It’s been almost four years since Syrian refugees fleeing conflict started congregating in Zaatari, Jordan, today home to the world’s second largest refugee camp.
Now with 80,000 residents, the emergency response phase is over, Hovig Etyemezian, UNHCR senior field coordinator and camp manager, told Devex. His agency’s focus now is on creating sustainable change and looking toward to the future. The focus, he said, needs to be on educating the more than 70,000 Syrian children living across Jordan who are currently out of school, as well as creating livelihood opportunities for adults. Without better prospects for the future, refugees will lose hope — and indeed some have already returned back to Syria.
More than a year and a half after taking up his position, Etyemezian shared his thoughts with Devex in an exclusive interview on the ground in Jordan.
About the author
Sam Mednick
Sam is a Devex Contributor based in Burkina Faso. Over the past 15 years she has reported on conflict, post-conflict, and development stories from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe. She recently spent almost three years reporting on the conflict in South Sudan as the Associated Press correspondent. Her work has also appeared in The New Humanitarian, VICE, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Al Jazeera, among others.