Syria, which ranked third behind India and Afghanistan, did not feature in a similar poll conducted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2011, the year the conflict broke out.

“I’m very afraid of being one of the last educated women in my country,” said Maria Al-Abdeh, executive director of Women Now For Development, which supports women’s centers in Syria.

“I’m witnessing a new generation who have no access to education, to economic opportunities, to law or to sexual health,” added Al-Abdeh, who has lost colleagues in the war.

Half a million people have been killed in the conflict and half the population have fled their homes.

But bullets and barrel bombs are far from the only dangers. “Sexual violence has been used with impunity,” said Al-Abdeh. “There is a complete absence of any rule of law.”

Laila Alodaat, of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, said while international attention was focused on the “horrific” crimes committed by Daesh, the biggest threat to women was from the Syrian regime.

“Although various actors in the conflict have used sexual violence, regime forces have used it as a weapon of war both to torture women and to terrorize wider populations,” said Alodaat who left Syria in 2011.

UN investigators said in March that the use of rape and other sexual violence during ground operations, house raids, at checkpoints and in detention constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Experts said women were also being sexually exploited by men delivering aid for local and international charities and higher numbers were abused at home as violence became more pervasive.

The poll ranked Syria second worst behind Afghanistan for the risks women faced from non-sexual violence and for access to health care, and joint third worst on sexual violence.

The poll asked 548 experts in women’s issues which five of the 193 United Nations member states were most dangerous for women and which was worst for health care, sexual and non-sexual abuse, economic resources, cultural practices, and trafficking.

“There’s definitely a normalization of violence,” said Jennifer Miquel of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) who coordinates humanitarian efforts to tackle gender-based violence in Syria.

“It’s not just about the frontline, it’s also about how violence has entered the home.”

Aid workers said rising poverty and fears of sexual violence were fueling a rise in child marriage with reports of girls as young as 11 being married but no official data on numbers.

Struggling families were marrying off daughters early for financial reasons and hoping it would protect them.

Campaigners say early marriage limits girls’ education and increases the risks of domestic abuse and death in childbirth, particularly with limited access to health care. “We have witnessed women dying in childbirth or having Caesareans without anesthetic because they don’t have access to hospital due to heavy bombing, or because the hospital has been destroyed,” Al-Abdeh said.

But the UNFPA’s Miquel said Syrian women and girls should not be seen simply as victims.

With many men killed, injured or absent, experts estimate one third of households are now headed by women.

“We cannot just see women as complete victims in all this — they are certainly agents of change as well,” said Miquel.

“There are many empowered and dynamic young women who I believe will be contributing to the future of Syria.”

* Courtesy Arab News

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“Children can’t wait for yet another famine declaration before we take action,” said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF Director of Emergency Programmes. “We learned from Somalia in 2011 that by the time famine was announced, untold numbers of children had already died. That can’t happen again.”

Some 22 million children have been left hungry, sick, displaced and out of school in the four countries, UNICEF said. Nearly 1.4 million are at imminent risk of death this year from severe malnutrition.

UNICEF will require close to $255 million to provide these children with food, water, health, education and protection services for just the next few months, according to a new funding update.

Most of the funds – over $81 million – will go towards nutrition programmes to screen children for malnutrition and provide them with therapeutic food.

An additional $53 million will be allocated to health services including vaccinations, while over $47 million will go to water, sanitation and hygiene programmes to prevent potentially deadly diahorreal diseases.

The remaining funds will help protect children affected by conflict and displacement and provide them with education services. Cash assistance will also be offered to the most vulnerable families.

The resources needed over the next few months are part of a broader appeal for all of 2017, totaling $712 million – a 50 per cent increase over funding requirements in the four countries at the same time last year.

UNICEF has been working with partners in the four countries to respond to the famine threat and prevent it from spreading:

* In northeast Nigeria, UNICEF will reach 3.9 million people with emergency primary healthcare services this year, treat 220,000 severely malnourished children under the age of five, and provide more than a million people with access to safe water.

* In Somalia, UNICEF is supporting 1.7 million children under-five years of age, including the treatment of up to 277,000 severe acute malnutrition cases through facility-based and mobile health and nutrition services.

* In South Sudan, UNICEF, together with partners, has delivered life-saving assistance to 128,000 people in areas affected or threatened by famine, including almost 30,000 children under the age of five.

* In Yemen, UNICEF has scaled up activities to respond to malnutrition through health facilities, mobile teams, community health workers and volunteers reaching hard-to-access communities and displaced families.

UNICEF is also supporting severely acutely malnourished children and their families with cash assistance and water and sanitation services, including the provision of safe water, supplies and hygiene promotion.

Armed conflict is a major driver of this crisis, UNICEF said, calling for unconditional, unimpeded and sustainable access to the children in need and an end to the violations of children’s rights in the affected countries.

UNICEF also sounded the alarm about a worsening nutrition situation in neighbouring countries.

“As violence, hunger and thirst force people to move within and across borders, malnutrition rates will continue to soar not just in these four countries, but also in the Lake Chad basin and the Greater Horn of Africa,” Fontaine said. “If humanitarian agencies do not get the access and resources they need to reach the most vulnerable, lives will be lost.”

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