Dear John,
In a crisis, children find themselves projected, catapulted, thrown into a new reality.
When I was in Croatia at the start of my career with UNHCR, I was confronted by 25,000 people all fleeing the conflict in Bosnia. Until a few days before, all these people had been living their routine life. And now that life was gone.
Whether it’s a war or this current pandemic, the impact of such a crisis reverberates through the whole family.
Parents are no longer able to go to work. Families have to live and manage in a small restricted space. Children who were playing and going to school suddenly find everything has changed.
That’s what happened to Maya Ghazal when the conflict in Syria came to her hometown of Damascus.
"Before the conflict I was like any other child just living my life. Not thinking about things like whether we were going to survive tomorrow or not. We just lived our life. We took it for granted. We never really thought we would lose it one day."
All that changed when the war arrived. Just as it has changed for so many children with the arrival of coronavirus.
"Going to school wasn’t safe. We were in constant danger. If our parents left the house, we never knew if we would see them again. I was supposed to be a kid just having fun. The war ripped all that away."
When we deal with children affected by crisis, they are facing the same anxiety and uncertainty as their parents. They breath that uncertainty and fear. That’s why at UNHCR we put mental health care at the centre of our response.
If you are sharing this current lockdown with children, there are some simple ways that you can do this too. 1. Establish new routines
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