Learn to Live: Syria’s refugee children struggling to find a future

More than 80,000 refugees are crammed into a single camp in Jordan. But despite the hardship, ambitions remain undimmed. Naomi Ackerman reports
Hoping for a bright future: Rula with her nephew Rami
Rosie-Lyse Thompson

Amidst the desert sands and pressed up against the Syrian border is a town that did not exist seven years ago.

It is a collection of homes cobbled together from corrugated iron and rough cement; where children are too often taught in makeshift, overheating classrooms.

This is Za’atari refugee camp in northern Jordan, one of the largest in the world with almost 80,000 people scraping together an existence.

Nearly all reached it to escape the bombs and bullets of the seven-year Syrian civil war. Many who embarked on that journey never arrived, and children witnessed their fathers being beaten and relatives dying en route.

Rula is one of the lucky ones. The childhood home she fled in the anti-government region of Daraa has been “completely destroyed” and she has little chance of ever returning.

As armed men advanced on her village one night, Rula’s family packed everything they could carry and fled to the Jordanian border.

Both her sisters, now 19 and 21, would have studied at Damascus University but instead married as teenagers and have children. Permits are needed to leave the camp even temporarily.

The Za’atari refugee camp in northern Jordan
Louis Leeson

Rula’s father, Yasin, 54, shook his head as he said: “We can’t even think about the future.”

Wearing a brave smile under a white hijab decorated with flowers, Rula insists she will not give up her dream of becoming a human rights lawyer. “I want to widen my mind and learn more,” she says. “I want to help people and make them happy. There is something good to see everywhere.”

She has even created activities for younger children in the camp under the motto “A Fingerprint of Hope”.

Rula studies with the VoiceMore programme in a centre made from metal sheeting. Areas surrounding its small compound have irregular electricity and no mains water, but inside, the walls are decorated with vibrant drawings created by her 20 or so peers.

All have been through trauma, but Rula is not alone in her determination not to be defined by her past.

Azeh, 16, escaped a violent and abusive marriage she entered last year.

Areej, also 16, “remembers everything” about her march from Syria aged 11, how she carried a large medicine bag on her back as she sneaked past soldiers fearing for her life. Her focus now is on finding a way to study as a nurse to help fellow refugees around the Middle East.

Ali dreams that the short stories he writes on the deprivation and frustration he sees will one day get an international audience.

Zain wants to be a geography teacher, perhaps with a sideline in football coaching.

Zain dreams of being a teacher
Rosie-Lyse Thompson

Their teacher, Hatem, a Jordanian who gave up a career in mechanical engineering, says such resilience is heartening.

Working with such young people, who are still really ambitious and still have energy and are still motivated after all the hardships they have been through, is inspiring

Teacher Hatem

“Working with such young people, who are still really ambitious and still have energy and are still motivated after all the hardships they have been through, is inspiring,” he explains.

The tragedy is that despite their courage and ambitions, these children may not be able to fulfil their potential. They risk becoming part of Syria’s lost generation: children who have been stripped of the chance to develop into the adults they could have been because of the war.

That is why the Evening Standard has launched our Learn to Live campaign in partnership with War Child.

The charity runs VoiceMore in Za’atari and similar programmes in other conflict zones, ensuring refugee children have educational and psychological support.

Our objectives over the next 10 weeks are simple: to help ensure children like Rula and her classmates know they are not forgotten. We aim to increase empathy and understanding between pupils of all backgrounds by twinning UK schools with counterparts in combat zones.

Already the children in Za’atari are wondering which London school they will be twinned with and what it will be like. “Are they addicted to smartphones?” one child asks. Zain wants to know if they also support his beloved Barcelona FC.

In the coming months, we will follow these children and others from the Central African Republic to former Islamic State-controlled areas in Iraq, as they learn the answers.

“This is a beautiful project,” says Ali. “It will help me gain experiences, share knowledge and information, and understand differences and similarities.”

Already pupils in London schools are writing letters and sending video messages. The children in Za’atari will soon know they are not forgotten.

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