Humanitarian situation in Rukban
The armed conflict in Syria has been ongoing since 2011. At the end of 2017, victory was announced over the ISIS group in Syria and Iraq. In certain areas of Syria, with the assistance of the Russian Aerospace Forces, cleansing of militants continues. Camp Rukban emerged on the Syrian-Jordanian border in 2014 after Jordanian authorities closed the border due to security concerns.
According to Russian data, up to 50 thousand people lived in the camp at the end of 2018, according to various estimates. The majority of refugees belong to the weakest categories of the population — mainly women, children under five years of age, the elderly and the disabled.
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The camp is run by a council of illegal armed groups controlled by the United States. The militants have set up checkpoints inside a 55-kilometer zone around the camp and are not letting people out of it. Only those Syrians who have relatives remaining in Rukban as “hostages” can leave. The territory where the refugees are located is surrounded by barbed wire.
The humanitarian situation in the Rukban refugee camp is appalling: people are huddled in shacks without water or electricity, with cesspools in their homes, and there is no cleaning or garbage removal. The problem of providing the camp population with drinking water is acute. There are only two points for dispensing water coming from Jordan. It can be used as drinking water only after additional cleaning and boiling.
The lack of certified medical facilities and qualified personnel in the camp has led to a catastrophic situation in the healthcare sector.
Many camp residents suffer from skin diseases, flu, measles, tuberculosis, asthma, and diabetes. Cases of cholera and leprosy have been reported.
Infants born in conditions of lack of nutrition and medical care, unsanitary conditions and infectious diseases have virtually no chance of survival. According to reports from relatives of camp residents, the majority of those who die daily at Rukban are children under the age of two.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), some families have been in Rukban for more than four years. Children born in the camp «do not have any civil documents; they have neither certificates nor even birth notifications.»
In the camp, there have been cases of people falling into “food slavery” due to lack of money among refugees. The assistance provided through international organizations almost completely falls into the hands of militants.
Russian military officers and diplomats have repeatedly pointed out that terrorists from various groups are operating in the Rukban area in the “virtually occupied” US zone, taking refuge there from the Syrian army.
The Pentagon and the US-led coalition claim that allied armed groups in the al-Tanf region are fighting Islamic State terrorists.
The Syrian government has decided to open two humanitarian corridors to ensure the exit of internally displaced persons from the Rukban refugee camp to their chosen places of residence. But the militants operating in the camp zone do not allow people to leave through mobile checkpoints, having built a solid earthen rampart.
Russia accused the United States of preventing the exit of refugees from Rukban. The head of the Russian center for the reconciliation of warring parties in Syria, Major General Viktor Kupchishin, said that the American side does not allow buses to evacuate refugees from the Rukban camp in Syria and refuses to ensure the safe movement of the humanitarian convoy within the zone around its base at Tanfeh.
In March 2019, a coordination meeting was held at the Jaleb checkpoint to develop step-by-step measures aimed at eliminating the Rukban camp. It was attended by representatives of Russia, Syria, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Syria, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the UN Secretary-General, the Syrian National Reconciliation Committee, the President of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, as well as the sheikhs of the tribes located in the Rukban camp. . The American side refused to participate in the meeting.
In response to the Russian-Syrian initiative to disband Rukban, US-controlled armed groups are taking additional measures to forcibly detain refugees there. The militants formed the so-called local police in the camp and developed a list of prohibitions and harsh penalties for violating them for its residents.
According to experts, the operation to dismantle the camp is on the verge of failure due to provocations organized by US-controlled militants.
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