Iraqi refugees turn to sex trade in Syria

A score of young Iraqi women in tight, shimmering gowns shuffle across the nightclub dance floor under the hungry eyes of Gulf Arabs at nearby tables.

The band blasts out Iraqi songs into the early hours as the watching youths join the dancing or summon girls to sit with them -- there is little pretense about what gets transacted at this neon-lit nightspot half an hour's drive north of Damascus.

The dancers, some in their early teens, do not want to talk, but one said she had no other way to support her family. "My father was killed in Baghdad and our money is finished," muttered the dark-haired girl in a black and silver dress.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR calls it "survival sex", a desperate way to cope for Iraqi refugees whose savings have run out since they escaped the violence at home.

The idea repels many of the 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria, but the struggle to make ends meet has forced some to share tiny apartments with other families in the slums of Damascus, put their children out to work or marry off teenaged daughters.

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UNHCR calls on women leaders to empower female refugees

GENEVA, December 12 (UNHCR) – A Norwegian polar explorer joined more than 50 senior businesswomen and aid workers in Geneva earlier this week to look at ways in which women leaders could help female refugees empower themselves through livelihood projects.

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The refugee agency's Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Erika Feller, kicking off the day-long meeting, told participants that a lack of livelihood opportunities could lead to protection risks, especially for women. She added that many women had to resort to survival sex to earn enough money and food to provide for themselves or their children.

"Refugee women often have skills and resources but need additional support to become self-reliant and avoid protection risks, such as survival sex," echoed Marjon Kamara, head of UNHCR's Africa bureau. "An initiative like WLL aims at doing just that."

Mireille Mugisha, a 26-year-old economics student from Burundi, urged the business executives and philanthropists to support livelihood projects for refugee women. "When you empower a woman, you support the entire household . . . you help eliminate child labour, you ensure girls' access to education," she said. "You also reduce infant mortality rates, improve nutrition and diminish poverty, exploitation and dependence on food aid."

All participants stressed that it was essential for refugees – especially female refugees – to develop skills in order to earn an income and support their families. Refugees must be given the opportunity to build up a lasting future whether they repatriate, integrate locally or resettle in a third country.

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Women Leading for Livelihoods was set up by UNHCR to recruit the help of women leaders in promoting economic self-reliance and empowerment of refuge women and girls around the world.

"The goal is to improve refugee women's lives by recognizing their right to work, their potential in creating micro-businesses and to help them to become self sufficient," said Gry Tina Tinde, who is the special adviser on gender issues to High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres.

"We want women leaders to contribute with their expertise in creating a business, we want them to contribute with their ideas, we invite them to finance refugee women's projects" said Tinde.

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Starving to survive: Iraqi refugees resort to desperate measures

Iraqi Fatima Ahmaji earns money to feed her family in Damascus by starving herself.

Living with her two children in a bare room in Sayeda Zeinab, the Iraqi-majority suburb of Damascus, Fatima does not eat from dawn until dusk on behalf of people who have missed days of fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

“I am here in Syria jobless,” she told IRIN. “How can I survive and look after my children? I should and must work.”

Since September Fatima has been fasting, receiving 3,000 Syrian pounds (about US$60) each month from Gulf and Iraqi clients. She says the work is taking its toll on her physical health.

“I feel very weak, I’m exhausted and I suffer especially from headaches. Some days I have to eat and make up the fast later, but I shouldn’t because I’ve given my oath.”

Fatima escaped the violence of Iraq in 2006 with her children after her husband was killed. Like many Iraqi refugees in Syria she has been forced to take extreme measures to make ends meet as the price of basic commodities and rents in Syria continue to soar.

“Harmful practices”

The Syrian government does not allow the estimated 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria to work legally and an increasing number of refugees have taken up “harmful practices”, from prolonged fasting to prostitution, in order to survive.

“People are finding themselves in extreme situations and at the worst end we’re seeing child labour, early marriage and survival sex,” said Sybella Wilkes, spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Syria. “This is something that these families would never have resorted to in Iraq. They’re facing drastic measures in order to keep some semblance of quality of life.”

According to the latest survey by the UNHCR of 754 Iraqi families in Syria, 33 percent say their financial resources will last for three months or less, while 24 percent are relying on remittances from family abroad to survive.

Some refugees are choosing not to stick it out.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have returned from Syria since mid-August, though the figures are disputed. The UNHCR said staff in Syria had received reports that 128,000 Iraqis were recorded as leaving, though figures from the Iraqi Red Crescent Organisation released on 3 December said between 25,000 and 28,000 Iraqi refugees had come home from Syria since mid-September. Initial Iraqi government figures said up to 60,000 had returned.

According to a UNHCR study, 46 percent, by far the largest component, left because they could no longer afford life in Syria.

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