There was no sound of children crying.  We had reached the camp, by chance, at the same time as two bus loads of new arrivals – rare for them to arrive in daylight, but the bombardments in Syria had been heavier than usual the previous night so there were delays crossing the border.  Women and children pressed their faces against the dusty window of the bus to stare at us, and then past us to the huddled families inside the tents whom they were about to join.

This was Za’ateri, a refugee camp in Jordan for displaced Syrians constructed only 12 miles from the Syrian border, home to now almost 200,000 refugees with up to 3000 new arrivals every night.

I spoke to a woman, ‘Basma’, who had just arrived. She had spent most of the previous day walking to the border carrying her baby and helping her three other small children.  They sat around her in little bundles, expressionless. They were exhausted, hungry and terrified. But not one of them cried.

Each night the Syrians fleeing to Jordan wait until a relative moment of safety before attempting to cross the border.  The borders with Jordan are still open to refugees (something that remains a top priority to UNHCR) but they cannot be assisted until they set foot on Jordanian soil. When they do so, they are immediately greeted by the Jordanian Armed Forces with ‘Welcome to Jordan, you are now safe’.

Basma had reached the border at ten the previous evening but tells me she had to wait six hours before it was safe to cross. She was now waiting to be registered, after which she would be given a tent, free blankets, mattresses and a ration card for the whole family. ‘We will only stay in the camp until my husband arrives’, Basma explains to me, ‘then we will find a temporary place to settle in Jordan before returning to Syria’.

This is the predominant feeling in the camp: that they will not have to remain here long but soon will be able to return home. I am told by a UNHCR representative there are some villages in the southern area, Dera’a, which now have a population of zero, the inhabitants either having fled or been killed.  It seems unlikely any will be able to return in the near future.

The camp’s families are chiefly headed by women, the men either having remained in Syria to fight or returning after escorting their family across the border. UNHCR has reported that more than half of all Syrian refugees are children under 18. This leaves the families in a vulnerable state, especially as various gangs of aggrieved and frustrated young men (many of whom are deserters from the regime) are springing up all over the camp.

There is a lot of crime in Za’ateri and a poor security system.  I hear of families too scared to leave their tent because, if they do, they return to find what little they had, has been stolen. At distributions of food or other items the atmosphere is always tense and violence often breaks out. There are stories of child exploitation, rape and abduction. We pass through a fence separating the aid and administration offices from the camp.  Men who have been waiting all morning in the heat grapple each other to get to the gap through which we have come before the gate is closed. There is shouting and stone throwing and more of the fence is broken away.

Yet, as we move through the registration tents and in to the heart of the camp a very different scene greets us. The desert sun bounces off row upon row of white UNHCR tents with children swinging from ropes that are not being used as clothes lines. Small boys are carrying trays of cigarettes and sweets, passing from tent to tent trying to make money. In theory, this is prohibited in the camp as everything here is meant to be available for free but UNHCR is not a policing agency and so we keep walking. A blind eye is turned to many things going on in the camp and I am laughingly told by a community service officer that this is nothing. He takes me to one of the many blocks of washing facilities, easily identifiable by their signature blue-painted bricks. As we continue through the camp, he points out blue bricks here and there, adding to structures families have built around their tent. ‘They are trying to build their home,’ he says, ‘they will take anything lying around and no-one will stop them’.

Za’ateri was bitterly affected by January’s snow and cold weather. UNHCR tried to tackle this by a ‘winterisation’ programme, an initiative that provided each family with a large sheet of corrugated iron designed to give some insulation and guard against the wind.  Some tents notably do not have these sheets, however, and, as we progress into the newly constructed, more spacious area of the camp, I see why.  Enterprising family members have seized upon the vacant space and used their corrugated iron sheets to set up shop.  We now pass through what can only be described as a vibrant market place.  Shop owners call at us as they serve shawerma to passers-by. There are stalls of fresh fruit and vegetables. There are mobile phone shops and hardware stores. One stall has washing machines spilling out of it. Their use in a refugee camp is unclear. On my right a man poses for me to take his picture while he is being shaved at a barbershop.

We move out of the market and onto a higher open plain. This is a newly built phase of the camp.  Enormous lorries are grumbling up and down, smoothing the ground and covering it in a white gravel. This process has cost already over $12m and, with the ongoing expansion of the camp, the cost is rising. When Za’ateri opened last summer the dust and sandstorms made inhabitation unbearable. ‘I could barely open my eyes after visiting last year,’ one of the aid workers tells me, ‘my eye-lashes were caked in sand. No-one could breathe’. In this area, there are rows of neat pre-fabricated caravans, mainly donated by Saudi Arabia. They are larger, better insulated and have been arranged into straight wide streets (although nothing can stop one family on the west side of the camp uprooting their tent and re-pitching in the middle of the street on the east side to be near relations).

Conditions in the camp are improving.  Every day more initiatives to set up schools, hospitals, child-friendly-spaces, women’s committees, arts and sports facilities are started. It is quickly becoming a Syrian city outside of Syria. The problem of opening a refugee camp, I am told, is that it is extremely difficult to close. These families are determined that they will soon be returning home but regrettably that is still looking very far off. ‘Why is the rest of the world not doing anything to support the Free Syrian Army, to fund and equip us with better weapons to fight the regime?’ is the question most heard in the camp.

“Faddy Sahloul, the founder of Hand in Hand for Syria, rubs his tired eyes and pulls heavily on his cigarette. From his small flat in Rayhaniya, on the Turkish–Syrian border, Sahloul is struggling with the logistics of delivering aid inside Syria. As if this was not daunting enough, he has four days to pay off a phone bill that keeps the likes of Al-Jazeera informed about events inside the country. Unlike other aid networks, he makes sure that his correspondents inside Syria have satellite phones. The cost of that safety comes at a price: satellite phones cost USD 3000 dollars each, not including the cost of using them.

The British-born Syrian’s life changed when the revolution broke out. Sahloul, a factory manager from Nottingham, was ordered by his ninety-seven-year-old father to deliver aid to inaccessible parts of Syria. How they deliver aid is remarkable. One of his ‘fixers’ from Homs is described as someone who makes things out of nothing. He had come to Rayhaniya by crawling through three kilometers of feces and urine. One of Sahloul’s convoys can deliver twenty-two tons of medical and food aid the same way.

Doctors come in and out of the office, requesting drugs and specialist equipment. They huddle together, puffing cigarettes and discussing a particularly difficult case. Things take a turn for the worse when a doctor from Deir Zour enters the room saying that he needs medicines and water purification equipment due to an outbreak of cholera in a village on the outskirts of his town. Sahloul drinks coffee straight out of the pot and lights another cigarette; it will take days to deliver this aid. He has only just put together another aid proposal for a field hospital. He does not need this.

The tension in the room is broken by a YouTube clip put on by Dr. Abu Hamza, who accuses me jokingly of being shabiha, a member of a pro-government militia. Few doctors trust journalists. We watch an old man in boxer shorts who has clearly lost everything curse Assad with a volley of expletives: “O, you son of a donkey, son of a dog, son of a harlot, may God curse you! Have you not done enough?”

Sahloul laughs bitterly, as that is all he can do: “I have no tears left.” He shows me his photo library of injured women, children and old men. It makes me want to vomit. All the doctors in the flat are volunteers, and everyone has suffered torture and imprisonment because they tried to fulfill their Hippocratic Oath. As Sahloul says, “To deliver humanitarian aid is a crime in Syria. We have had aid workers tortured even in Lebanon. We had to close our offices in Lebanon because of pro-regime forces there.”

I ask Dr. Abu Hamza about the aid delivered by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to the country. He is pessimistic: “Everyone knows this goes to the regime. Do you think that the Syrian Red Crescent can operate without the permission of the Syrian regime?” Several newspapers, like Haaretz and the Lebanese Daily Star, report that the Assad regime confiscates medical aid from the Syrian Red Crescent. Even the UN figures showing that 49% of aid was delivered to contested or opposition areas are questionable. Doctors Without Borders has stated that international aid was not being distributed equally within Syria, with government-controlled areas receiving nearly all of it. It is no wonder, then, that UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Gueterres’s remark that there is ‘no light at the end of the tunnel’ seems so galling.

Dr. Mustafa runs a hospital in Salma with two volunteers, a nurse and a wanted female pharmacist. “Empty words!” he says, “We have operating equipment but no qualified surgeon! I do the surgery. We have not seen a penny from the UN!” It was the same story from Dr. Abu Muhammad, a doctor in Yamadia, who said that most aid came from the Syrian diaspora community.

Sahloul says that a proposal that took him twenty-eight days to write was refused by the UK Department for International Development within three hours. “I don’t even know if they read it,” he complains. “NGOs and the international community talk much, but do very little. Why can’t they deliver field hospitals on the Turkish border so we can get on with delivering aid inside? What is so hard about that?”

This contempt seems to apply to Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs) as well, particularly the Islamic charities that seemingly peddle verses from the Qu’ran to get donations while delivering very little. One CEO of a charity operating outside Syria that raises money for the country, refused to work with charities inside Syria due to the belief that, without ascertaining the facts, they had allegiances to the FSA. This blinkered vision hampers humanitarian aid Syria.

The international community must take the recommendations of Dr. Marie-Pierre Allié, the president of Doctors Without Borders, seriously. Donors must recognize the legitimacy of cross-border humanitarian operations intended for Syria and assist them financially, administratively and logistically. If this is not done by the international community, more lives will be lost and the message to Syrians will be clear. “You [the international community] will help the US clearing the debris from the floods, but you [the international community] are happy to bleed us [Syrians] dry,” as one Syrian doctor puts it. This sense of abandonment will push Syrians to embrace groups that the international community does not want to deal with.

Dr. Abu Hamza adds, “The West is worried about the Islamists in Syria, but they don’t realize that it is only the Islamists that are delivering aid and victories, not the international community.” In such a scenario, the international community will only have themselves to blame.”

He said UNHCR planned to contribute to the effort by offering its expertise to expand capacity and identify the most vulnerable refugees and those with special needs. “Registration is essential for refugee protection,” he stressed.

During his visit, the High Commissioner signed a cooperation agreement with the Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Agency (AFAD) to fund 10 more registration centres. He also signed an accord with the Turkish Red Crescent on cooperation in logistics, emergency and contingency support to UNHCR’s operations globally. UNHCR is funding the production of an additional 18,500 tents through the Red Crescent.

• At least 2,400 schools have been damaged or destroyed, including 772 in Idlib (50 per cent of the total), 300 in Aleppo and another 300 in Deraa.
• Over 1,500 schools are being used as shelters for displaced persons.
• More than 110 teachers and other staff have been killed and many others are no longer reporting for work. In Idlib, for example, teacher attendance is no more than 55 per cent.
• In Aleppo, children attendance rate has dropped to as low as 6 per cent; and some schools have been used by armed forces and groups involved in the conflict.

Youssouf Abdel-Jelil, UNICEF Syria Representative, said:

“The education system in Syria is reeling from the impact of violence. Syria once prided itself on the quality of its schools. Now it’s seeing the gains it made over the years rapidly reversed. Being in school makes children feel safe and protected and leaves parents hopeful about their children’s future. That’s why so many parents we talk to single out education as their top priority.”

UNICEF is supporting more than 170 school clubs in Homs, Deraa, Rural Damascus, Tartous, Lattakia, Hama and Quneitra. The clubs allow some 40,000 children to receive much needed remedial education and take part in recreational activities. UNICEF is also providing teaching and learning supplies and is rehabilitating damaged schools.

However, an additional US$1 million is needed to keep the clubs open until the end of May. Funding shortfalls are also preventing the provision of urgently-needed pre-fabricated classrooms, repairs and rehabilitation of learning spaces, and the provision of teaching and learning materials.

Overall, UNICEF needs US$20 million for its education programmes in Syria during the first six months of the current year, of which it has received no more than $3 million.

“I never imagined that I would one day be a refugee myself.”

“Hassan is a qualified surgeon, but by a twist of fate he now finds himself specializing in the treatment of refugees. In 2006, as conflict raged in Iraq, he spent 10 weeks treating hundreds of ill and injured Iraqis at a refugee camp in eastern Syria.

Six years later his own world turned upside down. Fleeing the bloodshed in his native Syria, Doctor Hassan escaped to neighbouring Iraq in May 2012 and sought refuge in the homeland of his former patients. “I never imagined that I would one day be a refugee myself,” he says. “It’s like a nightmare.”

Like many refugees, Hassan looked for ways to put his skills to use and support his family. At Domiz Refugee Camp in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, he found work in a clinic run by Médecins Sans Frontières. He works long hours, mainly treating diarrhoea and other preventable illnesses. More than half of his patients are Syrian refugee children – not unlike his own two boys.

During the two days that a UNHCR photographer followed Hassan, he rarely stood still for more than a few minutes. His day was a blur of clinical visits punctuated by quick meals and hurried hellos. When not working in the clinic, he was making house calls to refugees’ tents late into the night.”

Grandi said:

“From a strategic interest point of view, the biggest competitor for attention and resources to the question of Palestinian refugees today is the crisis in Syria, which is monopolising political attention, funding and humanitarian efforts. Of course Syria is important, but I encourage people not to forget that the Palestinian refugee element in this crisis is extremely sensitive.”

Grandi says his office estimates that almost half of the 500,000 Palestinians in Syria are currently displaced:

“They cannot go to Jordan, as Jordan has issued a very stringent policy of no admission for Palestinian refugees from Syria. They claim they are already doing enough for the hundreds of thousands of Syrians coming over the border and for the two million Palestinian refugees they have already hosted in the country over the last six decades.”

He notes this “worrying policy” is preventing desperate people from fleeing violence across borders. The only way out, then, is to go to Lebanon. An estimated nearly 30,000 Palestinians have done so, joining the almost 200,000 Syrians that have likewise fled to that country:

“These Palestinians are a heavy burden for Lebanon, however. There is a very sensitive balance between the communities and religions, which makes the presence of more Palestinians more sensitive than in any other country. Even without this influx, they are already living in appalling conditions and in a very difficult situation.”

“Syria’s previously well-functioning health system has collapsed. Food shortages are commonplace, and water and electricity supply are severely disrupted. Parties involved in the Syrian conflict must negotiate an agreement on humanitarian aid in order to facilitate delivery from neighbouring countries and across front lines.”

MSF’s president, Dr Marie-Pierre Allie said that “medical aid is being targeted, hospitals destroyed, and medical personnel captured.” Most qualified health staff have fled the country to escape violence, a report by the organisation says today. As a result, dangerous operations are being performed by dentists, pharmacists are treating patients and young people are being sent to work as nurses. Some rebel groups fighting in Syria have been responsible for looting medical facilities, the report added.

Christopher Stokes, MSF’s general director, said the humanitarian situation in the country is being made worse by the Syrian government’s refusal to allow aid to be delivered to rebel-held areas.

“The Damascus authorities hold the key to breaking this deadlock and remove all obstacles to independent aid across the country. We call on the parties involved in the conflict, for want of a political resolution, to reach at least a basic agreement on humanitarian aid to facilitate its provision through the most effective means possible.”

In the second week of February, the WHO reported 86 new cases of suspected hepatitis A, mostly in Idlib, Rural Damascus and Aleppo. 111 new cases of leishmaniasis – a skin disease resembling leprosy – were reported (mainly in Aleppo and Hama), and the disease is spreading across Syria. There have also been many cases of typhoid reported.