Vulnerability Multiplied in Syria—Report on the Survivors of Explosive Devices—

AAR Japan, an international NGO, has conducted assessment on the survivors of the conflict inside Syria and published this report, Vulnerability Multiplied in Syria – Report on the Survivors of Explosive Devices –, which makes 6 proposals.

Assessment for this report was conducted over the course of 2016 in cooperation with a Syrian NGO, Hand in Hand for Syria, which began by identifying patients and former patients of medical facilities in northern Syria and entailed interviews with 2,036 survivors of the conflict including 475 children. The result revealed that the majority, 57%, of the survivors were victims of air strikes, followed by other explosive devices (22%) such as landmines, unexploded ordnance (UXO), and improvised explosive devices (IED). In addition, many of the survivors sustained severe injuries and impairments including amputation, visual and hearing impairments in addition to fractures and wounds, resulting in a high level of dependency in activities of daily life like eating, toilet, washing, and dressing.

Furthermore, given the health care system decimated in the conflict, many of these survivors do not have access to adequate medical care, rehabilitation services, or assistive devices. In addition to the physical and psychological burden on the survivors themselves, in the absence of functioning social welfare system, providing assistance in every step of daily life places an enormous burden on the family members as well, not to mention the significant economic impact in case of severe injuries and impairments of main breadwinners of the household.

Based on these findings, AAR Japan proposes the following to aid organizations working in Syria and donor countries, corporations, and individuals that provide indirect support to humanitarian aid in Syria.

1.    Include provision of rehabilitation services and assistive devices in the intervention in consideration of the conflict survivors;
2.    Help build local capacities, local organizations and volunteers working in Syria, to be able to provide rehabilitation and trauma response through training and financial support;
3.    Enhance food security and livelihood support to those who lost jobs due to injuries and impairments;
4.    Improve referral mechanisms across sectors in order to provide comprehensive support to the injured who are particularly vulnerable;
5.    Conduct awareness raising activities to reduce stigma and combat the loss of dignity particularly by the injured;
6.    Adapt the contents of risk education to reflect the context of the ongoing Syrian conflict to maximize the effect.

• The full text can be found here.