Syrian Refugees In Jordan (2013)

Every day, roughly one thousand Syrian citizens cross the border with Jordan more
than 370 kms long and with their scarce properties, settle down in the Zaatari Camp a tented camp now home to 146,000 refugees, whose population could easily reach one million. A large number of refugees in Zaatari comes from the southern Dar’a province, where, in March, 2011, started the first rebellion against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, a prologue to the war which is still being fought beside this metropolis in the desert, made of tents and containers, more small refugee camps, called the “illegal ones”, appeared on Jordanian territory. None of these, though, has the sinister fame of Zaatari: as a saying popular among its inhabitants goes, “before us, only the Devil lived here”. Zaatari Camp is only the pale reflection of one of the largest humanitarian tragedies of the last decade: eight million people internally displaced in Syria and 1.6 million refugees escaped in neighboring countries, mostly Jordan and Lebanon. humanitarian assistance in camps such as Zaatari is becoming a complex issue and needs enormous effort by the whole international community. The real need of Syrians, though is a ceasefire which would allow many of them to return to their country.