AFSC’s Giovanna Negretti, who is based in Amman, Jordan, talks about the challenges facing countries with large numbers of Syrian refugees and the need to build social cohesion.

Building social cohesion:

In Jordan, as you know is one of the countries in the Middle East that first received the Syrian migrants and about five years ago when this whole thing started. And they’re now seeing the effects of—the economic and social effects of the migrants moving out of the camps and coming into society and living in towns and cities. And this has economic impact for the government of Jordan which itself is a very poor country. Hospitals and schools are overloaded. Social services are needed for these migrants. So that creates a lot of pressure especially as it relates to job opportunities for Jordanian youth. So that has created quite a bit of social tension and right now the focus of the international community is really about how to deal with this reality. They’re here. What do we do about this, not only economically but socially to ease those tensions in those towns and cities where Syrians are now living and breathing.

That is something we need to monitor and learn from the lessons we are now seeing in Jordan. This is something that’s gonna be faced soon by places like Germany and the United States in the coming years. Although we have to know 92 percent of Syrians want to go back home. This important for people to know—that Syrians want to go home and rebuild their country. In the meantime we have to figure out how we’re going to build the social cohesion to ease them into society on both ends. Not just for the migrants but for the citizens of the country hosting the migrants.

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