Inspirational Women: Child refugee saves women from organized marriages

Do you understand an unbelievable lady — a charity campaigner, entrepreneur, instructor or well being employee who goes above and past — who deserves recognition? If so, you may nominate her for the Inspirational Women Awards 2024 in affiliation with Marks & Spencer. 

Find particulars at dailymail.co.uk/inspirational women2024. And we are able to immediately announce that the 5 winners will attend a WOW Foundation occasion at Buckingham Palace in March, to have a good time International Women’s Day.

She could solely be 25, however Muzoon Almellehan has overcome extra obstacles in her life than many ladies face in a lifetime.

However, what makes Muzoon so spectacular isn’t merely that she has embraced each problem with dedication, however that she seeks to encourage others every day.

From the second she arrived in a refugee camp aged 14, Muzoon has battled lengthy and exhausting for the rights of kids — notably women — to have an training.

Her battle has been so profitable that, aged simply 19, UNICEF made her its Goodwill Ambassador in recognition of her struggles. Her fellow ambassadors embody actors Orlando Bloom and Priyanka Chopra Jonas.

Muzoon’s intention is to see each little one given the possibility of an training. It could also be one thing we take as a right. But this Newcastle University graduate is aware of solely too nicely that, in lots of elements of the world, issues are very completely different.

‘Education isn’t a privilege, it’s a proper,’ says Muzoon, who lives in Newcastle together with her instructor father and youthful siblings. 

‘Every child deserves to be kept safe and deserves to have an education. I will never stop speaking out for all those children round the world who don’t have a voice.’

Muzoon was simply 11 when conflict broke out in Syria in March 2011 and her completely satisfied life disappeared in a heartbeat.

‘Until then life was completely normal,’ she says. ‘Dad was a teacher. Mum kept house. I was like every other kid, going to school and hanging out with my friends. I wanted to be a journalist.

‘I had nothing to worry about. I didn’t know the way fortunate I used to be.

‘But when the war started, our lives were turned upside down. Suddenly, it wasn’t protected to depart the home to go to high school since you might get killed. Even going to the retailers was harmful. 

‘And there have been weeks when there was hardly any meals. Basics like bread merely disappeared. Everything I’d taken as a right was gone. The bombing was so unhealthy you knew you would die at any second.’

The household endured these each day terrors for 3 years earlier than fleeing. Although her mother and father have been satisfied it was their solely hope for survival, abandoning their dwelling was deeply distressing. 

‘I couldn’t bear the considered leaving my beautiful dwelling and my college,’ says Muzoon. ‘Life was horrible, but it was all I knew. This was going into the unknown.’

Following her father’s directions to solely pack necessities and decided to carry quick to her dream of an training, Muzoon, then 14, loaded her backpack together with her college books. There have been greater than ten of them, making the bag virtually not possible to hold.

The household drove to the Jordanian border, becoming a member of 5.3million different refugees. Ten miles over the border, they discovered themselves in Zaatari, one of many world’s largest refugee camps. Their new dwelling was a tent with no electrical energy or web. Water got here from a central tank.

‘We’d been used to house and privateness. Now all of us needed to sleep collectively and share a kitchen with others,’ says Muzoon. 

‘We were in the middle of the desert. It was boiling hot in the summer and perishing cold in the winter. But my father kept reminding us of how lucky we were to be alive.’

Within a month, the primary college, supported by UNICEF, opened within the camp. Muzoon was ecstatic. 

The camp college, nevertheless, was 9 static caravans, every housing a distinct class, it was chaotic. ‘Refugees were coming and going all the time,’ says Muzoon. ‘There would be 30 students in my class one day, only 20 the next.’

But Muzoon buckled down, decided to maintain alive her dream of going to school.

‘Having a goal really helped me cope. Instead of concentrating on the present, I dreamt of the future when I could return to Syria.’

She was additionally desperate to encourage different youngsters within the camp to do the identical. ‘When I went to my first class, I saw so many of the children I’d seen within the tents weren’t there. I rapidly discovered that some women, even these as younger as 13, have been being married to males within the camp as a substitute of coming to high school.

‘They have been chatting about it as if it was regular. Their households thought marriage would defend them. I additionally found there was this basic perspective across the camp: “We’ve lost our homes and are refugees. It’s not our right to be educated.”

‘Why would you let war take everything? Nothing should take away your knowledge. And as refugees, we needed education more than ever to face the challenges and suffering in our lives.

‘There was a friend of mine at the school, a very good student. One day she stopped coming. It was only when I asked other girls that I discovered she had got married. She was 14, like me. I felt so sad.’

Undeterred, Muzoon carried on her marketing campaign when, 18 months later, the household have been moved to Azraq, a camp consisting of rows of tin shacks.

Every day, she toured the camp, speaking to oldsters about sending their youngsters to high school, encouraging the ladies to attend. 

‘I told them there is no better protection than education,’ she says. ‘I explained that one day we would need a generation of engineers, doctors and teachers to rebuild Syria.

‘There was one girl who was going to be married to a man old enough to be her father. It wasn’t what she needed. When I informed her she had a selection, she was capable of persuade her mother and father to let her keep at college and never get married.’

But, most of all, Muzoon dreamt of escaping the camp. The probability got here in 2015, when the then prime minister David Cameron supplied to resettle as much as 20,000 Syrian refugees. Ten weeks later, her household was on a aircraft to Newcastle with eight different households.

Given refugee standing with five-year visas, all the things had been organized so the household might settle in simply and, inside per week of their arrival, Muzoon and her siblings have been heading off to high school.

The tradition shock was huge. However, because of her personal resilience and the assist of workers at Kenton School, she thrived.

In 2018, she took up her place at Newcastle University. Now, with a Masters diploma in International Relations, Muzoon works full-time for her native council serving to asylum seekers and migrants, in addition to travelling the world in her UNICEF position, campaigning for the rights of kids. 

She visits refugee camps the place she hopes to instil the identical ardour for training in others.

‘I tell them that life will get better,’ she says. ‘I was in their place; I know how they are feeling, but I tell them that there is life ahead.

‘I hope that one day I will hear how they have become engineers, doctors, lawyers and teachers and have returned to their homes to build a new life.’

Muzoon not too long ago returned to the camp she left as a youngster. Being reunited together with her outdated lecturers and discovering how they use her story to encourage college students was testomony to only how far she has come.

‘I’d like a profession in politics or the media,’ she says. ‘I hope I’m dwelling proof that one small particular person could make a distinction.

‘When I started, I just had my voice, but I was determined to be heard. From talking to my friends and classmates, a movement gradually grew that can’t be silenced.’

Nominate your inspirational lady

To make a nomination, fill on this kind on-line, or use the shape beneath and ship it to us by way of electronic mail or by publish, and inform us in not more than 400 phrases — on a separate sheet — why your candidate ought to win.

Visit dailymail.co.uk/inspirationalwomen2024 to enter your nomination on-line; electronic mail your entry to: [email protected], or ship your nomination to: Inspirational Women Awards, c/o Femail, Daily Mail, 9 Derry St, London W8 5HY.

Closing date for entries is 23.59 on Wednesday, February 14, 2024. The editor’s resolution is last.

PRIZES: Each winner will obtain a crystal trophy and a £500 M&S reward voucher. There are not any money options to the prizes. Full phrases apply — please learn earlier than coming into at dailymail.co.uk/ inspirationalwomen2024.

YOUR NAME ……………………………………………..

YOUR TEL NO …………………………………………….

YOUR EMAIL ………………………………………………

YOUR NOMINEE  …………………………………………

THEIR TEL NUMBER ……………………………………

THEIR EMAIL ………………………………………………