Widows languish in Raqqa’s informal camps with little support

RAQQA — A tent made of burlap on the bank of the Euphrates River just south of Raqqa city is the only shelter for Yazi al-Kartan, 39, and her four children have known for around seven years. 

Al-Kartan came to the al-Yunani camp, an informal displacement camp two kilometers from Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)-controlled Raqqa, in 2017 after a regime airstrike killed her husband. At the time, Damascus was attempting to take control of parts of the Syrian desert in Raqqa and Hama, while the SDF battled the Islamic State (IS) with support from the United States (US)-led international coalition. 

Hundreds of people flocked to the camp, named for the nearby al-Yunani restaurant, after their homes were destroyed. It currently hosts 244 families from the al-Rasafa area of southern Raqqa and the al-Zamla and al-Sukhna areas of the regime-controlled Homs countryside, according to statistics Syria Direct obtained from the Social Affairs and Labor Committee of the Raqqa Civil Council affiliated with the SDF-backed Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). 

Life in the camp is hard, and families are in dire need of in-kind and material assistance. Some humanitarian organizations provide services, but mainly in the form of “psychological support, and sometimes blankets,” al-Kartan told Syria Direct. “They do not satisfy our hunger. We need food.” She has not seen any organization working in the camp since more than a year ago, she added, when “they distributed mattresses and blankets.” 

The dozens of widows languishing in Raqqa’s informal camps, like al-Kartan, are in a particularly difficult position, with no partner to help support them and no official body to represent them or prioritize their needs. 

Support from humanitarian organizations in the area has also declined overall since 2022, multiple sources told Syria Direct. Informal camps in Raqqa province, as across AANES-administered northeastern Syria as a whole, are largely neglected by official institutions. Meanwhile, living conditions in Syria as a whole continue to deteriorate, with the local currency plummeting to a black market exchange rate of 14,650 Syrian pounds to the dollar. 

Up until 2022, informal camps received attention and support from local non-governmental organizations, which provided cash and food assistance, alongside tents. Since then, support has dried up, with some organizations running small-scale initiatives, providing displaced people with supplementary items, drinking water, blankets and mental health support. What programs do exist target a small number of residents, primarily children, sources in the camps told Syria Direct. 

Raqqa hosts around 53 informal camps inhabited by more than 150,000 people from various parts of Syria. Most have lived there since 2017, when battles against IS were at their height. 

Dwindling support

To get by, al-Kartan works on farmland in the al-Kasrat area south of Raqqa, earning SYP 36,000 ($2.50) a day for an average of six hours of labor. It is unstable seasonal work, not enough to be self-sufficient, she said. 

Two of her sons—one 12 years old and the other nine—also work picking trash in Raqqa city. They head out early in the morning, “collect soda cans and plastic, then bring it back to the camp,” she said. “Every week, they sell what they collected to a dealer.” 

Her oldest and youngest sons, 15 and six respectively, both suffer from thalassemia—an inherited blood disorder—and need periodical blood transfusions. “If I had not been with them for the transfusion, you wouldn’t have found me in my tent,” she said. 

Declining support for Raqqa’s informal camps has left widows in “crisis,” especially those like al-Kartan caring for sick children, she added. “I’m tired of these conditions. Our concern is sustenance, and we’re running just to make ends meet.” 

While she sacrifices for her children, al-Kartan feels she is falling short. “I know I am not doing enough for them, but this is all the energy I have,” she said. She worries about the approaching winter season, when there is less work.

A woman does laundry by hand in the informal al-Yunani displacement camp outside Syria’s northern Raqqa city, 12/8/2024 (Sawsan Jabbara/Syria Direct)

Around 12 million people in Syria face food insecurity, with 2.9 million more at risk of slipping into hunger, the United Nations reported last year. Those living in informal displacement camps are among the hardest hit. 

In the al-Maqas camp, around six kilometers from Raqqa city, Halima al-Humaidi, 54, faces similar conditions. She has lived there since being displaced from the eastern Aleppo countryside town of Maskana in 2017.

Al-Humaidi’s husband was killed by a regime airstrike in Maskana in 2016, after IS took control of the town. On her own in the camp, she is unable to support her five children, especially as one of them has a heart condition and needs regular injections that cost SYP 150,000 ($10). 

Unable to take her son to Damascus to be seen by doctors there, al-Humaidi can do little more than buy the medicine prescribed to her by a doctor in Raqqa. Even so, sometimes she cannot “afford the price of the medicine,” she told Syria Direct. 

When al-Humaidi cannot pay for the medicine, she is forced to “leave my ID with the pharmacist until I can pay for it,” sometimes collecting the money “from do-gooders, or from working in the fields,” she said. She works harvesting crops, currently “picking molokhia for SYP 30,000 ($2) for every 100 kilograms,” she added. 

Read more: Marginalized and underpaid, women work Deir e-Zor’s fields

Organizations’ role

Local civil society organizations are active in SDF-held northeastern Syria, and particularly in Raqqa province, where protection and psychological support programs target former IS areas. But all too often, residents of informal camps find themselves on the margins of organizations’ interest, or find that programs directed at them do not meet the most “pressing needs,” sources told Syria Direct. 

Al-Humaidi hopes for humanitarian organizations in the area to take an interest in widows, and help cover part of their monthly expenses. Her tent “needs to be replaced” because it is worn out, “and this falls to the organizations working in the area,” she said. 

She has accumulated SYP 3 million ($205) in debt, and cannot pay her creditors without a stable job providing a good income. For her, the solution is “to learn a new profession, or obtain a sum to establish a small business,” she said. This is not possible without “accessing professional training, and the existence of organizations to support these projects and provide me with a sustainable income,” she added. 

Hajir al-Balikh, 38, who also lives in al-Maqas camp, is in a similar situation. She lost her husband to cancer months after they were displaced, and since then has been “the sole breadwinner for my children,” she told Syria Direct.

Al-Balikh is from Maadan, a regime-controlled city in the Raqqa countryside. For about a year, she has worked at an AANES-affiliated kindergarten for a monthly salary of SYP 1.5 million ($102). Before that, for years she worked as an hourly farmworker, like al-Kartan. 

She supports five children, the oldest of whom is 13 years old. Three of her children have hearing, sight or speech difficulties. The mother barely makes enough money to cover her family’s basic expenses, leaving her helpless to pay for medical care. 

Al-Balikh echoed al-Kartan and al-Humaidi, saying organizations dealing mainly with widows’ concerns and needs are needed. Syria Direct contacted the organization affairs office at the Raqqa Civil Council to inquire about the reasons for declining support for informal camps and convey the concerns of the women interviewed for this article, but received no response by the time of publication. 

“There are days when we eat nothing but bread and tea,” al-Kartan said. She appealed to organizations and stakeholders to take action to meet her needs, or at least secure “my children’s [medical] treatment.” 

This report was produced as part of Syria Direct’s Sawtna Training Program for women journalists across areas of control in Syria. It was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.