Muzoon Almellehan

Muzoon Almellehan at the Global Citizen Festival in Hamburg (2017)

Muzoon Almellehan is a Syrian activist and refugee resettled in the United Kingdom. She is known for her work to keep Syrian girls in school, and has been referred to as the "Malala of Syria".[1]

Biography

Almellehan was born in April 8, 1999[2] to Eman and Rakan Almellehan,[3] and brought up in the Syrian city of Daraa.[1][3] Her father was a schoolteacher.[3] She has two brothers and a sister, who are between one and four years younger than her.[1][3] After the Syrian civil war broke out, their city was besieged by the government before being taken over by Islamist forces in early 2014. Her family moved to Jordan when the fighting became severe in 2014 and lived in refugee camps for three years.[1] The Almellehan family was forced to move multiple times. The first camp they lived in was Za'atari, from where they moved to Azraq, another Jordanian camp.[4] While there, her family received offers to move to Canada or Sweden. Almellehan's father rejected these for logistical reasons.[4] Almellehan later negotiated her family's move to the United Kingdom under a plan announced in September 2015 by David Cameron,[4] by which the British government planned to accept 20,000 Syrian refugees.[1] The family was brought to Newcastle two and a half months later,[4] being among the first Syrian refugees admitted to the UK.[1] The Almellehan children were enrolled in a local school. Almellehan was among nine refugee children at Kenton School,[4] and has expressed interest in becoming a journalist.[1] She has stated that she found adjusting to the local variant of English difficult.[4]

Activism

Almellehan was led to advocate for girls' education by the fact that half of the 40 girls in her class at Za'atari dropped out of school to get married. Child marriage, although not particularly common in Syria, increased dramatically after the civil war began.[5][6] Almellehan became known for trying to persuade parents to leave their children, particularly girls, in refugee schools rather than making them marry early.[1] She also tried to persuade children to remain in school, and to prevent child marriage.[7]

Almellehan is a friend of Malala Yousafzai, whom she met in 2014 when Yousafzai was visiting the refugee camp Almellehan was staying in. Yousafzai later invited Almellehan to the ceremony at which the former received the Nobel Peace Prize.[1] Yousafzai also visited Almellehan upon the latter's arrival in the UK.[1] Almellehan's activism received recognition in a number of countries,[3] and has led to her receiving the sobriquet "Malala of Syria."[1][3][8]

See also


References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Lizzie Dearden (4 February 2016). "Syrian refugee girl's message to world leaders: 'Give us the power to make our hopes and dreams come true'". The Independent. Retrieved 14 November 2016.
  2. ↑ Malala Fund (8 April 2017). Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/BSov8ohlBUk/?taken-by=malalafund. Retrieved 9 April 2017. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Thompson, Craig (30 May 2016). "Newcastle offers new homes to Syrian refugees – but Sunderland has offered no help". Chronicle Live. Retrieved 14 November 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Muzoon Almellehan: the Syrian teenager who is the talk of the Tyne". The Guardian. 27 January 2015. Retrieved 14 November 2016.
  5. ↑ "Syrian teen advocates for girls' education". New York Times. 4 June 2015. Retrieved 14 November 2016.
  6. ↑ Strochlic, Nina (9 September 2014). "Meet the Malala of Syria". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 14 November 2016.
  7. ↑ Woollaston, Victoria (5 November 2016). "How Newcastle embraced a teenage Syrian refugee". Wired. Retrieved 14 November 2016.
  8. ↑ Purewal, Harpreet (24 October 2016). "If Dove expects women to cheer up, it hasn’t been paying attention". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 November 2016.
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