How Being Forced Across Borders Causes Mental Strains

Palestinian woman stands at the entrance of her home in Bethlehem after its been shelled for the 7th time.

Caring for oneself isn't an easy task.

Imagine the burden of remaining strong so as to provide some level of stability for the rest of your family while you are continuously, against your will, forced across borders.

Currently, there are more than 15.4 million refugees in the world.

Iman was a Professor of Engineering at the University of Baghdad. In August 2005, she was left blind after being attacked along with her husband.

We met at the Caritas Migrant Center in Lebanon.

“We used to have four cars and a large house. Now we don’t earn anything and our savings have nearly run out. I am broken inside living this life of begging,” Iman said in an interview with Migrant Stories. 

“I am struggling to provide healthcare for me and my diabetic daughter. We have been driven from our homes, victimized, and even outside our country we lack security. The war is on the Iraqi people,” adds Iman.  

"I don't want charity; I want to work. I didn't ask America for this war." 

There are an estimated 27 million internally displaced people worldwide, with Sudan representing the largest population at 5 million.

Arafa Hassan is from central Sudan’s Nuba Mountains, which lies in the state of South Kordofan. As a child she dreamed of sharing her cultural heritage internationally but those aspirations vanished when she was forced to leave her homeland.

“We used to have our own language but then Arabic was forced on us. I witnessed members of my family being raped and killed,” Arafa told Migrant Stories. “Our family was driven out after the government seized our lands. Although it’s difficult living the life of a refugee, which could mean being detained or without basic needs, we had to escape persecution.”

High Chronic Neurological Disease Plagues Refugees

As the number of refugees continues to rapidly increase, health officials are shifting their focus from infectious diseases to monitoring neurological diseases that affects a high proportion of refugees exposed to various levels of mental shock.

A study conducted in 2011, which is a part of a national United Nations (UN) pilot project, says that refugees are in need of targeted neurological health services, health education for neurological disorders, and long-term and sustainable chronic disease management.

Neurological diagnoses were reported in 1,295 refugees out of 2,539 refugee visits, accounting for 17 percent of all refugees who were receiving health assistance and 4 percent of the 7,642 Iraqi refugees registered in Jordan in 2010.

The study found that 4.97 percent of refugees with neurological system disorders reported being victims of torture. Seventy-eight percent were diagnosed as chronic disorders, with nearly 70 percent of individuals originating from Baghdad.

A neurological disorder occurs when structural, biochemical or electrical abnormalities in the brain, spinal chord or in the nervous system results in common symptoms such as epilepsy, back pain, headaches, root and nerve plexus dysfunctions and strokes.

Psychological stress incurred during times of emergencies such as natural disasters, war, and being uprooted from their natural environment are major triggers that can cause disruption to the normal flow of the nervous system.

“Limited data has been collected on neurological diagnosis in terms of chronic disorders and how people live day to day as refugees,” Dr. Farrah Mateen of the Department of Neurology and International Health at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, a member of the American Academy of Neurology and lead researcher for the study told Migrant Stories. 

“Over time health services have been more geared towards infectious diseases and this data shows that in fact there are more chronic ailments that need to be looked at,” adds Dr. Mateen. 

“Understanding the neurological disorders in vulnerable displaced persons is crucial to developing sustainable policy measures to recognise and ultimately address what may be a large and lifelong burden of neurological disorders in refugee populations.”

Migrant Stories Series

Two weeks ago, I wrote a post about how the single-story robs us our dignity.

To my surprise, I was asked to do a series of excerpts from an eMagazine I created for the Her Blueprint audience titled, Migrant Stories: Tales From Women Forced Across Borders.

You can grab your copy here if you haven't already.

Migrant Stories is about Dignity. Storytelling. Respect. Awaken.

It's also about using sacred journalism to repair and heal one's dignity. Most importantly, it's about using the power of up close and in-depth storytelling to foster a culture of respect and awaken the world to one of the most pressing and under-reported issues of our time.

I look forward to sharing more stories with you.

Until then, over to you

Researchers warn that as conflict and natural disasters continue to uproot individuals, a global trend towards high chronic disease in displaced refugees could reach pandemic proportions in the coming years.

Add your voice!

What are some solutions that could be implemented to better facilitate women who have been exposed to high levels of trauma?

Either share your wisdom in the comments below or on the IMOW Facebook page.

After that, share this article so that others may join the conversation.

Tunisia: Longing For A Place To Call Home

Since the outbreak of war in 1991, Somalia has been left with no central government. Located in the Horn of Africa, this east African country has managed to maintain an informal economy based on livestock, remittances from its expatriate community, and the telecommunications sector. However, two decades of civil war has disrupted many lives and forced many Somalis to flee their country in search of asylum.

Sixty-three year old Hawiyeh Awal is one of them. Eighteen years ago Hawiyeh embarked on a treacherous journey through the desert with her daughter after violence, which claimed the lives of her entire family, and caused severe damages to both of her hands.

"Both of my hands were hit during a gun battle and they were unable to save my small finger on my left hand. My right hand suffered many fractures. After losing my family it was hard to ignore the situation anymore," Awal told Her Blueprint. "The government in Mogadishu wasn't doing anything to protect us and I needed to find safety for me and my daughter."

Relying on middlemen, Hawiyeh was able to survive a four month journey through the desert to finally reach her destination in Libya. For eighteen years, she managed to rebuild her life working as a domestic worker for Libyan families but then the civil war broke out.

When we met, Hawiyeh was sitting outside her makeshift tent with her daughter and grandson as they tried to find a bit of shade from the Tunisian desert's scorching sun. She was sitting on a white bucket that she had turned upside down to function as a temporary chair, while her daughter -- who is in her late twenties -- nibbles at the couscous mixed with onions and tomatoes they were given for lunch.

"I'm scared that I'm going to die in this hot desert," she explains. "I have diabetes and I've lost more than eight kilos since coming here because of the hot weather."

Like many other migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers from Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, Hawiyeh was once again uprooted from her fairly stable situation and forced to flee to Libya's North African neighbor of Tunisia by bus several months ago.

"The situation was getting really bad. Many families were being held up at gunpoint in their homes and robbed," Hawiyeh adds. "I started to worry for my daughter because she is without a husband and emotionally I just couldn't bear going through another war."

Tens of thousands of individuals have crossed Ras Ajdir border crossing to the under-equipped and under-staffed Shousha refugee camp in Tunisia with what little belongings they manage to salvage. For many, Libya was a relatively stable economy where one could find modest work or flee political violence due to Muammar Gaddafi's Pan African stance in the 1990's, which opened the country's borders.

Now many just wait for another border to open.

"My daughter and I can't bear the situation in this camp anymore because all we do is sit and wait. We're just hoping to be resettled in a safe place where I can find medical treatment because here we must first get approval from the Tunisian military in order to access any kind of healthcare," Hawiyeh adds. "The problem is that the West decided to bomb Libya in order to protect people but also decided to close their borders so no one is interested in protecting us. We're trapped here."

Tunisia: Faced With a Life in Limbo Part II

During my two week visit to the Shousha refugee camp on the Libyan-Tunisian border I had the fortunate opportunity of meeting several individuals who were trying to make the most out their new living situation after the Libyan civil war erupted. In part two of my series on how two young women have managed to overcome their obstacles while faced with a life in limbo I introduce twenty-year old Mowahab Abdullah Noor.

As a means of preserving her identity due to the nature of the story she reveals I opted not share her portrait but instead an artistic view of the sprawling tent city that was erected to house the thousands of economic migrants, political refugees and asylum seekers that sought refuge in Tunisia. This is her story.

My name is Mowahab Abdullah Noor and I'm twenty-years-old. I was born in 1990 and have never lived outside of Libya or ever seen my country of Sudan. My parents are from Al Fasher City in Darfur. The problems in Darfur started in 1958 when the Sudanese government started preventing Darfurian people from living a normal life like the other Sudanese by denying them access to government jobs, education in the University and there was a lot of racism.

Fearing for their life, my parents fled to the capital Khartoum and then to Tripoli in 1988 because during this time the government was attacking villages, taking women as hostages or using them as human shields and killing new born boys because they believed that once they reached adulthood they would take up arms against the central government.

There are some people that choose to close their eyes to the truth but I'll never stop sharing these stories.

While in Libya my father worked as a cook and my mother was a domestic worker for Libyan families. My two brothers and younger sister and I attended the best schools that our parents could afford and before fleeing Libya I was in my third year of University pursuing a degree in the medical field.

When the Libyan civil war broke out my family was shocked because we never thought revolutions on this scale could ever happen in the Arab world. Actually, in Tunisia and Egypt it was great to see the people take back their freedom after all those years of being oppressed but in Libya it took a bloody turn because people no longer respected the law and started raping women, taking hostages and killing people.

Eventually all the companies shut down and my father and I lost our jobs, our education was halted due to the closure of the schools and for two months we remained trapped in our house because no one was allowed to go out, especially men because they were killing any males caught on the street.

The situation became very difficult for us because we were drinking tap water, which was so salty and undrinkable but it was what we had. Whenever there was relative calm on the streets our mother would go out to the market for food but there were many days that we starved from running out of food.

As refugees we had only two options, which was to stay in Libya and risk being killed by the NATO airstrikes or be killed by the Libyans but luckily we learned that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was helping those stranded flee Libya and on the 9 May we arrived at the Shousha refugee camp in Tunisia. However, the reality of ending up in a refugee camp has been a big tragedy for our parents because they left Sudan to protect us from living this kind of life, only to find it again.

Through this experience I've learned to be strong and accept this current situation by volunteering and working with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) where I've been able to work as a nurses aid and assist their psychologists who provide mental health services to inhabitants of the camp. This opportunity has actually allowed me to gain some hands on experience with working in the medical field, which is going to be helpful for when I'm eventually resettled in a new country and can resume my studies.