Legal assistance helps a Syrian refugee mother rebuild her life and secure her daughters’ future
Legal assistance helps a Syrian refugee mother rebuild her life and secure her daughters’ future
Zozan holds her refugee certificate, which grants her access to UNHCR legal protection in Erbil.
Zozan gently braids her eldest daughter Marya’s hair as she gets her ready for school. Mira and Tolin are already waiting by the door, their own braids neatly done and their backpacks in hand. “I work from early morning until 11:30,” Zozan explains. “Then I come home, make breakfast, get them ready, and watch from the window to make sure all three get on the bus at 12:10 sharp.”
Thirty-four-year-old Zozan, a Syrian refugee and mother of three daughters from Al-Hassakeh, remembers clearly the moment she decided to flee in 2021. “We left Syria because the situation was unbearable. The education system had collapsed. There were no schools and no security. When my children went to school, I feared they might not return home.”
She first travelled to Damascus and from there made her way to Erbil. Shortly after her arrival, she met a man claiming to represent a residency company. He promised to obtain her residency permit in exchange for payment. “At that time, I’d been told Syrians had no rights in Iraq. I believed him,” she says. She paid the requested amount and gave him her documents, but once the man had her money, he disappeared.
Zozan braids her daughter’s hair before she goes to school.
Shocked and unsure what to do, Zozan went to the police to file a complaint. Instead, she was arrested because her visa had expired and her lack of valid residency, which resulted from the fraud she had experienced meant she was detained for six days.
Among the Syrian refugee community, she had heard that UNHCR, through its partner INTERSOS, could support people facing legal issues. When Zozan contacted INTERSOS, a lawyer intervened immediately, filing a request for her release on bail so she could care for her children. "They supported me and clarified my situation. After they supported, six hours later I was released,” Zozan says with a sense of relief.
A UNHCR partner lawyer provides legal consultation to a Syrian refugee in Iraq.
Following her release, INTERSOS continued to provide Zozan with legal assistance. Their lawyer pursued the case, provided legal representation throughout the investigation and the misdemeanor court proceedings, explaining Zozan’s situation as a victim of fraud. The defense was articulated on the basis that according to the Iraqi law, refugees and asylum seekers should be exempt from detention related to residency violations. In addition, Zozan was able to follow the correct procedures in registering herself and her daughters as asylum seekers with UNHCR, eventually obtaining a valid Personal Identification Card issued by the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Residency Department. After three years of uncertainty, the legal charges were dropped, and her ordeal was finally over.
Zozan holds her personal identification card and refugee certificate, documents that open the door to new opportunities.
Today, holding her personal identification card proudly, Zozan says she finally feels safe. The document has also opened the door to new opportunities. “I have two jobs now. In the morning, I work a cleaning job, and in the evenings, I work as an assistant to a dentist. I studied medicine back in Syria, but I couldn’t finish my degree,” she smiles. “At least we feel safe here now and my daughters can go to school. That’s all I wanted.”
In 2026, UNHCR’s legal assistance programme is supported by the PROSPECTS Partnership, funded by the Government of the Netherlands, EU Humanitarian Aid and Italy.
Lilly Carlisle contributed reporting to this story.