.” Cone indicated that a number of other humanitarian organizations, which had not joined in MSF’s pullout, shared his organization’s concerns.

Donor fatigue has clearly set in. Less than 20 percent of the current U.N. humanitarian financial goal is so far funded. In the overwhelming Syrian regional disaster, less than a quarter of the $4.6 billion required for relief has so far appeared, according to the U.N.’s Financial Tracking Service. Of another $3.2 billion required for Syria itself, only 14 percent is funded. The challenges that the summit meeting claims to be facing, however, are stark and still growing: some 60 million people displaced or otherwise gravely affected by what one aid official calls a “gigantic spike in conflict-related violence”; and tens of millions more affected by other social or natural disasters.

The lack of resolution to long-running conflicts like those in Central African Republic, Liberia and Syria means that refugees also live in degraded, limbo status for much longer: currently an average of 17 years. Meantime, the bill to alleviate some of that suffering is rising steeply. In 2016, funding for humanitarian relief is already estimated by O’Brien’s U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance at some $20.8 billion to help 90.1 million desperate people in 40 countries, virtually triple what was requested four years ago.

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