Aid cuts leave Ramadan tables sparse in Jordan’s Zaatari camp
Syrians in Zaatari, the world’s largest Syrian refugee camp, are struggling to make ends meet this Ramadan after the World Food Program cut their food assistance by about a third last year due to funding shortfalls.
5 April 2024
Zaatari Camp, Jordan –In Zaatari, the world’s largest Syrian refugee camp, supermarkets are packed. Decorations for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan dangle above shoppers preparing for the evening’s fast-breaking iftar meal and the fast-approaching Eid al-Fitr holiday.
A few days into April, Zaatari’s nearly 80,000 residents have just received their monthly food aid allowance from the World Food Program (WFP). However, the sum is significantly less this Ramadan after funding pitfalls forced WFP to reduce its food assistance for Syrians in Jordan in July 2023.
“The aid isn’t enough, you can’t buy anything with it,” Marwan*, a middle-aged man originally from Syria’s southern Daraa province, told Syria Direct while shopping. Residents of Jordan’s two largest Syrian refugee camps, Azraq and Zaatari, now receive just 15 Jordanian dinars ($21) per person each month for food, about a third less than the 23 dinars ($32) they received before the cuts.
“The situation became worse after the [aid] reductions,” Marwan said. “People are poor and there is no work,” he added, turning to join a line of shoppers waiting to check-out using WFP’s iris scan payment technology.