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2. Tens of thousands of Syrian babies have been born as refugees



According to an April 2015 study by Refugees International, more than 60,000 babies have been born to refugees in Turkey alone. Murat Erdogan, a professor at Hacettepe University in Turkey, estimates the total could be closer to 150,000. These children are at risk of becoming stateless. Syrian citizenship is passed down through the father, but many Syrian men have died or are currently fighting in the civil war, and in many cases their names aren’t written on birth records. This will make things tricky for the refugee babies, especially because the countries surrounding Syria don’t give out citizenship for being born on their territory.

3. More than half of the Syrian refugees are children

More than half of the registered refugees in the Middle East and North Africa — 51.1 per cent or about 2.1 million people — are children under 18 years of age. More than 1.6 million of these children are under 12 years old. International agencies and non-profits working in the region are trying to get and keep these kids in school, but resources are limited and some children haven’t studied since the conflict started. For example, in 2013, UNHCR reported that 80 per cent of refugee children in Lebanon were not in school, while the World Bank found that Syrian children were dropping out twice as fast as Lebanese ones.

4. More than three-quarters are women and children

Seventy-seven per cent of refugees are women and children. According to a study by CARE International, a non-profit working with Syrian refugees, about one-quarter of refugee households in Jordan are headed by women, as compared to eight per cent of households in pre-war Syria. With many men absent or killed, refugee women who haven’t worked before are struggling to feed their families. Non-profits report that early and forced marriage of Syrian girls is on the rise because families are in dire economic straits.