Zaid was only a young boy when air strikes and artillery fire began to plague his hometown in Syria. Originally from Daraa, the city where the war once began, Zaid, his siblings and their mother were left with no choice but to flee the country. Although they eventually found safe haven in Ajloun, Jordan, the …
Is home where your heart is, as the popular saying goes, or is it, as Webster’s dictionary defines it, just “one’s place of residence”? What does home mean to the over 65 million people displaced globally because of war, violence, natural disaster and persecution? They live in temporary, uncertain and often chaotic conditions, far from …
At the center of this emergency lies Syria. Since the conflict started, over 5.5 million people have left the country. The majority of them have found shelter in neighboring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. 6.6 million are internally displaced inside Syria and an unimaginable 13 million people need humanitarian aid. What would turn …
As a global first responder for over 30 years, International Medical Corps’ medical professionals know a ton about the human body: how to perform lifesaving operations, treat chronic illnesses, address and prevent infectious diseases, and bring children back from the brink of starvation. But matters of the mind and heart can be more mysterious. Says …
Hind Yousef laughs heartily as she recounts using her degree in clinical psychology to diagnose herself with a “Type A personality.” She identifies with people who need a lot of structure and organization–yet she strikes me as someone who is immensely comfortable with chaos. After all, she works in Jordan providing mental health care to …
Syria’s relentless civil war enters its eighth year this month with no sign of any end to what has become this century’s bloodiest, most brutal conflict. The fighting has claimed an estimated one-half million lives and caused nearly half the country’s pre-war population of 21 million to flee their homes for safety, either elsewhere inside …
Single male refugees and unaccompanied adolescent boys are subject to a number of threats and risks which are often overlooked and under-addressed by the humanitarian community, a recent report showed.
The original impetus behind Insan, an initiative launched in 2013, was to provide psychological treatment to Syrian children in Egypt suffering from the trauma of the civil war in their home country.
When refugees arrive in a new country they bring the clothes on their backs, the memories in their heads, and the recipes of their ancestors. From afar, they re-create the flavors of a past life.
Zaid Jalood, Community Health Officer with the International Medical Corps, reports on a project that has trained young displaced people in Iraq as community healthy workers to help prevent the health issues that can be endemic in refugee camps.