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BARDARASH CAMP, Kurdistan Region – More than half of the over 15,000 refugees who have sought safety in the Kurdistan Region after fleeing Turkey’s military assault on northern Syria are children. Their parents are pleading for a school to be set up in the refugee camps so their children don’t miss out on their education.
As of November 16, 15,972 refugees have crossed the border from northern Syria, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)’s humanitarian organization, the JCC.
Fifty-one percent of them are children.
Bardarash camp is sheltering the majority of the refugees, about 12,400. The camp, which was empty after its previous occupants, Iraqis displaced by the war with the Islamic State, returned to their homes in Mosul and Nineveh province, was hastily brought into service to accommodate the influx of refugees after Turkey launched its Operation Peace Spring early last month.
But no school has been opened here yet and parents are concerned.
“We can tolerate having nothing, but [must have] schools for them,” said Abdulrahman Saeed, a refugee father of two children. “They’re poor and have the right to go to school.”
“We want to open a school for our children so they don’t lose their future,” said Jwana Cholo, another refugee.
Camp officials are scrambling to find a temporary solution. “We’re now in a state of emergency for three weeks, that’s why we don’t have any schools yet,” said camp manager Botan Salahaddin. They plan to open an unofficial school in order to get the kids into classrooms and hope that, with help from UNICEF and the KRG, they can build a proper school in the future.
Reporting by Bradost Azizi
Translation by Sarkawt Mohammed
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