| Though the plight of refugees trying to escape to Europe has dominated the news in recent months, most Syrian refugees remain stuck in poor Middle Eastern countries and probably will be there for years or even decades to come. Here’s why the world needs a new way to care for them.
The standard model of a refugee camp is to set it up as an isolated island where aid goes in and nothing comes out. Food, clothes, and more are delivered by truck and security is provided by the U.N., local forces, or nobody at all. That usually works passably, at least for a while. The problem is that most camps end up staying in place for years, even decades. They cost a fortune to maintain and often degenerate into cauldrons of disease, violence, and corruption, their inhabitants dependent on foreign donors and resented by host-country locals.
Killian Kleinschmidt is at the forefront of a growing movement among aid workers, academics, and urban planners to reimagine the refugee camp. The central idea: Start thinking about such spaces as rapid-response cities. It could not only save the international community untold millions of dollars but also make life for refugees more tolerable—which could in turn diminish the numbers heading for Europe.
TakePart contributor Vince Beiser headed to the place where this bold new approach is being experimented with in a big way: the world’s biggest Syrian refugee camp, a place named Zaatari out in the desert of northern Jordan. |
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