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Women refugees in Beqaa camps under the mercy of the “Shawish”
5-2-2018
In a special feature today, Al Hayat newspaper noted that for every Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon there is a shawish (chief) who supervises, organizes and is the link between the camp’s residents and the outside world. In one of the camps, so-termed “widows’ camp”, in the Beqaa area, Al Hayat wrote, lives a group of 40-50 widowed women displaced along with their children, but who cannot leave the camp for any reason without the permission of the shawish. The latter has become more like a ‘mahram’ (allowable male escort) to dozens of widows living within the camp, where none can act without returning to him. Widows residing in the camp pay the shawish in return for delivering daily services, including purchase of household items or a lift in his own car when need arises, the newspaper said. But the rules enforced by the power of money reach sometimes the extent of separating the boys when they reach the age of 9 from their mothers to live in independent caravans located outside the camp. They are allowed to stay with their moms during the day but are separated from them at night, the newspaper wrote. Human rights and relief workers fear that this situation which is in clear violation of the rights of refugees, could very well cultivate and foster sexual abuse of both women and children, become a hotbed for extremists and possibly later a base for recruiting outlaws to do illicit businesses. Um Mariam, a resident of a Beqaa camp, best described the situation when she said: “We live at the mercy of the shawish, the bully who leaves us cowering in fear of his admonishment.” The article can be found on this link: https://goo.gl/79Aroy. (Al Hayat, February 5, 2018)
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