Earthquake, Unicef: up to 5,000 children left alone in Turkey

In Turkey there are between 1,000 and 5,000 children left alone - including orphans and those still looking for their parents. 'The number of children left without a family is increasing dramatically.

We started the first day with 500 children and now - explains the director for Unicef ​​for Turkey Regina De Dominicis - we are between 1,000 and 5,000 because the numbers are increasing by the hour.

When parents are taken to hospital, they often don't survive and this is happening in all provinces.'

    "Like Unicef ​​we are working with the ministry of family and social affairs - underlines the Unicef ​​representative - we have created an emergency line, when children are found on the street or in hospital or next to the rubble we work on family reunification. Thanks to this type of intervention, it has been possible for many children to find grandparents or uncles who were in other cities. There are many who have been able to reunite and this is the positive part of the story".

    Among them is also Elif (not her real name), 12 years old, who lost her mother and her whole family.

When he met his 83-year-old sick grandmother who lived in another city, he said to her: "Grandma, don't worry, I know it's so difficult to be without your little girl, but now I'm here".

    "She tried to cheer up her grandmother - recalls the Unicef ​​representative - for having lost her daughter, but for her that woman was her mother. She touched me, she was different from the other girls".

    In Turkey, according to De Dominicis, they have "a fairly developed family reception system" and children from zero to three years of age are usually entrusted to families.

Therefore, before the earthquake, only minors between the ages of three and 17 lived in the orphanages.

"They are child homes, where there are - he points out - abandoned children. These children's homes were either damaged or in any case they were no longer safe for children. Fortunately, so far none of the children's homes have collapsed. We have evacuated like Unicef, but on request and with close collaboration with the Ministry of Family and Social Affairs, a total of 700 orphans".

From Kaharamanmaras, Gaziantep, Adiyama and Hatay the children were transferred to Bursa, Nigde, Konya, Izmir, Ankara and Kocaeli.

AND'

the transfer from Osmaniye to Eskiserhir, from Kilis to Kirsehir and to Istanbul is underway.

As for the supply of basic necessities, "we bought many things here to send them to Ukraine and Poland. For example, 300 winter clothes for children and 13,000 hygiene kits for families destined for Ukraine, we had to delay them by a day , and we used them here in Turkey since in some areas the temperature is minus 8".

    Aid workers already knew many of the people they are now helping: "They were already poor, already tried by traumas and many by the war. Now an unfinished emergency - notes De Dominicis - has been joined by another".