09.03.10
From Syria
Asil is a 20 year old Iraqi girl and a refugee for four years. The security situation and the tragic murder of her brother by the militias in 2006, forced Asil along with her family to leave their home back in Iraq and head to Syria for refuge and safety. “It was a very difficult journey for us. We had never left our families,” Asil said.
Because she has a baccalaureate degree from Iraq which is not recognized by any state university in Syria, Asil’s only choice left was private universities. But even this choice was not accessible for Asil since the family survives mainly from UNHCR modest subsistence allowances.
Since 2008, DRC has been providing in partnership with UNRWA short-term Vocational Training for out-of-school Iraqi and Palestinian adolescents, and Asil was one of this joint cooperation’s beneficiaries attending a course in Computer Maintenance.
The training was a chance for Asil to continue the learning process after a four-year break, and to establish numerous friendships with both Palestinian and Iraqi class colleagues, the thing that helped her overcome many prejudices she previously had. Asil concludes: “I live in an area where many Palestinians misbehave which made me develop a false idea about Palestinians in general, but after I met my class colleagues who were extremely polite to me, I discovered that just like in any other country in the world there are both good and bad people”.
Asil spent the night before the last day of the course crying because this training has filled her time and developed her self-confidence and independence: “I felt strong and courageous because I was going from my house to the centre on my own!” Asil said.
In spite of the bad conditions Asil suffers from, her determination was not affected. She now wishes to become a civil engineer to keep alive the memory of her brother who was murdered just few months before he could graduate from the faculty of agricultural engineering.
