The civil war in Syria has passed its third anniversary, yet the situation in and around the nation remains dire. War persists, and the crisis endures, affecting approximately 2.5 million Syrian nationals who have been displaced from their homes into neighboring countries. These innocent civilians—75 percent of whom are women and children and 1.5 million of whom are under the age of 18— arrive at refugee camps seeking shelter from the terrors they have escaped. Yet these oases of hope have become breeding grounds for dangerous and thoroughly underreported events that threaten the bodily sanctity of the refugees within them. Among the greatest threats to refugees are the systematic rape and sexual harassment of girls and women and a quickly growing organ trafficking market. Without widespread awareness of these issues, steps cannot be taken to reverse them.
TRAFFICKING HUMAN ORGANS
Few, if any official media outlets have conducted reports on the organ harvesting occurring within Syrian refugee camps. And yet, as the crisis has progressed, unofficial and firsthand testimonies of the practice have languished online, almost undetected. As of today, some experts and NGOs have recognized organ harvesting in refugee camps as a crucial issue, asserting that the illegal trade has picked up in recent months. Both Turkey and Lebanon are home to large organ crime rings, along with hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Looking at Lebanon specifically helps to elucidate the factors that make the flourishing of such a trade possible. Over 800,000 Syrians have crossed the border into Lebanon seeking safety. This has grown the population of Lebanon, a country of about 4 million, by nearly 25 percent according to official reports from the United Nations. This influx of refugees has flooded the Lebanese labor market and placed severe economic strains on a nation already suffering from financial woes. Add a government whose restrictions and checks on the nation’s health care are close to zero, and the environment is perfect for organ smuggling and trade.
Few, if any official media outlets have conducted reports on the organ harvesting occurring within Syrian refugee camps. And yet, as the crisis has progressed, unofficial and firsthand testimonies of the practice have languished online, almost undetected. As of today, some experts and NGOs have recognized organ harvesting in refugee camps as a crucial issue, asserting that the illegal trade has picked up in recent months. Both Turkey and Lebanon are home to large organ crime rings, along with hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Looking at Lebanon specifically helps to elucidate the factors that make the flourishing of such a trade possible. Over 800,000 Syrians have crossed the border into Lebanon seeking safety. This has grown the population of Lebanon, a country of about 4 million, by nearly 25 percent according to official reports from the United Nations. This influx of refugees has flooded the Lebanese labor market and placed severe economic strains on a nation already suffering from financial woes. Add a government whose restrictions and checks on the nation’s health care are close to zero, and the environment is perfect for organ smuggling and trade.
Unlike Jordan and Iraq, Lebanon has so far refused to establish true refugee camps for the Syrians, despite having the largest refugee influx of any country in the region. Instead, the refugees are forced to create their own nomadic camps, sleep in tents, and find any other shelter available to them in this alien country. A significant number have filled up Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley in a makeshift refugee community.
Thus, when the organ brokers pay visits to these communities of refugees, they find a mass of people seeking any opportunity to provide basic survival necessities for their families. Often in good health and desperate for a way to provide for their mothers and siblings, young refugees, generally between the ages of 15 and 25, are perfect donor parties in this organ trafficking system. Brokers offer as much as $5,000 for one kidney. The choice is a simple one.
Although refugees are giving a certain measure of consent in entering the market, in reality, the system is more complex than can be accounted for in the literal definition of that term. The World Health Organization, in conjunction with the U.N. Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, determined in a 2009 study that consent that has been “obtained through varying degrees of coercion or abuse of vulnerability” no longer constitutes true consent. The study added that, “as with human trafficking for other exploitative purposes … victims of trafficking for the purpose of organ removal are often recruited from vulnerable groups (for instance, those who live in extreme poverty).”
According to an investigative study by the German news magazine Der Spiegel, after this quasi-consent is given (if it is given at all), the broker takes the individual to a makeshift secret clinic, keeping the refugee blindfolded to protect the clinic’s location. These clinics are strewn throughout Beirut in obscure warehouses and abandoned buildings. Once there, a surgeon arrives to perform the organ removal, often lying to the patient and claiming that his organ will grow back with time and sufficient bed-rest. The refugee returns to his “home” in the nomadic camp. Sometimes the money comes; sometimes it doesn’t.
The worst danger comes post-operation. Live organ donors, even in the best health care systems in the world, must seek follow-up care for at least a year following their operations. Painkillers are often prescribed and necessary in the initial weeks following the surgery. Instructions are necessary to inform the patient on how to care for and clean his wound, as are new bandages, gauze, and other equipment to insulate the wound from the outside world. In situations of poor hygiene, surgical wounds are particularly vulnerable to infection. Yet, in the case of these refugees, the Der Spiegel report finds, none of these necessities are ever offered to the organ donor post-operation. Refugees are taken back to their camps, told that everything will be fine, reassured that the money will arrive in a few days or weeks, and then, for all intents and purposes, abandoned.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND RAPE
Though the growth of the organ trafficking trade appears dire and almost irreversible, it has, thus far, been limited in its scope. Estimates suggest that 600 to 800 such operations have been performed on Syrian refugees over the past three years. While this is a sizable number, the practice has tended to fade into the background of public consciousness—obscured by other, more widespread and systematic problems.
Although refugees are giving a certain measure of consent in entering the market, in reality, the system is more complex than can be accounted for in the literal definition of that term. The World Health Organization, in conjunction with the U.N. Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, determined in a 2009 study that consent that has been “obtained through varying degrees of coercion or abuse of vulnerability” no longer constitutes true consent. The study added that, “as with human trafficking for other exploitative purposes … victims of trafficking for the purpose of organ removal are often recruited from vulnerable groups (for instance, those who live in extreme poverty).”
According to an investigative study by the German news magazine Der Spiegel, after this quasi-consent is given (if it is given at all), the broker takes the individual to a makeshift secret clinic, keeping the refugee blindfolded to protect the clinic’s location. These clinics are strewn throughout Beirut in obscure warehouses and abandoned buildings. Once there, a surgeon arrives to perform the organ removal, often lying to the patient and claiming that his organ will grow back with time and sufficient bed-rest. The refugee returns to his “home” in the nomadic camp. Sometimes the money comes; sometimes it doesn’t.
The worst danger comes post-operation. Live organ donors, even in the best health care systems in the world, must seek follow-up care for at least a year following their operations. Painkillers are often prescribed and necessary in the initial weeks following the surgery. Instructions are necessary to inform the patient on how to care for and clean his wound, as are new bandages, gauze, and other equipment to insulate the wound from the outside world. In situations of poor hygiene, surgical wounds are particularly vulnerable to infection. Yet, in the case of these refugees, the Der Spiegel report finds, none of these necessities are ever offered to the organ donor post-operation. Refugees are taken back to their camps, told that everything will be fine, reassured that the money will arrive in a few days or weeks, and then, for all intents and purposes, abandoned.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND RAPE
Though the growth of the organ trafficking trade appears dire and almost irreversible, it has, thus far, been limited in its scope. Estimates suggest that 600 to 800 such operations have been performed on Syrian refugees over the past three years. While this is a sizable number, the practice has tended to fade into the background of public consciousness—obscured by other, more widespread and systematic problems.
However, sometimes even the widespread and endemic problems escape media or public attention and, as a result, never achieve resolution. One such issue is the systematic rape and harassment of women and girls that has become prevalent in refugee camps around the region. This abuse often takes three forms: outright rape and harassment in the camps, the traditional practice of sham marriages, and domestic violence.
Rape and harassment have unfortunately become commonplace in the camps, with women reporting fears of using communal bathrooms alone or of wandering outside of their tents at night. According to a report by The Guardian, even the local owners of brothels and nightclubs have requested that the U.N send in officials to restrict the actions of the “gangs of young men” who “wreak havoc” in the camps and “harass women.”
Yet these attacks remain shrouded in layers of fear and shame, as the traditions of society in the region are deeply conservative. Women cannot come forward about the brutality to which they have been subjected, for fear of public shaming, social isolation, and accusations of impurity leveled by their peers. Sexual abuse severely lowers a woman’s chances of marriage later in life and, on the whole, separates her from society on the grounds of her supposed impurity. For this reason, even aid workers and clinicians from outside the region who have volunteered in the camps are often unwilling or hesitant to report the violence they have witnessed; the long-term consequences of publicizing the attacks could be just as harmful to the victims as the attacks themselves.
Dr. Manal Tahtamouni, director of the Institute of Family Health, a national NGO which has opened nine women’s clinics across Jordan to care for refugees, confirmed this in an interview with the HPR. She noted that “when dealing with women and families, it is not very common to see such cases [of rape], because women refuse to approach workers and report these attacks. This is because of social stigma and understanding the other consequences that could come from their rape.”
In keeping with the ultraconservative, traditionalist atmosphere of society and culture in the camps, the practice of sham marriages has also seen a dramatic increase over the past three years. In this practice, the “groom” (who usually hails from Saudi Arabia or another Gulf state) offers the family of the “bride” a sum of money—often enough for the family to sustain itself for several months—in exchange for the girl’s hand in marriage. In reality, however, the groom takes the bride for a short period—anywhere from a few weeks to a few months—sleeps with her, and then annuls the marriage, returning to his home country without her.
As the war drags on, and new crises spring up around the world, the amount of aid and time donated to the crisis in Syria has slowly started to shrink. “So much progress has been made over the past three years,” said Tahtamouni, “However, I know that we still need assistance other than what we are receiving now, which is all very general. We need more specific assistance.” The only way to truly guarantee that these problems can be resolved in the future is to place the crisis in the public eye.
Rape and harassment have unfortunately become commonplace in the camps, with women reporting fears of using communal bathrooms alone or of wandering outside of their tents at night. According to a report by The Guardian, even the local owners of brothels and nightclubs have requested that the U.N send in officials to restrict the actions of the “gangs of young men” who “wreak havoc” in the camps and “harass women.”
Yet these attacks remain shrouded in layers of fear and shame, as the traditions of society in the region are deeply conservative. Women cannot come forward about the brutality to which they have been subjected, for fear of public shaming, social isolation, and accusations of impurity leveled by their peers. Sexual abuse severely lowers a woman’s chances of marriage later in life and, on the whole, separates her from society on the grounds of her supposed impurity. For this reason, even aid workers and clinicians from outside the region who have volunteered in the camps are often unwilling or hesitant to report the violence they have witnessed; the long-term consequences of publicizing the attacks could be just as harmful to the victims as the attacks themselves.
Dr. Manal Tahtamouni, director of the Institute of Family Health, a national NGO which has opened nine women’s clinics across Jordan to care for refugees, confirmed this in an interview with the HPR. She noted that “when dealing with women and families, it is not very common to see such cases [of rape], because women refuse to approach workers and report these attacks. This is because of social stigma and understanding the other consequences that could come from their rape.”
In keeping with the ultraconservative, traditionalist atmosphere of society and culture in the camps, the practice of sham marriages has also seen a dramatic increase over the past three years. In this practice, the “groom” (who usually hails from Saudi Arabia or another Gulf state) offers the family of the “bride” a sum of money—often enough for the family to sustain itself for several months—in exchange for the girl’s hand in marriage. In reality, however, the groom takes the bride for a short period—anywhere from a few weeks to a few months—sleeps with her, and then annuls the marriage, returning to his home country without her.
As the war drags on, and new crises spring up around the world, the amount of aid and time donated to the crisis in Syria has slowly started to shrink. “So much progress has been made over the past three years,” said Tahtamouni, “However, I know that we still need assistance other than what we are receiving now, which is all very general. We need more specific assistance.” The only way to truly guarantee that these problems can be resolved in the future is to place the crisis in the public eye.