Restoring childhood: humanitarianism and growing up Syrian in Za`tari refugee camp

ABSTRACT

Of the 80,000 Syrians living in Za`tari refugee camp in Jordan, roughly 44,000 are under the age of 18. This article explores childhoods lived in displacement in this humanitarian space. Za`tari's humanitarian apparatus believes children have lost their childhood due to past trauma from the war and current displacement in a refugee camp. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the article explores the ways in which non-governmental organisations (NGOs) aim to ‘restore’ these lost childhoods by promoting youth, enabling agency and refocusing children's attention on their future return to Syria. Through interactions with aid workers during programming in child-friendly spaces, children learn new skills, expand social circles and develop forward-looking goals. Children are also active navigators of life in the camp. The author argues that by customising childhoods cultivated in child-friendly centres to their individual circumstances, children construct a Syrian identity that is more complex than the apolitical Syrianness encouraged by NGOs and inherently different from one that would have been cultivated in Syria. Against humanitarian discourses of a lost Syrian generation, the author’s material sheds light on a nuanced (rather than lost) generation that is basing its identity on experiences in Za`tari as well as on the idea of return to and reconstruction of Dar`a, its home city.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugees
• children
• refugee camp
• humanitarianism
• Jordan
• Syria
• Za`tari; Dar`a

Acknowledgements

I would like to give a special thank you to Shahla and Randa Suleiman, without whom fieldwork for this project would not have been possible. I am indebted to Save the Children Jordan and its dedicated Media and Communications team for making room for me. I am also grateful for the support of my advisor, Dr Paul Anderson. Finally, I thank the community of Za`tari refugee camp for their hospitality and openness, and especially the children who immediately accepted me in their lives and whose stories greatly influenced this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Melissa Gatter is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge who examines questions of identity and humanitarianism in spaces of displacement in the Middle East.