AL AZRAQ REFUGEE CAMP, Jordan — Behind barbed-wire fences at this camp in northern Jordan, about 33,000 Syrians — half of them children — exist uneasily, housed in rows of rudimentary shelters that barely protect them from the winter cold.
As in Jordan, the world’s refugee crisis, which is intimately linked with water availability both in the homelands that people escape and in the camps where they find shelter, is large and growing.
Some 66 million people — a France-sized population — are displaced.
To help, non-governmental organizations supply water and relief groups visit to offer aid.
Azraq, 50 miles southeast, was built on unused desert land after Zaatari swelled beyond capacity just a year after opening, to more than 156,000 people.
Water and wastewater networks were constructed by the humanitarian group ACTED.
At the informal Rohingya camps in southeast Bangladesh, water pumps next to open sewers have stoked fear of disease outbreaks, and led to vaccination, clean water, and sanitation drives.
The World Health Organization reports that diptheria is “rapidly spreading among Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar,” a city in Bangladesh.
Six deaths were reported in December.
The Sahrawis have come a long way since eight years ago, when water was trucked in via UNHCR tankers and outhouses were crude holes beside mud-brick homes.