Care centre in Syria’s Idlib gives hope to lost children of war

More than a decade of war and poverty has seen a rise in child abandonment in rebel-held area

For 23 years, Nader Muhammad Bakri had prayed and hoped that God would bless him and his wife with a child of their own. The Syrian civil war that erupted in 2011 and the ensuing chaos and violence made the challenge of trying for a baby even more daunting.

But while the war took much away from the couple, it also gave them the child they had longed for – a baby girl who had been wrapped in a towel and left outside a building in the town of Ariha in Idlib province.

Mr Bakri and his wife found Joriya – the name they gave the baby – at a home set up to care for the increasing numbers of abandoned children in Idlib, one of the last areas of Syria to remain largely under the control of rebel groups.

“The reason that prompted me is that God did not grant me any children of my own,” Mr Bakri, 40, told The National during an interview at his home in the northern Idlib town of Sarmada, where he moved after being forced by the war to leave his hometown of Khan Sheikhoun in the south of the province, and where he now runs a small shop selling food.

“My neighbour took me to the orphanage where there were all these abandoned children and orphans,” he recalled.

After undergoing a screening process, he and his wife were given charge of the little girl who has now become the centre of their lives, he said.

“For me, if God blesses me with children, I am certain that there will be nothing more important than Joriya.”

More than a decade of conflict and violence has turned Syria into one of the most desperate places in the world, but more so for children. While it has been difficult to accurately count the human cost of the war, a UN report released last year said children were experiencing a protection crisis, with 2,438 grave violations recorded in 2022 and 6.3 million children needing protection services.

“Insecurity and economic hardship heighten human rights violations, fear and psychosocial distress, gender-based violence, child marriage and incidents of sexual exploitation and abuse,” the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (Unicef) said in its report.

The report did not give an official number of children in orphanages or care centres.

Unicef said there were at least 1.2 million children in need of assistance in north-west Syria in 2022, mostly in Idlib where many families are internally displaced, having fled violence in other parts of Syria over the years.

To give these children care and protection, a group of young Syrian volunteers set up the Child’s Home Organisation in Idlib with funding from European countries and Turkey.

“The centre was established in early 2019 due to war, conflicts and repeated displacements,” Hussein Ahmed, an employee at the Child’s Home Organisation told The National. “The centre caters for the children’s basic needs. This includes shelter, food and drink, as well as protection, safety and recreational activities.

“We take in any child who doesn’t have a family or, to be precise, a child who has been abandoned and we don’t know who their parents are. They could be left in hospitals, at mosques, in parks or on the sides of roads.

“Usually, contact is made with the Child’s Home Organisation through our hotline or via our social media channels,” he said.

Raising an orphan or fostering a child is allowed and encouraged in Islam, but western-style adoption is not officially recognised.

Strict rules and guidelines govern the process, with the term “guardianship” used instead of “adoption” in cases where a couple takes in a child that is not their own.

These guidelines apply when finding homes for children in Muslim-dominated Idlib.

“In case it is impossible to reach the biological families after conducting a thorough tracking and tracing process, we then turn to alternative care,” Mr Ahmed said.

“There are many families now applying to foster a child. The family with the highest rating after a thorough evaluation process from our side then gets the right to care for the child.”

That is how Mr Bakri and his wife were matched with Joriya two years ago.

“Before Joriya, we ate and slept, and our lives were very ordinary. There was nothing to work for and try for,” Mr Bakri said.

“I was alone with my wife; why should I build a house? But after I fostered the baby girl, may God protect her, my whole life changed.

“I now have the drive to work and earn, all for Joriya. Everything I own will be marked and I will register it in her name.”

Since only direct biological descendants have the right of inheritance under Islamic law, or Sharia, bequests to unrelated members of a family have to be made in a will.

Mr Bakri said he realised that under Sharia they would have to give up their guardianship of Joriya if her biological parents ever showed up to claim her.

“I am aware that these conditions are in place. If the child’s family found her, they could take her from us. But if they want to take her, I want them to take us together, not take her alone,” Mr Bakri said, half-smiling.

“For my dear Joriya, there is an indescribable love. She is very attached to me and my wife, and we are attached to her even more.”