The devastation inside Syria continues after almost five years of conflict. Syrians are now facing the largest humanitarian and protection crisis in the world.
Families have been forced from their homes, livelihoods have been destroyed and the social fabric of a whole country torn apart as a result of the relentless violence and disruption to access and delivery of basic services.
Over four million people were forced to flee their country and 6.5 million people displaced internally, some of them several times. There are now over 4.3 million refugees across Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. More than half of the refugees are children. Turkey now hosts 2.1 million Syrian refugees, Lebanon has nearly 1.1 million, while Jordan hosts more than 630,000. The armed conflict in Iraq has further compounded the Syrian refugee crisis there, with 3.2 million Iraqis displaced within Iraq since January 2014. Many of the 245,000 Syrian refugees in Iraq are in areas where internally displaced Iraqis sought refuge, placing a major burden on host communities and services.
Children are particularly vulnerable to risks of grave violations including killing and maiming, recruitment and use by armed groups, as well as multiple forms of exploitation and abuse, especially forced and early marriage and child-labour.
Inside Syria, the delivery of basic services is severely hampered in most parts of the country affecting children’s access to education, health care, water and sanitation, and other basic social services. Almost one third of hospitals are not functioning and half the population lack access to basic health care. An estimated one third of children under five have never been reached with routine immunisation. More than 6,000 schools - close to one third - can no longer be used because they are destroyed, damaged, sheltering displaced families or being used for military purposes. More than two million children are now out of school. Families in Syria face severe water shortages: 70% of the population live without regular access to water as a result of extensive damage to the infrastructure and in some cases deliberate cuts by parties to the conflict.