“What I get is not enough to pay the house’s del. The Syrian husband in early 2013 on charges of demonstrating against the regime, and she has not heard about his place of detention or fate so far.
Hala, with her three children, resorted to the house of one of her relatives in “Jadida Artouz”, 17 kilometers west of Damascus, after the Damascene neighborhood at the time was subjected to a violent government shelling that affected most of his buildings, later managed to rent a modest apartment in the town itself, where even settled in it. today.
Hala continues her talk to Al -Jazeera Net: “I was feeling a heavy pregnancy as a result of the role of the father and mother together, I had to search for a source of livelihood that I spent from him and paid the house of the house, and I cared about my children’s affairs and their needs. I was often unable to secure food for my children. “
Hala’s suffering is withdrawn from thousands of Syrian women who today head families who lost their breadwinner, either as a result of his death by the Syrian regime forces during the horrific war that the country witnessed, or forcibly absenting it inside prisons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw4hvtkozvc
Thousands of families without a breadwinner
Widowment (the loss of one of the spouses) is described as one of the most dangerous problems produced by the war, and the Syrian families suffer from their repercussions at the human and living levels significantly.
A multi -purpose demographic survey conducted by the Central Bureau of Statistics – a government institution – in cooperation with international organizations, showed that there were 518,000 women who lost their husband during the war.
While an international report issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees indicates that more than 145,000 Syrian families are refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, and like tens of thousands in Turkey, it is supported by women who are fighting alone in order to survive, the total of about 22% of The total number of Syrian families.
Between psychological stress and living difficulties
The war in Syria since 2011, according to the reports of the World Bank, has left a collapsed economy, poverty and hunger, and families supported by widowed women who hold great burdens and responsibilities that exceeded their endurance, today suffering from hardship, isolation and anxiety, after they were forced to take responsibility for their families alone from an early age .
Often we suffered from the lack of supplier, the height of debt, the lack of sufficient food, and the need for more children to work in shadow economies, and some of them were exposed to varying degrees of violence in various forms.
In the same context, the researcher in the Social Research Unit linked to the Hermon Center for Contemporary Studies, Talal Al -Mustafa, linked the increase in the percentage of women in the family, and the need for families to cover the deficit in their budgets, and saw that the rates of women’s poverty increased to unprecedented levels with the increasing number of widows in society.
In his study on the destinies of Syrian women in the shadow of the war, he pointed out that the war imposed a heavy reality on women on the psychological side, as a result of the lack of safety and the difficulty of the ability to adapt to such troubled conditions, in addition to a continuous state of anxiety, tension and fear of the loss of her husband or children .
The study pointed out that the women who lost their husbands or their breadwinners were subjected to great pressure due to new roles added to their usual roles, such as working inside and outside the house.
Women often for their families practiced unfamiliar or stressful work, and they often resort to work that need long working hours for cheap wages, such as packaging of food, or marketing vegetables ready for cooking.
Most of the families led by a woman under the power of poverty in light of an economic collapse caused by the high levels of regime spending on the war, and neutralizing the country’s economic resources in favor of active powers on the ground.
UNICEF confirms that poverty in Syria controls 90% of the population, while the rate of malnutrition among mothers ranges from 11% in the northwest of the country and parts of Damascus to 25% in northeastern Syria.
As for Faten, 52, who lost her husband as a result of a random government shelling, one of the commercial markets in the town of Saqba, northeast of Damascus, does not differ much, she says, “I was in times of distress borrowing money from relatives and sometimes from neighbors to spend on our basic needs. The distress is intensified, I buy it from a nearby store in debt, and I will pay the store I have borrowed after I received financial assistance. “
Despite her commitment to work in the informal sector, she is charged with a salary, she needs with her family for semi -permanent financial and nutritional assistance, in order to be able to pay the basic expenses.
In her interview with Al -Jazeera Net, Faten explained that the provision of the house’s fee, in light of the high prices, is a constant source of concern, because of the delay in her payment of caveats that may open the way to evacuate us, and pointed out that she often left the dining table while she was hungry, in exchange for satisfying her children, Although the table lacked many types of traditional foods that were supposed to exist, similar to their pre -war.
Other women whom Al -Jazeera Net contacted in different regions of the country complained that they have lost their breadwinners during the conflict period, from their poor living conditions, as they were not worrying to life in front of them.
The double responsibilities carried by women affected by the war, according to the High Commissioner for Refugees, led to a great shock that has not been disturbed by a negative feeling towards this new role. It quoted an institute specializing in psychological and social support services, the high risk of depression and psychological pressure, as women are exposed to in such conditions.
Between response and needs
In previous years, the United Nations supervised the largest international response to providing humanitarian aid to the Syrian people. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies – it reached more than 40 billion dollars.
Bid that the fate of this aid remained the focus of skepticism and controversy, with continuous accusations of the Assad regime of exploiting it in his favor and benefit from it in support of its political environment.
Economist Firas Al -Sayed believes that the legacy left by the ousted system and its implications require a comprehensive reassessment of issues and issues related to natural resources, and the state’s general resources to discuss its potential effects on the economy and the biological needs of the population.
He told Al -Jazeera Net that the fall of the Syrian regime involves an important opportunity to reset these resources that it invested in the previous stage is a limited group of beneficiaries, and starting again, through a clear -cut vision about future Syria, which today lives a historical shift, in which a reality is supposed to improve. Weak categories, with limited income, which the regime impoverished with its economy.
Al -Sayed believes that the needs of the population, especially after millions of refugees abroad returns to their country, will continue to change according to the new transformations in the structure of society and the developments it is witnessing, and his need for new strategies and work programs that are consistent with its aspirations after 6 decades of a holistic rule that brought the country to all international indicators To the last ranks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyro2v0zati
The caretaker government, for its part, is trying to address the social part of the economy, due to the poor financial conditions and the lack of resources that the population suffers from, in light of the high volume of inflation during the last decade, high prices, and the decline in the value of the national currency, but it faces many challenges in this regard that increased its burdens , The most prominent:
- The aid provided by the World Food Program stopped for 5.5 million Syrians to finance their humanitarian needs.
- The presence of 16.7 million people need aid to meet their humanitarian needs, according to United Nations estimates.
- Increased poverty and poverty levels in wide sectors in society.
Finance Minister, Mohamed Aba Zaid, acknowledges that the government does not have a magic wand to solve the economic problems it inherited from the Floor system, empty cabinets, huge debts, and a year 70% of its losing companies, but the government revealed its intention to reform the salary package and wages, in a step Urgent to improve the reality of weak groups.
