In the Middle East, men are single parents, too, and their situations are more fragile if they’re also refugees
Lebanon hosts the largest number of Syrian refugees per capita. The country is currently hosting 1.5 million of the 6.7 million Syrian refugees displaced globally, according to government estimates. Among them are single mothers raising young children on their own with little to provide for them. But what the rest of the world doesn’t often hear about are the single fathers having to raise children, as refugees.
Ibrahim or Abu Mayzar, as he is more commonly known, is a Syrian refugee who lost his wife and who is raising their two sons by himself in Lebanon. Abu Mayzar, who used to live in Al-Hasakah – famed for its fertile fields of wheat, is now living in a single room. The widower and his sons are spending Ramadan as refugees again this year.
“This is Mayzar’s mother holding him 20 days before she passed away. Her name was Ammouna,” he says, pointing to a blurry photo on his phone.
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