From the 150,000 babies born to the strong education: Eight things you don't know about Syrian refugees

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On Wednesday, prime minister-designate Justin Trudeau vowed to make good on a campaign pledge to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of 2015, though the logistics of how this will be accomplished have yet to be worked out. As Canada and other countries grapple with how best to respond to the outflow of refugees, the National Post’s Alia Dharssi counts down eight things you might not know about the crisis.

1. More than half of Syria’s pre-war population of 22 million has been displaced

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees reports that there are more than four million registered refugees outside Syria, while the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that another 7.6 million are displaced within the country. In addition, almost half a million Syrian refugees have fled to Europe and North America. More than 2,400 have resettled in Canada. But, with the situation constantly in flux and thousands of unregistered Syrians in the Middle East, the real number of those displaced may be much higher.

2. Tens of thousands of Syrian babies have been born as refugees

According to an April 2015 study by Refugees International, more than 60,000 babies have been born to refugees in Turkey alone. Murat Erdogan, a professor at Hacettepe University in Turkey, estimates the total could be closer to 150,000. These children are at risk of becoming stateless. Syrian citizenship is passed down through the father, but many Syrian men have died or are currently fighting in the civil war, and in many cases their names aren’t written on birth records. This will make things tricky for the refugee babies, especially because the countries surrounding Syria don’t give out citizenship for being born on their territory.

3. More than half of the Syrian refugees are children

More than half of the registered refugees in the Middle East and North Africa — 51.1 per cent or about 2.1 million people — are children under 18 years of age. More than 1.6 million of these children are under 12 years old. International agencies and non-profits working in the region are trying to get and keep these kids in school, but resources are limited and some children haven’t studied since the conflict started. For example, in 2013, UNHCR reported that 80 per cent of refugee children in Lebanon were not in school, while the World Bank found that Syrian children were dropping out twice as fast as Lebanese ones.

4. More than three-quarters are women and children

Seventy-seven per cent of refugees are women and children. According to a study by CARE International, a non-profit working with Syrian refugees, about one-quarter of refugee households in Jordan are headed by women, as compared to eight per cent of households in pre-war Syria. With many men absent or killed, refugee women who haven’t worked before are struggling to feed their families. Non-profits report that early and forced marriage of Syrian girls is on the rise because families are in dire economic straits.

5. Terrorism does not have deep roots in Syria

Though some fear that refugees may bring terrorism with them, Salafi Islam — the ultra-conservative strain of Islam that has inspired notorious terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and ISIL — doesn’t have deep roots in Syria, in part because Bashar al-Assad’s oppressive regime didn’t tolerate dissent, says Thomas Pierret, an expert on Islam in Syria at the University of Edinburgh. Fundamentalism only gained prominence in Syria after the civil war began in 2011. Pierret suggests that with ISIL fighting a two-front war in the Middle East it needs every fighter it can get, and that extremists are unlikely to be “getting on boats and trying to cross the Mediterranean.”

6. Religious strife in Syria was not as bad as you might think

Prior to the war, Syria’s main ethnicities and faiths co-existed in relative harmony, albeit under the thumb of an oppressive dictatorship. “There’s often an analysis of the conflict or of Syria’s politics from a sectarian perspective, which I think is misleading,” says Marwa Daoudy, a professor at Georgetown University. Daoudy says the strong national identity that started to emerge under colonial rule was strengthened under the Ba’athists through school curricula and foreign policies that championed Arab causes. Religion is important to Syrians, but many “feel strongly that religion should be a private matter,” says a report published by the Cultural Orientation Resource Centre, a U.S. organization that helps with refugee resettlement.

7. Syrian refugees are relatively well-educated

In a bid to cement his power, Assad made public schools available throughout Syria and presided over a number of reforms to the education system. “The state was very powerful and extending access to education was one aspect of that power,” says Elizabeth Buckner, an expert on education in the Middle East at Columbia University. As a result, pre-war Syria had an 86 per cent literacy rate with 96 per cent of youth aged 15 to 24 able to read and write. Those who progressed to high school learned some English and French. By 2007, 91.4 per cent of 10 to 14 year olds were attending middle school. This, says Buckner, was high when compared to other middle-income countries with a comparable level of economic development, even though attendance dropped off in high school and beyond.

8. Syrians from all socioeconomic backgrounds are fleeing

Before the war, Syria was a middle-income country with a GDP per capita of $5,200 in 2010. With most of the populated regions of Syria along an international border, people from all social classes started leaving Syria very early on, says Pierret. “The poorest people would end up in camps. Wealthier people, middle class people, would usually find a way to rent a flat somewhere.” Now, four years into the conflict, with refugee camps filled to the brim, refugees are living wherever they can find a space. Mercy Corps, a non-profit working with Syrian refugees, says on its website that its staff have met refugee families living in chicken coops and storage sheds. As for the ones leaving for Europe, they’re usually middle class, says Daoudy. “They have the means to be able to cross (the Mediterranean), to take the boats and pay the smugglers.”

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