According to the UN, the Middle East and North Africa ( MENA ) region will account for 12 % of “forcibly displaced and stateless people” in 2024. War, humanitarian problems, and economic disasters will all contribute to this movement.
The Sudanese civil war and the fallout from normal catastrophe in Turkey, Syria, Morocco, and Libya are the latest causes of the number. The millions of people in Palestine who have been displaced since 1948 are not included in this portion.
Children make up 50 % of the more than 80,000 people living in the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, where 20-year-old Arab girl Souad is pregnant.
It’s challenging to raise a kid in the tent. Souad informed the Wilson Center, a US-based coverage think reservoir, in June 2023 that there is limited access to basic tools like clothes and baby milk formula.
Za’atari was the fourth-largest capital in Jordan for a brief period in 2013 and was home to more than 200,000 Syrians at the time.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees ( UNHCR ), despite the fact that the population of the 11-year-old refugee camp has since decreased and there is still no sign of a truce in the neighboring Syria, Za’atari continues to be the largest camp for refugees in both the Middle East and the world. ( Most refugees do n’t reside in formal camps. )
According to the UNHCR, 131 million people are expected to become displaced worldwide by 2024.
According to the UNHCR, of the entire 131 million people who are expected to be displaced, 63 million are anticipated to experience internal displacement, and an additional 57 million does experience external displacement or become refugees. Women and children may make up the vast majority of those who have been displaced, just like Za’atari.
More than three-quarters of the migrants were housed in lower- and middle-income nations in 2022, with Turkey leading the way with 3.6 million people and Iran at 3.4 million. According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Lebanon has the highest rate of refugees per capita ( 1 in 8 ), followed by Jordan ( one in 14 ).
results of the civil war in Syria and Yemen
Syria, where the civil war started in 2011 and is still going on, is home to the majority of the migrants in the MENA area. Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and North Africa are home to more than 5.3 million Syrian migrants. The most Palestinian refugees in Europe are also housed in Germany, where there are about 560,000 of them.
This excludes the roughly 6.8 million internally displaced people who are still living in Syria. In the MENA place, about three-quarters of those under UNHCR’s purview—millions from the civil war in Yemen and Syria—were internally displaced.
The “entrepreneurial” spirit of the refugees is frequently emphasized in Za’atari, which has a bustling business district known as the Sham Elysees ( a play on the Arabic word for Syria and the Parisian avenue Champs-Élysées ). However, Asia Amari, an 18-year-old camp native, told CNN in 2016 that” We are not living around; it’s just an life.”
A visit to Azraq, another Syrian refugee camp in Jordan, reveals a very unique tale than the one about thriving fair. Azraq, which was intended to serve as a model camp, has been described as” a heavily controlled, miserable, and half-empty enclosure of symmetrical districts that restricts economic activity, movement and self-expression.”
It has been referred to by refugees as an “outdoor incarceration” and by outsiders as a “dystopian problem.”
situation of Palestinians
In contrast, a distinct UN organization is in charge of the nearly 6 million multigenerational Arab immigrants. In addition to smaller amounts residing in various MENA nations, about 1.5 million Arab migrants are housed in camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
” Socioeconomic conditions in the camps are generally poor, with high population density, cramped living conditions, and inadequate basic infrastructure such as roads and sewers,” according to the United Nations Relief and Work Agency ( UNRWA ), which oversees the Palestinian refugee camps.
According to the think-tank Migration Policy Institute, for instance, the almost 488 000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are asynchronous and “have extremely limited exposure to public health care, education, or the official economy.” They reside in camps for almost 45 % of the time.
” In some Palestinian tents, when the spring rains come, natural sewage washes into people’s houses,” according to the non-governmental business Anera.
According to a Lancet study published in 2012, 31 % of Palestinian refugees living in these camps had chronic medical conditions, and 55 % had “psychological distress.”
Not only is gender-based violence a significant problem in these tents, but UNRWA claims that “violent clashes]among different groups ] are also]a regular occurrence.”
Another illustration of the appalling situations faced by Palestinians is Gaza, where both the poverty level and the proportion of people who rely on humanitarian aid are over 80 %. As of August 2022, the unemployment rate was 47 %.
According to Anera, 13 % of the youth community experienced hunger in 2017. And that was when Israel launched its massive war and bombing campaign.
Some refugees, like many Palestinians, still have a strong desire to go back to their home country, should the circumstances when again permit it to be safe for them to do so. Some, however, have the chance; for instance, fewer than 25, 000 Palestinian immigrants were able to return to the nation in the first eight month of 2023.
Others want to relocate to Canada, Europe, or another location, like Amari. But for the time being, they are confined to filthy tents.
Globetrotter created this post and gave it to Asia Times.