Paper details
| Paper authors | Melissa Gatter |
| In panel on | Ethical Exits and Future Trajectories: Reimagining Closure, Localisation and Humanitarian Practice |
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Abstract
Syria’s liberation came in December 2024, thirteen years after millions of Syrians fled to camps across the Middle East. This paper focuses on the two UNHCR-run camps in Jordan, Azraq and Za‘tari, and the extent to which the events of December 2024 have changed their camp lives. Where previous scholarship has argued that humanitarian systems prevent camp residents from integrating and building futures in the host state, this paper argues that humanitarianism also threatens to foreclose the very futures it has kept Syrian camp residents waiting for: the return to Syria. Based on ethnographic data and ongoing interviews with camp interlocutors over the past decade, this paper analyzes the effect of a decade of short-term aid on camp refugees’ financial and logistic ability to return to their home country. This carries implications for accountability and humanitarian exits from other protracted camp settings where repatriation becomes possible.
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