Domestic violence increases among Syrian refugees
The stresses of the war and lack of income are resulting in more cases of domestic violence among Syrian refugees in Jordan.
AL-KHALDEYA, Jordan — Even when Hamda was still living in the city of Homs, her husband used to hit her. This didn’t happen a lot, but occasionally, when he was stressed out or tired. Most of the time he wasn’t even at home, since he worked outside of Syria a lot, so Hamda didn’t consider it to be a problem.
However, things changed when the Syrian war broke out and their neighborhood was bombed. One of their seven children died during an attack. Hamda’s husband was still mourning his dead son when all of a sudden he lost his job.
"And then things started to change rapidly. My husband got angry over the smallest things: money, how the kids behaved, what I was cooking. He started to beat me up for almost everything,” Hamda,40, told Al-Monitor.
Her husband often used a stick or an iron wire to beat her. More than once, her body was covered in bruises, sometimes in all kinds of colors. Although he never laid a hand on the children, they started to hate their father for the way he treated Hamda.
