More than seven million children have been affected by the devastating earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said on Tuesday (14), fearing that thousands of them may have lost their lives. . RFI visited a displaced people’s camp in Kahramanmaras, in southern Turkey, which has been receiving many children.
Pierre Olivier, RFI Special Envoy to Kahramanmaras, and AFP
“In Turkey, the total number of children living in the ten provinces affected by the two earthquakes reaches 4.6 million. In Syria, 2.5 million children are affected,” said James Elder, spokesman for the organization, in a press conference in Geneva.
“Children and families desperately need additional support. Many staff from our local partner organizations and frontline first responders have been killed, injured, displaced and their offices and equipment destroyed,” he said.
Unicef fears that “thousands of children have been killed”.
According to Unicef, thousands of families living outdoors are exposed to the cold. “Every day there are reports of an increasing number of children suffering from hypothermia and respiratory infections,” said Elder, noting that families are sleeping with children in the streets, malls, schools, mosques, bus stations and under bridges.
In Turkey, Unicef, in coordination with the Ministry of Family and Social Services, sent social workers to hospitals to help identify unaccompanied and separated children. In addition, the organization launched ten new helplines for unaccompanied and separated children.
Alongside these efforts, Unicef is also working with partners to provide psychosocial support to affected children.
In Syria, he said, “every child under the age of 12 has only known conflict, violence or displacement. Some children have been displaced six or seven times.”
According to Unicef, more than 1.7 million Syrian refugees have been registered in the ten affected provinces of Turkey, of which 811,000 are children.
devastated city
The report of RFI went to the city of Kahramanmaras, in southern Turkey, which had a population of 1.1 million before the earthquakes. Today it is a jumble of collapsed buildings, with ambulance sirens blaring at every turn and coffins placed along roadsides.
Between the camp’s white tents, the boys are playing soccer. A few meters away, a 6-year-old girl watches the match. “I was very scared during the earthquake. I was at home with my parents. Yesterday dad came back to get toys for my two little brothers and Barbies for me and my sister”, says the girl.
With a choking voice, she confesses: “I have two dreams: the first is to go back home with my parents, the second is to go back to school with my friends”.
For more than a week, these children, sometimes orphans, try to forget about the disaster. “We play soccer, we go for walks, there are games for the children”, says a boy.
“We used to go camping, but now… it’s not the same! Everything is missing… Here there is no hygiene, there is no cleanliness, the children got sick”, says a woman who arrived from the rural area three days ago with her daughter. Their house is completely destroyed.
Nur Zeyden is a volunteer nurse at the camp and works with traumatized children. She hasn’t slept in two days. “I’ll give you examples: a one-year-old child. He survived the earthquake and now, when he hears the wind blowing, he starts to cry. Another, 6 years old, wants to cry, but can’t. Children tell us that they feel their hearts beating very fast!”
Faced with the anguish of these children, caregivers often have only a few old toys to offer them as a palliative.
road escape
A week after the devastating earthquakes, thousands of people are still trying to flee the affected areas. In some regions, the railroad tracks, destroyed by the earthquake, no longer allow trains to circulate. The population then tries the buses.
At the Kahramanmaras bus station, a man with his wife and four children desperately waits for a seat on a bus. “Our house was destroyed! We have no relatives here, we have nothing else, everything is closed. We can’t stay! We arrived this morning. We’re waiting, they told us they were going to help us!”, says the father of the family.
In every corner of the bus station, the anguish is the same. “We’ve been here for three, five hours, I don’t know. We’re waiting. If there’s a bus, we’ll leave, otherwise we’ll wait. We want to spend a few days in Kayseri, to have a roof over our heads, to eat hot food. We’re very sad to leave the city. , but we will come back and put the city back on its feet!” says another survivor.
A one-way game for some. “We are leaving because the children are not well psychologically. Young people feel bad. And we are all in shock,” says a man who wants to move his family to Ankara.
“They say that all departures from Kahramanmaras are free, but for six people I paid €170 (R$944). Our houses are destroyed and we have to pay anyway”, says another earthquake victim.