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A field-based commentary from Jordan showcasing what future may lie ahead for Syrian refugees. Is their incremental integration a viable option?
The main maternity clinic inside Zaatari – the Middle East’s largest refugee camp - is packed with tired mothers and sleeping new-borns, the latest addition to a growing community of 80,000 Syrians who found refuge in this camp located in northern Jordan.
Last night, Marah Jureidi, 25, gave birth to a baby girl named Rafeef. Jureidi was 15 years old when she first arrived in Zaatari from Deraa, where she later met her husband and started a family in a country, she now calls home. “Syria is not like it used to be. Everything has changed. Here we have security. It is better for me and my children. My relatives agree with me, no one is planning to go back to Syria and those who did now regret their decision,” she told the BIC.
Jordan has been a safe haven for refugees since the start of the war in 2011. Anywhere between 670,000 (officially registered with the UN Refugee Agency) and 1.3 million Syrians (according to the Jordanian authorities) are said to have found shelter in the country.
The United Nations envisions three options for refugees: their safe and voluntary return to Syria, their resettlement to another State that has agreed to admit them and ultimately grant them permanent residence, or their integration in their host country, Jordan.
While the vast majority of refugees say they would like to eventually go back to Syria, there is a possibility many will never be able to do so because they fear the regime and military conscription as well as the lack of services, security, and work opportunities. Others do not wish to be uprooted again after rebuilding a new life in exile. Only 42,000 Syrians who had found refuge in Jordan over the past decade have returned voluntarily to Syria since 2018.
Resettlement has also proven to be a limited option with only 3000 spots available in 2022. The happy few will be selected among the 760,000 refugees of all nationalities who are currently residing in Jordan, with transfers to France, Germany, Canada, and Belgium, among other countries.
Within the aid community, many thus hope for the incremental integration of Syrian refugees in Jordan, with more rights granted and a greater access to the job market, and camps slowly turning into urban areas fully integrated into their surroundings, similarly to the case of Palestinians who had found refuge in the Hashemite Kingdom decades ago following the establishment of Israel.
However, Jordan, which is facing an economic crisis and unprecedented levels of unemployment, has been resistant to the idea of integrating Syrian refugees, fearing that doing so may lead to a dwindling of financial support from the international community.
“Refugees will remain refugees and camps will remain camps,” an official at the Syrian Refugee Affairs Directorate told the BIC.
Rights that are off-limits to most Syrian refugees include driving a car, taking a loan at the bank, travelling outside the country, buying property, and access to skilled jobs.
Yet, Jordan has made tremendous efforts to accommodate the flow of refugees. In February 2016, the country’s authorities signed the “Jordan Compact”. In return for billions of dollars in grants and loans and preferential trade agreements with the European Union, Jordan committed to improving access to education and legal employment for its Syrian refugees. In 2021, the country issued a record number of 62,000 work permits to Syrians.
As of today, refugees from Syria already have more rights than non-Syrians refugees, such as Iraqis and Yemenis, who are not allowed to simultaneously hold a work permit and refugee status. Some believe the best possible outcome would be for Syrians to eventually receive the same rights as Palestinians from Gaza, who unlike West Bankers were not given Jordanian citizenship but still enjoy a wide range of rights and benefits from de-facto permanent residency.
“No refugee who has settled to Jordan ever left, just look at Iraqis, Palestinians, Armenians, and Circassians. Syrians will get more rights, it’s the only option anyway. Within the next two decades, I think they will get the same status as Gazans,” said Hazem Shakhatreh, a legal consultant at the Justice Center for Legal Aid, a Jordanian NGO providing legal counselling to Syrian refugees.
Jean-Marc Jouineau, the head of the Jordan program at the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO), told the BIC that he holds a similar view.
"In twenty years or more, it is possible, even probable, that we will move towards a Palestinian-style scenario,” Jouineau said. “But it must be remembered that such a scenario also implies very significant international aid. So, it can go up to a certain level, but the international community has to play along. Jordan is already making very important efforts with limited means and little natural resources.”
Other European officials interviewed by the BIC disagreed with this assessment. “We often talk of donor fatigue, but we should also be wary of host country fatigue,” one diplomat said, arguing that asking Jordan to do more still on the refugee file could backfire.
Rather than looking at Palestinian refugees to speculate on the future of Syrians in Jordan, perhaps another avenue for reflection would be to examine the case of Syrians who fled to Jordan in 1982 following the Hama massacre, during which president Hafez al-Assad’s security forces killed tens of thousands of citizens to quell an uprising.
Thousands of refugees were then welcomed to Jordan and given the status of foreign residents, with a residency permit and access to the labour market, recalls Kamel Doraï, a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
"It's complicated to make predictions,” Doraï told the BIC, “But I think we are heading towards a kind of long-term normalisation of these people as foreign Arab residents in Jordan, which means, overall, a regime that is somewhat favoured compared to other categories.”
“Since 2016 [the year the “Jordan compact” was signed], we have seen more of a shift in this direction. A normalisation by trying to extract people from their refugee status in the strict sense of the word by giving them a work and residence permit,” Doraï added. “With this configuration, Jordan would be able to manage the Syrian issue quite easily because, as these residence permits must be renewed at regular intervals, Jordan could decide not to renew them if the country eventually decides that it does not want these Syrians to remain in Jordan.”
With nearly 7 million refugees – about 1 million of which are in Jordan alone – the war in Syria provoked the largest refugee crisis in recent times. Speculating on what their future may look like decades down the line is a crucial, albeit challenging exercise as international donors ponder how to support the many Syrians who are unable or unwilling to return to their home country.
Inside Zaatari’s maternity clinic, Marah Jureidi is about to head home with her new-born daughter. After living in this camp for a decade, her husband and her have decided to find an apartment in the neighbouring town of Mafraq where he already works as a baker, commuting daily. The couple has agreed: Jordan is their new home. Looking at her baby Rafeef, sleeping beneath a tick blanket, Jureidi smiled: “I consider my children to be Jordanians.”