Four-year-old Adel and his 1-year-old sister Nour crossed the border from Syria to Lebanon alone. Their father had come to Lebanon in search of a place to settle, leaving his two wives and their children in Syria. When the time came, his second wife and her children crossed the border together, but Adel and Nour’s mother fled their hometown of Tal Kalakh, abandoning the children in Syria.
His wife, Fatima, recounted to The Daily Star how the father was able to arrange for the brother and sister to travel with strangers, paying to have them smuggled into Lebanon by boat, a process Syrian refugees at the NGO Women’s Charity League in Halba, say costs around $400 per person.
Now reunited with their father and siblings, Adel and Nour have no ID papers or documents, save for a letter from the local mukhtar noting their names and ages. Nevertheless, they are among the lucky ones.
There are a myriad of reasons why children become separated from their families in crisis situations. Of the rising number of Syrian children who came to Lebanon unaccompanied, some were separated from family accidently, during an evacuation or at the borders, and others were simply abandoned, some out of the belief that they would have a better chance of survival.
Unaccompanied Syrian children arrive in Lebanon under the radar
Four-year-old Adel and his 1-year-old sister Nour crossed the border from Syria to Lebanon alone. Their father had come to Lebanon in s...
