Women In The Syrian Civil War

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Syrian Women and the Syrian Civil War The Syrian civil war is a current conflict in the world that is affecting millions of people. Many Syrian civilians are being displaced from their homes, and finding assistance in nearby countries. There is a history of women being adversely affected during recent wars in ways that include sexual violence, domestic violence, and human trafficking (UNICEF, 1996). In addition to this, refugee women are very likely to be discriminated against with access to resources and education. The Syrian civil war is not excluded from following these trends. In this paper, I will discuss the Syrian civil war, and the challenges that women are facing in Syria and in refugee camps. To understand how women are being affected …show more content…
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as of November 3rd, 2015, there are 4,290,332 registered Syrian refugees (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2015). Sorting by gender, there was no significant difference between the amount of male and female refugees. When sorting by age, 45.9% of the refugees are in the age group of 18 to 59, and 51.1% of the refugees are under the age of 18. When combined with the amount of women refugees 18 years old and older, 76.6% of refugees are women and children. These statistics from the UNHCR show how many families are being affected by this war. The countries that the refugees are mainly going to are Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt, in order from the greatest population of refugees to least. Turkey has by far the largest population with over 2 million of the 4.3 million Syrian refugees. However, the largest refugee camp is located in Jordan. It is the Zaatari refugee camp, with a population of 79,150 refugees as of November 2nd, 2015 (UNHCR, 2015). While Turkey has the largest population of Syrian refugees, the refugees are spread throughout various areas of the …show more content…
While ISIL does place many restrictions on women like other religious extremist groups have done in the past, one of the things they do differently is using women to take part in the war. ISIL needs women to join their group because women are necessary for society to grow, which is one of the goals that ISIL is trying to achieve. ISIL uses social media to recruit new members, and they take advantage of ISIL women to use social media to target women around the world to join (Marzurana, 2015). False promises and images are shown over social media to paint a picture that ISIL is an idea place to join. Overall, while women are helping in the recruitment goals of ISIL, they are not usually placed in any situation with a