Jordanian, Syrian women find common ground, better understanding through joint bazaar


25-03-2014 01:19 PM

Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Jordanian and Syrian women working together at the Zaatari camp said their collaboration shows that discontent among host communities, whose patience towards the large number of refugees is wearing thin, could be reduced.

A two-day bazaar at the Zaatari Refugee Camp, which is now the Kingdom’s fourth largest population centre with about 100,000 residents, brought together women from host communities and refugees to display and sell their handicrafts.

“This project is about introducing the Jordanian and Syrian community to each other,” UNHCR Communication Officer Nasreddine Touaibia told The Jordan Times at the bazaar last Thursday.

“We invited five local women’s associations from northern Jordan and three women’s organisations from the camp. The handicrafts were produced in their own associations and the Syrian women produced them at the camp in labs provided by UN Women,” Touaibia added.

The Kingdom has given sanctuary to some 600,000 of the 2.5 million Syrians who fled their country since the onset of the conflict in March 2011, UN figures show, but unofficial figures suggest they could amount to one million.

The large number of refugees has been stoking resentment among members of the host community as some cities near the Syrian border saw their population double, adding pressure on water and sanitation services, and leading to a consequent increase in rents

“Jordanians started thinking that all the support is going to the camp for the refugees without helping the host communities which, in people’s opinion, are not benefiting from the resources given to the humanitarian emergency,” Touaibia said.

“We must try to bridge the gap between the two communities, and this bazaar may be the first step,” he added.

Many of the Jordanian women selling their products at Zaatari, some 100km northeast of Amman, came from rural areas in the Northern Badia, part of the Kingdom’s vast desert area.

They told The Jordan Times their businesses have recently come to a halt due to disruptions of trade routes with Syria and, partly, Iraq.

“This is my first time in the camp,” said Iman Aqil from Um Al Jimal.

“I was worried about coming here as I did not know whether the refugees would welcome us or not. I thought they would defend their community and prevent everyone from entering the camp,” the 40-year-old added.

Aqil said her family has been facing many challenges since the beginning of the Syrian war, adding to problems that have been dragging on since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“My husband earns JD200 a month, and before the conflict I used to support my family by selling handicrafts; but now with the disruption of trade routes, this is not possible anymore. Prices soared of both rents and services. It is not that we don’t like refugees as people, but we are facing many problems too due to their large number.”

But the mother of seven said that after coming to Zaatari and seeing how people lived in the camp, she would try to work more with Syrian women and take her children to Zaatari to play with their children since amid difficulties “Arabs are one and the same people.”

Hunching over her embroideries, Menwa Masabeeh from the northern town of Safawi said she was also concerned about coming to the camp, but now all her fears vanished.

“We are the same people, we partly face the same problems and worries about our families and children,” Masabeeh said, adding that she was willing to continue cooperating with Syrian women, but further support from the outside was needed to make the cooperation more effective.

A daily average of 400 Syrians cross into Jordan, according to the UNHCR, putting a strain on the camp’s facilities, but especially on the host communities, where about two-thirds of the refugees a reside.

“As Jordanians, we watch TV and read newspapers but we never sit and talk with the refugees from Syria. To have a bazaar like this is a chance to get to know each other,” Jinan Nakshabandy, the president of a Jordanian charity and a UNHCR volunteer, told The Jordan Times.

“The resentment is caused by a lack of mutual knowledge. We rarely sit and talk together. When we decided to come to the camp, women started asking questions concerning safety. They were very scared because of rumours they heard about Zaatari,” she added.

Syrian women told The Jordan Times that joint projects were the key to overcome mutual fears and hostility between the two communities.

Rabaa Al Abbas, from the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib, said she started working with a local organisation after she arrived at Zaatari a year-and-a-half ago.

“I heard there was a training course with a Jordanian women’s association, and after finishing the training I have become a trainer myself for Syrians in the camp,” she said.

“In the beginning I felt prejudice and hostility from the Jordanian side but after we got to know each other better and worked together these feelings disappeared.”

Isra Soud, a 24-year-old musician from Daraa, who sold mosaics and dreamt of becoming an interior designer covering the walls of private houses with her work, told The Jordan Times she now partly understood Jordanians’ resentment towards refugees after talking with women from the host communities.

“The fact that we are here has caused them many problems, but we must work together to find a harmonic coexistence like what we achieved in this project in a way that both communities may benefit from each other.”

*Jordan Times




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