Jeremy Stoner, Save the Children’s regional director for the Middle East and Eastern Europe, says that Syrian children affected by the country’s conflict are still struggling to feel at home, whether they live inside or outside of Syria.

Save the Children has said that 86 percent of the 1900 children surveyed, who had been displaced by Syria’s decade long conflict have said they cannot imagine returning to the country. The charity had surveyed children in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and the Netherlands. One third, meanwhile, said they would rather live in another country.

The Middle East Eye reports that according to Save the Children, of all the children surveyed only three percent of the children who now resided in Turkey, nine percent in Jordan and the Netherlands and 29 percent in Lebanon wanted to return to Syria.

Children who lived in a camp in Idlib expressed the desire to live in “any country other than Syria, where it’s safe, and there are schools and toys.” They expressed fears for their safety living in tents.

The Middle East Eye reports that the survey’s findings also showed how the children’s perspective concerning their future was impacted on by their access to education. Those living in Europe were reportedly more hopeful than those displaced in the Middle East.

Stoner said, “This ten-year war has cost Syria’s young people their childhoods, but the world should not allow it to rob them of their future.”

Since 2011, when a largely peaceful uprising against the Syrian government turned into a complex war, around 6.6 million people have fled Syria, with a further 6.1 million internally displaced.

There are no true figures available for the number of those who have lost their lives to the conflict, but, according to the Middle East Eye, in 2018 there were already at least half a million fatalities.

Umm Muhammed Umar