Refugee Camps

Debate between Adrian Sanders and Pauline Latham

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I am pleased to have secured this joint debate with the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), and I am honoured, Mr Sanders, to serve under your chairmanship—for the first time, I think—on this, the last day of term.

During the past year, I have visited a number of refugee camps around the world. What has really struck me is the disparity between the conditions in different camps. In March, I went to the middle east as part of my work on the International Development Committee. I was given the opportunity to visit the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, which is currently home to more than 82,000 people fleeing the conflict in Syria.

Despite the fact that it is the fourth largest refugee camp in the world, Zaatari is remarkably well run and the quality of life for its resident population is comparatively very good. The accommodation provided there was far better than I have seen in any other refugee camp in the world, with the refugees living in portacabins. Although living conditions were basic, it was clear that the issues caused by overcrowding were not as prevalent as in other camps. For example, a family of up to five could live in one of the portacabin units; if a family was any larger, a second unit would be provided for them.

The relative comfort in which Syrian refugees live in Zaatari is largely due to the fact that the camp receives a lot of funding from other middle eastern states, and it is pleasing to see that aid being put to good use. Having seen its living conditions, I think that Zaatari has a greater sense of permanency than many other refugee camps I have visited.

Most people in Zaatari believed that they would be going home to Syria in a relatively short time. The reality is that in many cases there is nowhere for them to go home to because many homes no longer exist. It is perhaps a good thing that the refugees there enjoy a higher quality of life than those in many others camps do. Achieving that quality of life should be reflected in the management of camps all over the world.

The services available for children and young people in the Zaatari camp are much better than what camps usually provide, due to the provision of child friendly spaces. Obviously, a number of children in the camp have witnessed the horrors of the fighting in Syria and even seen members of their families killed. The child friendly spaces scheme, run by various global non-governmental organisations, is designed to give children a safe place to play, to ensure that they can continue to have a childhood and can recover from the emotional and psychological scars that conflict has caused. Many young children in the Zaatari camp start off by being able to draw only guns and tanks, but after the work of the NGOs they start to draw pictures that are much more normal for children of their age, and they even start smiling again.

I was delighted to see the particular focus on education at Zaatari. UNICEF, which runs the education programme at the camp, has set up a compound of 14 classrooms and runs two schools a day, with girls being taught in the morning and boys in the afternoon. That dedication and commitment to ensuring that the children of the camp have a good education is unusual, and will serve to mitigate some of the disruption caused to the children’s lives, and, most importantly, normalise them. It should also ensure that when Zaatari’s young people leave the camp and eventually return to their country, they will have some of the skills they need to enter the work force and thrive.

The quality of life of the residents of Zaatari is significantly better than that in many of the camps I have visited. For instance, £1 million has been spent on laying down gravel on the site to reduce the nuisance and health issues caused by excessive dust, because the camp is situated in very arid conditions. Although dealing with dust is a lesser concern than providing education, addressing it has ensured that the lives of those living in the camp are much more comfortable; people there experience far fewer chest problems, including asthma in children, than they would otherwise.

The other measure that normalised the lives of Zaatari’s residents was the way in which food was provided in the camp. As I am sure many hon. Members will have seen, food provision in refugee camps typically consists of a rationing-style system, in which residents queue and are allotted a set amount of certain types of food every day. In many cases, refugees will eat the same thing day in, day out for the length of their stay, which often runs into years. That approach undoubtedly prevents people in camps from making their own choices, and I believe that it leads only to institutionalism.

In Zaatari, residents are given smartcards, which function like cash and can be used to buy whatever their holders want, albeit from a relatively limited choice, in the supermarket-style food stores in the camp. Although choosing what to eat may seem a small concern, it is important in helping to normalise the lives of those living in the camp. I would like the approach to be rolled out in refugee camps across the world.

In stark contrast, on a visit to Rwanda with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association earlier this year, I was presented with a sense of disorder and listlessness at a camp for refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo. There was a huge number of young men, many of whom had been there for years; they were bored and had nothing to do. Those young men had no hope, and no chance of escaping and getting a normal life again.

Early marriage was common, due to the absence of any enrichment programmes or provision of education. We all know that education is particularly important for young women, as statistics show that those who receive education are likely to put off marriage and having children until later, meaning that they have better prospects and, above all, better health. This particular camp demonstrated that that is true. I learned that mortality in childbirth there was very high, because many of the girls and young women were getting married far too young, as there is nothing else for them to do.

Although there is a clear discrepancy between the provision of facilities in Syria and in other refugee camps, in camps outside the middle east a similar divide exists along gender lines, and provision for women is of particular concern. In the South Sudanese camp that I visited, toilets were non-existent and people defecated openly; when the rains come, the camp is flooded with human excrement. I heard stories of the women and girls there being too afraid to go to the toilet at night for fear of being raped. Given the duration of the crisis in South Sudan, it would make sense for more permanent toilet facilities to be built, which in turn would reduce the risk of rape that the girls in the camps face every day. However, there must be some sort of security for the toilets, so that women’s and men’s toilets are separated.

What is most shameful about the situation is that the guidelines for the protection of young girls, which specifically mention the need for the provision of lockable toilet facilities, have been in place for the last 10 years in the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s paper on gender-based violence. It is absolutely essential that that advice should be followed in the running of refugee camps globally. In line with their strong stance on violence against women, particularly in conflict, I urge the UK Government to put pressure on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other NGOs to ensure that women are adequately protected.

It is clear that there is a huge disparity between the conditions in refugee camps such as Zaatari and those in Africa. When the residents of refugee camps eventually leave the camps, it is important that they should be able to reintegrate into normal society. Achieving that requires an emphasis on the provision of education, ensuring that children whose lives have been torn apart by the horrors of war can continue to grow emotionally and psychologically, and, most importantly, become contributors to their communities, with reasonable job prospects.

Maintaining normality is key in ensuring that adult refugees leave the camps as functioning members of society. It is clear from how Zaatari is run that self-sufficiency is encouraged there. Although the introduction of supermarket-style food provision is a positive thing, and a welcome change from how food is distributed in the African camp that I described, more could be done to encourage refugees to be more self-sufficient, ultimately ending the dependence that the camps create.

Perhaps one way to do that would be to encourage more micro-economies to be created in camps. Such micro-economies would serve to normalise life for refugees and provide lives more like the ones they will experience when they eventually leave. The fact is that the Syrian refugees in Zaatari are more educated than those in camps elsewhere, but it seems unfair that they should be able to demand one type of camp, and get it, whereas people in camps in Africa, who are generally less educated, have to put up with much more basic facilities.

It would make sense for the Department for International Development to ensure that, in its aid policy and work with NGOs, substantial facilities are put in place in camps. The disparity between the facilities available at Zaatari, compared with the other camps I have described, marks unfairness in how they are organised.

Although Zaatari marks what could be the global standard for refugee camps, more than 70% of Syrian refugees in Jordan and 100% of them in Lebanon live outside them. Although refugees living outside are more likely to lead lives that are more typically normal, there is a challenge in keeping them safe. Many of them are living in basic rooms, with little sanitation and poor water, but they are at least kept in family units, in individual—albeit very small—apartments.

Organisations that run the camps, such as the UNHCR, are experienced in identifying vulnerable individuals and giving them the care that they need, but that is obviously problematic when those vulnerable people are not in camps. Living outside the camps presents a number of other problems, in that refugees have to pay for their own accommodation. Of the non-camp dwelling refugees in Jordan, 90% are now in financial crisis. One reason is that refugees must obtain work permits to work in Jordan, which can often be expensive. Another factor is that some 33% of households are run by women who have been widowed by the war.

One way of assessing the needs of refugees in non-camp settings is to create community boards, consisting of elected representatives from the community. That initiative has been successful within camps and provides aid agencies and NGOs with a useful way of monitoring refugee populations. CARE, the NGO, has been running similar schemes for Iraqi refugees, and they have been very successful. Like that organisation, I believe that community boards should be rolled out in refugee populations across the globe.

Although the UNHCR does a fantastic job of co-ordinating humanitarian efforts across the middle east, especially in Jordan, it goes without saying that one of the bars to providing assistance to, and improving conditions for, refugees who do not live in camps is its reach. For example, many Syrian refugees in Lebanon are unable to access services, due to their inability to travel because of sectarian concerns. In this instance, co-operation between NGOs in these areas and the UNHCR is essential. It is to that end that I would like DFID to use its relationship and influence with the UNHCR to encourage NGOs to co-chair working groups.

It is obvious that there is much to be done in standardising the quality of life of refugees around the world. Nevertheless, it is often easy to overlook the fate of those who do not go into camps. It is vital that provision be made for those people and that they are not rendered more vulnerable as a consequence of not having entered camps. With that in mind, I strongly advocate greater co-ordination between NGOs and the UNHCR, to ensure the widest possible delivery of services and the setting up of community representative groups as standard practice with non-camp dwelling refugee populations.

I have not yet mentioned the current crisis in Gaza. People there are living in schools because they have had to flee their homes. DFID should consider what money it can forward to those vulnerable people, who probably have no homes to go back to now because there has been so much bombing. They are in a desperate situation. I hope that the Minister will take back to the Department my feeling, which is that I should particularly like it to get involved and help the Palestinian people to have as much of a normal life as they can under the circumstances.

[Mr Adrian Sanders (in the Chair)]

I said privately to hon. Members that, if they wished to remove their jackets, they could. I now say that publicly.