The massive earthquake that struck Syria and Turkey last week has killed more than 41,000 people and displaced over a million more, according to Turkish government statistics. Among those affected are 7 million children living in the regions that were hit, according to UNICEF.
Thousands of children have died, and thousands more have lost a parent or caregiver or both, although no concrete estimates of that number yet exist. Rescue workers are rushing to attend to their needs in the crucial days ahead.
Why We Wrote This
Trauma affects children differently than adults. But as Turkey and Syria attempt to recover after their deadly quake, research shows that children also exhibit high degrees of resilience, especially when the community steps in.
Among the most critical priorities is identifying unaccompanied children. Following this scale of disaster, UNICEF says, children separated from family are vulnerable to violence, exploitation, and abuse. Children rescued from under the rubble who have lost their families – many of them so shocked into silence they do not know their own names – have been left in the care of pediatricians.
Those with their families are dealing with the traumas of homelessness and hunger – and watching their caregivers suffer. Children face unique vulnerability after a natural disaster. But research also shows that children are uniquely poised to withstand tragedy, especially when support networks step in to provide care.
Children covered in dirt and grime, many shoeless, wait for food in a field outside a camp for internally displaced people in this southeastern Turkish city. Many of the children are Kurdish, many impoverished, and now, in the wake of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit this region last week, many are homeless.
They sleep in tents, curled up next to cousins and siblings, trying to stay warm.
Here in Gaziantep, they wait for aid. When the government supply truck arrives, usually once a day, they run toward its white, hulking form. The truck stops, and a young man, dressed in civilian clothes, leans out of the back.
Why We Wrote This
Trauma affects children differently than adults. But as Turkey and Syria attempt to recover after their deadly quake, research shows that children also exhibit high degrees of resilience, especially when the community steps in.
The children scramble toward the open hatch, trying to climb inside. The man uses a stick to push them back. He throws a blanket or two into the teeming crowd, but no food.
As the truck lurches forward, children are still hanging from its back. Their shoeless feet drag on the ground as the truck speeds up, some running to try and keep up. Others try to clamber inside the moving vehicle.
As quickly as it arrives, the truck is gone, leaving a trail of fallen children in its wake.
“The children are hungry. They are scared,” says Kiraz Balik, who is alone in Gaziantep with her seven children – among some 200 estimated to be at this informal camp alone – because her husband is in prison.
The massive earthquake that struck Syria and Turkey last week has killed more than 41,000 people and displaced over a million more, according to Turkish government statistics. Among those affected are 7 million children living in the regions that were hit, according to UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, speaking to reporters in Geneva.
The images of children being rescued after days under collapsed buildings have captured the world’s attention. But thousands of children have died. Thousands more have lost a parent or caregiver or both, although no concrete estimates of that number yet exist.
Children face unique vulnerability after a natural disaster, and in this region their plight is overlapped with poverty, and across the border in Syria with displacement and civil war. But research also shows that children are uniquely poised to withstand tragedy, especially when support networks step in to provide care.
Finding the parents
For now, rescue workers are rushing to attend to their needs in the crucial days ahead.
“Urgently identifying unaccompanied children and those who may have been separated from parents and caregivers is absolutely critical,” UNICEF communications specialist Joe English told CNN. “Following these kinds of disasters, displaced children, especially those who are unaccompanied or separated from family, are vulnerable to violence, exploitation, and abuse, including the risk of trafficking or gender-based violence.”
Children rescued from under the rubble who have lost their families – many of them so shocked into silence they do not know their own names – have been left in the care of pediatricians.
Those with their families are dealing with the trauma of homelessness and hunger – and watching their caregivers suffer. Many more will soon be born into this tragedy. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that at least 214,000 pregnant women have been affected by the quake, and that 24,000 women could give birth in the next month. In the city of Islahiye, in Gaziantep province, rescue workers reported that women were giving birth in tents next to rescue sites.
Children display trauma in unique ways. According to research published in The New England Journal of Medicine, as part of a survey of stress reactions to the 9/11 attacks, “children are among the most vulnerable for long-term psychological disorders and impairment” in the aftermath of disaster. They often become anxious about leaving their caregivers, are unable to perform in school, and become hypervigilant. At least 35% of families surveyed in studies after 9/11 said their children displayed some symptoms of post-traumatic stress.
Eloisa Lopez/Reuters
The severity of response can also be directly linked to post-event exposure. In other words, if a child is left near rubble or bodies, or watches coverage of an event incessantly following a disaster, they are more likely to display PTSD symptoms.
Increasingly, however, mental health research is focused on their resilience. In a paper on pediatric responses to trauma, Dr. Froma Walsh from the University of Chicago found that “acute stress symptoms” are common in the immediate aftermath of an event. However, most people, including children, are resilient in coping and adaptation and exhibit transformation and positive growth, she finds.
That’s especially true with early interventions in community settings like schools or hospitals.
This will be complicated in Turkey and Syria, where many traditional institutional structures critical to children’s recovery – such as schools and hospitals – are currently inaccessible. Schools are closed until at least March 1, and even when they open, many displaced children will not be registered to attend. Hospitals are teeming and overcrowded with earthquake victims. In some cities, such as Antakya, almost all of them have been destroyed.
Dr. Walsh’s study also points to the importance of the family and community structure “when their strengths and potential are mobilized.” The symptoms of children who experience trauma, she writes, greatly depend on whether children can seek support within their networks.
Tightknit community
In a region such as southeast Turkey, where families are large and tightly knit, this is positive news. In the makeshift camp in Gaziantep, Genco Demir, a Kurdish man overseeing the tents, says that everyone here is related.
Suhaib Salem/Reuters
“There are many people here watching other people’s children,” says Talibe Gezgin, a young mother at the camp who is four months pregnant.
On a recent day in the middle of the tent city, erected by this community of Kurdish migrant farmers on the first day after the earthquake, a group of nine children has made up a game. One girl, no more than 10 years old, wiggles a found piece of string on the ground, like a snake. Two groups of children – four on each side – squat on either side of the string. When she instructs, they jump over the rope.
They seem aware of some tragedy, some disruption, but they smile and hold each other close. They play all day. They talk about how they miss school – how they can’t wait to go back.
Their parents, circled around them, are worried. None of them can get the government aid they need to feed their children or take care of their own medical needs; the government has promised victims of the earthquake 10,000 lira, some $530, per family, but they do not know where to go to get it.
But amid the trash and tents, the children laugh.