We were surprised with four children in one of the abandoned houses in Aleppo where a good lady whom they’re not related to took them to the “latter care” center for the prisoners organization in Aleppo and asked to place them there. these four brothers looked homeless with all meanings of word.
no father or mother to take care of them, dirty old clothes, pathetic faces and looking tired, exhausted and hungry, with lice eating their heads. when asked about their parents, they said that their father had traveled away along time ago, and their mother had married a strange man and never even comes to visit them.
this image isn’t an fantasy, it’s one out of many cases that we find all the time, but no one pays any attention to it or puts it under the spot. it includes a very wide and important range of our children, the homeless children that gradually turn into criminals! these children that deserve our special care. they practically can be categorized under “children with special needs” who have a special care according to the political guidance in our country today.
we have to mention that children with special needs like the handicapped for example often find families or relatives or charities to surround them, or a generous person who is motivated by compassion and mercy to adapt or take care of some of these physically handicapped children. but a homeless kid is an outcast in our society, never finds anyone to take care of him or financially support him! and often ends up either selling cigarettes or begging for money.. or is forced by the circumstances to commit a felony or even a crime. and since this homeless kid is outcasted, doesn’t find a place to shelter him, he goes back to homelessness or begging, after he gets out of arrest or teenage reformatory, or is even turned by the master criminals into a tool of their use.
The announcement 52 of the year 2003 released by Mr. president has declared that the minor isn’t criminally persuaded if he wasn’t ten when committing the felony, and in case he was ten then he would be submitted to some reformative procedures. and therefore the minor before ten is given to his parents according to the law and after ten is put into rehab institutions for a certain time decided by the court.
here appears another kind of problem when this minor has no parents or relatives to take care of him, or in the absence of rehab institutions that are able to contain large numbers of homeless offenders,he will end up on the streets again and in the trap of yet another criminal act and enter a vicious circle with no way out.
here one of the TV investigations aired over two years ago comes to my mind, about the experience of a certain country to take care of the minors. long story short is that one of the institutions of this country adapted a project to take care of criminal minors coming in or out of prisons there within a follow-up society. and gave them care and education and put them into perminate internal school system. they wanted to find out the results of this experience. years after that these minors had moved up from one school period to another. and the liables were very surprised, when they were invited to the graduation ceremony, that these kids had gotten the highest marks! and a lot of them had reached PH in all different scientific areas! but the biggest surprise was their parents and families who didn’t believe that their own children, whom they were afraid to carry their names, had reached what they had! and the investigation ended with the families and children embracing with tears in their eyes.
that experience points out that the criminal is the result of the social and economical circumstances surrounding him.. and that criminals or homeless minors have a unique intelligence only hire it in a bad way instead of hiring it for good, and that kind of phenomenon rises in the absence of caring centers and proper rehab institutions.
we (prisoners care organization in Aleppo) have a successful experience in the “latter care” center of sheltering the children of prisoners and homeless children, and with great efforts the organization managed to get a floor then two floors of a humble building provided by the directorate of work and social affairs for the organization to borrow. and the organization have prepared it to take in those deprived of parental and social care.
and in spite of the small place the organization has managed to shelter over 70 children and provide all their needs of food, shelter and education and many scientific and career and entertaining activities too.
and when the place got too small for us we went after a land to build a special society for these children and after a long way and many tries we succeeded to get a land given to us by the ministry of agriculture and agricultural reforming to fulfill this dream project for the kids. so we filed a formal request to give us the necessary licenses to start constructing by the Aleppo city counsel..and there began the agony journey to reach a dead end when all the follow-ups and the reviews of the city counsel came to a conclusion that the estate is in the organizing scheme protection area and therefore, they can’t give us the necessary license to start building.
During this time Mr. prime minister released the announcement 16B for the year 2005 that declares the permission for building hospitals, schools and touristy and service projects within the organizing scheme protection area.
And a new agony journey began based on this announcement, and after so much time spent going backwards and forwards from one department to another and then from departments to the ministry of local management, and after pursuing the application for so long, the application ended up at the constructional commission of the city counsel that decided to wait for the instructional schemes from the city counsel, and therefore leave the license approval suspended for unlimited time! Practically the application ended up in drawers, depriving the organization from building the project that we worked hard for for so long with all the great people who are ready to contribute and put the effort into giving this gift for out children.
If that's the case in applying the management scripts in our departments, how can the administrative correction ever get done in the presence of such managers who climb up on the public management thrones in our country? And if that's the way they deal with a public project that serves the citizens of our country then how are they dealing with private projects?!...
It seems as though their unjustified literalism exists only when dealing with these public projects! And it totally differs from handling private ones! there the script game that they hold on to so literally is their game and their bright intelligence interferes to create whatever holes in the script they can find!
And the question that arises here is: if this was a private or touristy project and not a service one, would all that procedures stand in its way?! And isn't it weird that a local organization contributes even if partly in a special service project to solve the problem of homeless children –even though the responsibility to solve it is on the government's shoulders not on the shoulders of some organization- that this organization is confronted with such prevention armed with management barriers and solid scripts, and frustrated to establish a project that is considered a real accomplishment for our country and a salvation for the lost childhood. how can we ever invest childhood under such circumstances of a management minds controlling our public departments and institutions? and is there still a hope for this project to ever be accomplished after all?
Lawyer Mohammad Ali Saieg, 3/2007, (Administrative procedures stops a children’s project until further announcement!)
Translated by: Areej Shmaies