Jordan: what future for Syrian refugees?

We meet Ikram in the living room of her shelter, where she leads community awareness-raising sessions on hygiene and water conservation practices. On this winter morning, the icy desert air rushes between the metal panels of the shelters. But in summer, confides Ikram, the heat is hardly bearable and the residents of Azraq suffocate, entrenched in their homes.  

Originally from Damascus, Ikram arrived in the camp in 2013, with her husband and 4 children. She recalls her first few months in the camp and the difficulties associated with the water supply. “It was a very difficult period to live through, a real ordeal. I was living in a dynamic environment full of life, then I found myself in a place that exhausted me. My greatest suffering when I arrived here was the lack of water, or the fact that I couldn’t get enough water because it was distributed at specific times of the day. Sometimes there was a big rush to get water. We had to travel long distances to collect it in cans, and often the water spilled on the way and was wasted. What’s more, when we arrived at the camp, we had no private toilets, only communal ones”.

Ten years later, many water, hygiene and sanitation challenges remain. More than half of Azraq’s inhabitants, supported by humanitarian organizations, have installed private latrines in their homes. But the communal latrines, still used by 40% of the camp’s residents, suffer from a lack of cleanliness and hygiene. In addition, supplying communal water points is a challenge that women often face alone. The installation of taps on the plots is widely supported by the refugees.

Rising demand for water due to the influx of Syrian refugees and climate change have exacerbated water scarcity in Jordan, which ranks as the second most water-stressed country in the world. Water conservation and the fight against resource wastage therefore remain a major concern.

Community involvement as a vector of emancipation for women

The creation of a vast network of volunteers among the refugee population, trained by Action Against Hunger (ACF), has been decisive in influencing the social norms and behavior of camp residents in the area of water, hygiene and sanitation.

Community awareness-raising actions, in the form of door-to-door visits, group sessions and public campaigns, have helped to promote the proper functioning of water, hygiene and sanitation infrastructures, optimize water conservation and disseminate good practices linked to menstrual and personal hygiene. For the women who take part, it’s a space where they can meet up, acquire knowledge and share the difficulties associated with life in the camp, while reinforcing their role as referents within the community.

“We mainly target women and girls because, in general, it’s the women who take on the most responsibility in the shelters. It is them who fill the water and manage its use, who decide how much water is needed for each need, as well as where to dispose of used water after washing and cleaning,” explains Ikram, on whom the burden of responsibility falls due to her husband’s illness.

Community involvement also helps to offset the lack of economic opportunities. In Jordan, life is expensive and unemployment, which reached 22% in 2023⁵, remains a major challenge for the kingdom. Women, who are particularly represented in agriculture and informal work, are also the hardest hit by this unfavorable economic climate. For many female refugees, getting involved with humanitarian organizations is a way of making ends meet.

Since 2017, 65 community water, hygiene and sanitation representatives, 750 “lead mothers” and 65 young people have been trained, with convincing results in the field of water conservation and hygiene. “We succeeded in raising awareness on water conservation practices among refugees living in the camp, and in encouraging over 20% of them to put them into practice, which is a considerable achievement given the very limited and resource-poor context in which the refugees live. We also have a very high level of awareness on good hygiene practices within the community,” says Paul George, Deputy Country Director for Action Against Hunger in Jordan.

Taking a chance outside the camp

Despite the challenges of life outside the camp, almost 80% of Syrian refugees have tried their luck outside the camps. In Harta, in the Irbid governorate, many refugees live in informal settlements on the outskirts of urban centers.

After a brief stay in the Zaatari refugee camp, Ahmad decided to settle in Harta, just a few kilometers from Syria. He lives with his parents, his brother and his family, his wife and their five children, in a tent that he moves to his plots during harvest time. “The province of Hama, our homeland, is a rural Syrian region. Life here is very different from the camps, and adapting to the camp environment has been difficult. We have therefore preferred to settle in villages or rural areas that remind us of our Syrian homeland. Farming is our identity, and we have never considered any other alternative,” confides Ahmad, wrinkling his laughing eyes.

Agriculture is one of the few sectors in which non-Jordanians are allowed to work, alongside construction, services and basic industries. On the 2.8-hectare plot he shares with Syrian refugee families and Jordanian families, Ahmad grows okra, squash, cucumbers, onions, beans and peas. He sells his products in the surrounding villages in markets and shops.

Like most farmers in the area, meeting his family’s needs is always more difficult during the low season, and he sometimes has to go into debt. “The income I get from this land is reasonable; it covers part of my expenses, but it’s not enough to cover all my needs. For example, sometimes one of my children gets seriously sick and requires expensive care. Sometimes, in addition, I have to buy school supplies”.

To help ensure the sustainability of his agricultural business, Ahmad takes part in training courses run by Action Against Hunger in partnership with the French Development Agency (AFD) for Syrian refugees and vulnerable Jordanians. “Participating in this training is a chance. Opportunities like this don’t come along every day, and it was crucial for me to seize it. During these training courses, I have learned how to develop a project more strategically, become a more skilled farmer and adopt innovative practices,” concludes Ahmad enthusiastically.

A neglected crisis

At regional level, funding for the Syrian crisis is running out of steam, threatening to worsen the living conditions of Syrian refugees dependent on humanitarian aid. “Today, we can say that the Syrian refugee crisis is a forgotten crisis, due to the scale of the needs and the drop in funding. This situation can also be explained by the regional context, but it is very difficult to manage because development aid is not increasing in parallel with the drop in funding,” explains Paul George, Deputy Country Director for Action Against Hunger in Jordan. In July 2023, UN agencies announced a substantial reduction in their food assistance program in the camps, and funding would have fallen by 12% in 2024 compared with the previous year, according to the UN⁶.

The effects of this budgetary rigor are already clearly visible in Azraq. The monthly allowance has fallen from 23 to 15 Jordanian dinars (respectively from 30 to 20 euros), compromising the refugees’ ability to meet their basic needs. “We are no longer able to buy fruits, dried fruits or white meat for the children, except on rare occasions,” laments Fadil, a camp resident who used to live in Hama.

Despite the end of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, return conditions are not met for Syrian refugees. After a decade of war and economic decline, 90% of the Syrian population lives below the poverty line and 16 million people are in need of humanitarian aid.

In their host communities, Syrian refugees are divided between optimism about the regime change and concern about the drop in aid. Some refugees, like Fadil, have lost everything, which makes the prospect of returning even more remote. “Syria has been completely devastated, there’s nothing left for me there. Even the olive trees have been uprooted and burnt, and my house has been completely destroyed by the bombs”. The euphoria that has followed the fall of the regime is gradually giving way to more pragmatic questions: in a country where infrastructure and public services have been cut to shreds, how to secure children’s future?

Sources:

¹ Syrian Revolution 13 years on | Nearly 618,000 persons killed since the onset of the revolution in March 2011 – The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

² Jordan – European Commission

³ Après douze ans de conflit, la faim et la pauvreté affectent toujours plus les réfugiés syriens | UNHCR France 

 ⁴ Jordan: Azraq Camp (March 2023) – Jordan | ReliefWeb

⁵  Jordan Overview: Development news, research, data | World Bank

⁶ Global Humanitarian Overview 2024 [EN/AR/FR/ES] | OCHA