Video Syrian refugee babies born in Greece

(2 Nov 2016) Ahmad, Farah and Mohamad drew their first breaths in their Syrian parents' promised land of Europe - sort of.

For them, Greece lies at the wrong end of the continent, separated from its prosperous heartland by an array of high fences, razor wire and border checks.

For the time being, the months-old babies are stuck in the Ritsona refugee camp, in the countryside just off a highway some 70 kilometres (43 miles) north of Athens, as their families wait for the slow wheels of bureaucracy to turn.

If they're lucky, they'll be resettled in another European Union country some time next year.

Hundreds of women among the 60,000 refugees and other migrants stuck in Greece were pregnant when they squeezed into flimsy smugglers' boats for the terrifying and sometimes deadly sea crossing from Turkey to the eastern Aegean Sea islands.

What they found in the hastily erected refugee camps on the mainland was a shock for many.

Ritsona's estimated 570 residents, almost all Syrian families, still live in roughly 15-square-metre (160-square-foot) canvas tents, ingenuously reinforced against the rain with all kinds of tarps.

The heat was stifling in the summer, and winter will soon draw in.

Rows of prefabricated homes equipped with bathrooms and kitchens stand unoccupied, awaiting final adjustments before the refugees can move in.

Meanwhile, the refugees devise ways of home improvement: vegetables and sweet-scented basil grow in small gardens, women bake in makeshift mud ovens, neighbours gather on the benches of improvised patios, drinking endless cups of tea or coffee.

But things are particularly hard for mothers with newborns.

"This life is very difficult, but in Syria (it's) also difficult," said Hanan Halawa, 39, a mother of four aged from 12 years old to just four months - baby Ahmad was born June 10 in a hospital in the nearby town of Halkida.

Halawa, her husband Yousef, a once-prosperous dairy manufacturer from Idlib, and the children crossed from Izmir in Turkey to Chios island, the adults paying smugglers 700 euros (772 dollars) each and half-price for the children.

"I want for my children, not for this baby only but for all my children, a safe place, good education, only," she said, cradling Ahmad. "That's what we want."

Her neighbour Hala Baroud, 28, was four-and-a-half months pregnant when she made the sea crossing from Turkey to the nearby island of Lesbos, with her husband and five-year-old son.

They were evicted from Dubai in late 2015, and had nowhere to return to in their native Syria.

"I hope for my baby a good life, a happy life, and to live in good places," she said, holding 42-day-old Farah.

Rima Al Basir, 30, already had another four children when she fell pregnant with Mohamad, now five months old.

Al Basir hopes to be resettled in another European country.

"Any country is comfortable for my family and my children," she said. "Anywhere, but not in these tents."





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