A first-hand account by the Defensora del Pueblo, Soledad Becerril, who visited Zaatari refugee camp with the ambassador of Spain in Jordan and Carmen Comas-Mata (Office of the Ombudsman):
“Ninety kilometres from Amman, there are 79,000 people from Syria living in Zaatari, the camp put up for refugees.
Jordan has been generous with the people and families who have made it to the country, fleeing from the war. But not all of them have managed to get there. In the escape, children and husbands were left behind and women with three, five or more children took refuge in this camp. Only 10% of the people who have arrived in Jordan are in refugee camps at the moment.
Zaatari is a city made up of caravans and tents. Abdelrahman, a Jordanian colonel, is the head of the camp and Hovig, from the United Nations Commission for Refugees, is the director. Stephen, from Unicef, is field coordinator, striving to provide schooling for the children in eleven schools, and Doctors of the World, among them some Spanish doctors, run the hospital where the young and less young do their best to recover from the serious wounds and scars of the horror that they have experienced.
Giuseppe, from the United Nations Women’s Programme, and Amber, from the United Nations Food Programme, run the workshops for women and the supermarkets, and María, a Spanish national from the Fundación Promoción Social de la Cultura, keeps the children amused and is in charge of rehabilitation for children with disabilities, but there are no orthopaedic chairs or aids for children in their parents’ arms. Spain is also present through the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID in its acronym in Spanish).
Although basic needs are met, life in the camp is very tough. The city was built to cater for moments of emergency because people are better protected here than in the street, but it is not a city for living your life there. Now, with the onset of winter everyone is concerned: there may be a lack of food, medicines and clothes. The Jordanian government provides the safety, water, electricity, schools and the hospital, but it cannot give the Syrians back their city, their jobs or their families.
Zaatari is an admirable piece of humanitarian workmanship but it is heartbreaking to think of what the near future holds for its inhabitants. What will become of all these families in a country that has already taken in more than 1,400,000 refugees since 2011, many of whom sold their belongings and their land in order to make the journey? Will they ever be able to go back to their homeland?
The Jordanian people do not protest or demonstrate over the arrival of the refugees but they ask for help, not only to keep the refugee camps going but for the growing needs of a large group of people who have to share schools, teachers, hospitals, water and electricity supplies and countless facilities, as well as jobs. Staff at the Jordanian Ombudsman Bureau are asking themselves what is going to happen from 2016 onwards, when they cannot cover the spiralling costs that the rise in population will bring about.
Everyone in Zaatari refugee camp is pleading for the war to stop, because the final outcome must be to be able to go home.
Reflection:
The majority of countries in the E.U. are also showing signs of generosity, among them Spain. But as the root of the problem is there, and the indispensable harbouring of those who take flight cannot be a solution for millions of people, there will be no choice but to influence the reaching of minimum agreements with the country at the origin of this migratory crisis.
