UNHCR’s Legal Aid was Life Changing for a Displaced Syrian Mother
Hamdiya almost gave up to a bitter choice for the sake of her children, until she was introduced to UNHCR’s legal aid programme.
Hamdiya, who lost her vision due to a medical mistake, hardly stepped the stairs of Syria Trust’s legal clinic that’s supported by UNHCR, with the assistance of her 12-year-old son, Mohammed, but with determination and insistence to resolve her case.
Hamdiya is the second wife of a widowed man displaced from Al-Hassakeh city in northeast Syria. They sought shelter in Herjala town to the south of Damascus.
“I could not accept that my children would be the children of another woman even if it’s on paper”
Hamdiya’s husband wanted to register his children from Hamdiya as the children of his first late wife to avoid the expenses of registering his marriage to Hamdiya and this meant issuing new family records for his new children. “I did not like the idea.” Hamdiya said, “I could not accept that my children would be the children of another woman even if it was only on paper”.
Hamdiya’s husband wanted to register his children from Hamdiya as the children of his first deceased wife to avoid the expenses of registering his marriage from Hamdiya and extracting new family records for his new children. “I did not like the idea.” Hamdiya said, “I could not accept that my children would be the children of another woman even on papers”.
When a lawyer from UNHCR’s legal aid program visited the shelter, Hamdiya’s daughter told her that she could not attend the school because she and her siblings do not have the required documents. Hamdiya did not hesitate to tell her story to the lawyer who visited the shelter. the lawyer met the husband and explained to him that UNHCR’s legal aid program provides all the needed support and services for free in order to register the marriage and the children birth.
The husband accepted the lawyer’s assistance, and the procedures went swiftly. Now Hamdiya’s marriage is documented and the children obtained birth certificates. They are going to school and Hamdiya’s son, Mohammed, wants to be an Ophthalmologist to help his mother with her blindness.
UNHCR in cooperation with its partners provides the internally displaced persons (IDPs) with legal aid through 114 trained lawyers. The legal aid program includes legal counseling, legal awareness sessions, and legal interventions before courts and other administration bodies. So far in 2016, UNHCR provided legal aid to more than 93,000 individuals from the affected population all over Syria.
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