For displaced Syrian youth, art draws the mind out of war and into the future

GlobalPost

PORTLAND, Oregon —
The charcoal drawing was slightly larger than a man’s thumbprint. Adjusting my sense of scale, I studied the tiny sketch: a tree, bare of its leaves, straining under a stiff wind.

“It’s a small drawing, but it has big meaning,” said the artist, 15-year-old Youssef. The small tree, he said, represents him. The wind that had blown the leaves from the branches represents the forces that try to blow him off course. The roots — Youssef’s friends, family and education — hold the tree firm.

Youssef is one of more than 150 adolescents — Syrian refugees and their host community peers — who participated in focus groups organized by the global humanitarian agency Mercy Corps earlier this year.

We were seeking insight into how to best support the hundreds of thousands of youth from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, victims of more than three years of conflict. One day they will carry the responsibility of rebuilding a broken country and shoring up a fractured region.

Dozens of adolescent boys and girls, most of them refugees from Syria, gathered in a community center in Baalbeck, Lebanon.

Strings of fluorescent lights illuminated the room, and the air hung heavy with soot from the oil heaters.

We asked them to create drawings representing their daily lives as well as their thoughts about the future. These few hours provided welcome distraction from the jets roaring overhead that day and the occasional distant thud of bombs.



Ahmed, a 17-year-old Syrian refugee, painted the flags of rebel groups draped limply over a bloodstained map of Syria. He expressed disgust at the infighting that had led the Free Syria Army to lose ground in the war. Still, he said, “I would rather return to Syria to fight and die with dignity than live in humiliation as a refugee.”



Mohammed, 14, drew a train tunnel. He described the opening of the tunnel as the present and the light at the other end as his future. Mohammed hadn’t thought much beyond his desire to return to Syria, but he wanted to be ready to put the pieces of his community back together once he reached the other side.



It’s time for the international community to look ahead to where the tunnel ends, and determine how to help Syrian adolescent refugees get back on track.



Of the 1.2 million children forced to flee Syria, one of three is between 12 and 18 years old. Like their peers around the world, these 400,000 adolescents are just now setting the course for their futures.

The teen years are a fragile time of transition, compounded by a deep longing for acceptance, respect and the pressure of preparing for the challenges of adulthood. 

Many in this so called “lost generation” are woefully ill-prepared, and the US administration’s proposal to cut refugee assistance programs by one-third will not help matters.



Currently, 68 percent of Syrian refugee children and adolescents are out of school, and many have not seen the inside of a classroom in over three years.

We must reduce the barriers to formal education and offer alternative learning models. Open online education could be one way to meet the need, although host countries would have to agree to a set of regional standards to make the school credits transferable.

The private sector could also help ensure that the skills taught are in demand by regional employers and improve future employability. 



We must act quickly. Mercy Corps’ research shows that many adolescent Syrian refugees are already losing hope. For boys especially, a sense of hopelessness greatly increases their vulnerability to extremist ideology and recruitment by armed groups.

Girls, kept home by their families mostly for safety reasons, have reported frightening levels of physical and social isolation.



Beyond giving young Syrian refugees access to education and essential skills, we must work to address pervasive loneliness and daily humiliation.

By creating opportunities to work side-by-side with their peers in host countries, we can help break down sectarian and nationalist divides, and build the teamwork and leadership skills they will need when the fighting finally ends and the time for recovery begins. 



We cannot afford to let Youssef, Ahmed, Mohammed and thousands of other young people fall through the cracks. If we fail to reach them at this critical juncture of their lives, at the other end of the tunnel we are likely to find a future worse than the one we can imagine.

Matt Streng is senior youth development adviser at international development agency, Mercy Corps.

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