Northern Syria – The night of February 6th a year ago was not like any other night for the residents of northern Syria and southern Turkey, following the devastating earthquake that resulted in the death of 4,256 people and the injury of 11,774 others.
Syrian girl Maryam Al-Ahmad, 12, was affected by “Cerebral Palsy.” She said, “The prosthetic legs (crutches) have become my constant companions. I initially had a difficult time walking, but now, after a year, I have adapted to them. However, I want to get rid of them and return to playing and running with my friends and siblings.”
Maryam insists on going to school on crutches to share her study time and leisure with her classmates before returning to her tent, which was built on the ruins of her house and where she lives with her family.
Her only wish is to get rid of the crutches, and to be able to walk to her school, run and play with her classmates, and she wishes for the recovery of all the children affected by the earthquake disaster.
In the same disaster, Mrs. Najwa Al-Saloum and her family survived, but lost their home in the city of Idlib, leaving them homeless. They moved to the village of “Al-Zohour” in Mount Kelkel in northern Idlib.
“The residential apartments remain better than tents, but the distance from the city center causes a lot of problems in terms of health, education, and services,” said Najwa.
Syrian Abu Hossam added, “We have moments when we transport pregnant women on motorcycles before giving birth, due to the lack of an ambulance or a 24-hour medical center in this residential village, which accommodates 5,000 people. We also transport our children to school by motorcycles or on foot.”
Regarding the initial moments of the earthquake, Abu Hossam recalled, “We didn’t know where to go; the destruction was everywhere. The houses collapsed over their owners’ heads.” He added, “After enduring great suffering, we received this residential apartment in Mount Kelkel, but we lost everything under the rubble, and now we are in need of everything.”
The Initial Response Moments
Mounir Mustafa, Deputy Director General of the Syrian Civil Defense, said that the Civil Defense rescued 2,950 trapped individuals from under the rubble, provided them with first aid, and transported them to hospitals. It also helped to equip a village to accommodate 7,000 families and prepared the infrastructure with water and sanitation networks, and provided other assistance in collaboration with several organizations.
Thaer Najjar, Director of the “Human Appeal” organization, said, “Our teams rushed to provide services to the earthquake-affected from the first moments of the earthquake. After that, there was direct coordination with the main office to assess the situation of the affected on the ground and provide a rapid response, conduct surveys and questionnaires for a number of affected people in the areas of Jarabulus, Jinderes, Idlib, Salqin, and Armenaz.”
He added, “Due to the great need to secure urgent housing for the affected, we worked on transforming a housing project that we had started since mid-2022 to accommodate displaced people living in tents into a shelter to which earthquake-affected families are transferred. A thousand families, totaling 5,000 people from the Jinderes and Idlib countryside areas, were transferred.”
After a year since the earthquake, the effects of the earthquake still remain on the residential buildings in the city of Jinderes (Al Jazeera)
Compensation Attempts
Coordination response coordinators in Syria documented 334,821 affected families, with a total of 1,843,911 individuals affected, and the earthquake displaced 48,122 families, totaling 311,662 individuals. Children, women, and special cases accounted for 67% of the total displaced.
Mohammed Hallaq, Director of the Response Coordinators, said in an interview with Al Jazeera that “the earthquake displaced hundreds of thousands without shelter or a place to turn to. After organizations responded and restored part of the homes, approximately 51,000 individuals are still in camps and shelters without any response to accommodate them.”
Hallaq added that a donor conference was held in 2023 twice to discuss the response to earthquake victims. The first conference in April raised $1.1 billion, of which $400 million was allocated to northwestern Syria. Although the amount was fully distributed to the projects, the response rate achieved was 53.73% of earthquake victims.
As for the second conference held in Brussels, it was dedicated to the earthquake victims in Syria, with donations amounting to $5.41 billion. The humanitarian response plan for 2023 was implemented at a rate of 33%, the lowest response rate since 2014, due to the failure of the Security Council to extend the mechanism of delivering aid across the border to Syria.
