When Solaf passed a group of kids one morning running around in strange white robes faatened with colorful belts, she decided to follow her curiosity. She had just arrived at Azraq camp a couple of days before and the inquisitive 9 year-old simply wanted to make friends that “seemed to be fun” and to find out what they people in white were up to.

The group led Solaf to a sports ground built a year earlier thanks to International Olympic Committee support. “When I saw the movements the kids were doing, I knew that was something I wanted to learn”, explains Solaf with her black eyes wide open. At that time more than 50 boys and only two girls were part of the training. She decided to join them. “I love jumping and breaking wooden boards”, she clarifies while standing up to do a little show.

Ruwyda had no idea about her daughter’s new hobby. “Solaf used to disappear, but I thought she was outside, just playing with her friends”, she confesses. “One day Solaf arrived home and started doing all these weird movements, jumping up and down on my walking aid, so I asked her what on earth she was doing”. Solaf announced to her family that she was taking taekwondo classes. “My daughter had never seen this sport before, not even on TV”, mutters Ruwyda. “The only thing she remembers from her childhood is airstrikes and violence”.

Solaf speaks loud, clear and with a confidence not common for a girl of her age. Her words were the ones putting the family in trouble when the clashes started in Dara’a, her hometown. Ahmad, Solaf’s father, remembers with tears in his eyes: “During a demonstration, she spoke to a camera while holding a rocket. This is how you treat the children of Syria?, she said. She was just 5 years old, but her message was strong. Then the persecution started. They wanted her”. The family tried to hide but soon decided to leave Syria to protect what they describe as their “treasure”.

Solaf does not remember much of that day but her strength flows out of her mouth: “If someone hassles me or tries to harass me, I need to learn how to defend myself. My brother won’t be always around to protect me, maybe he is at the school or at work… I need to be independent”.

Ruwyda cannot stop smiling at her daughter’s movements. “Solaf is a multitalented girl and we are so proud that now she is free to achieve anything she wants in life”, she explains. But in the end, she is just a kid and taekwondo has become the best excuse to fight with her older brother: “I am training myself, mum”, she says quickly excusing herself.

Restless Solaf now has enrolled into football and volleyball training. She is good at sports but her finest kick is her mind: “Can you imagine ants living in the Artic?”, challenges Solaf. “These questions are her best punch!”

Since 2012, Japan has been one of UNHCR’s main donors with a combined contribution of $31.4m in support of 629,000 Syrian women, men, boys and girls in Jordan. Underpinning the longstanding support to refugees operations globally, the contribution to the Jordan operation has saved the lives of thousands of people through providing access to health care, financial assistance, winter support and core relief items for those who arrived with little more than the clothes they are wearing.

Minister for Foreign Affairs, Japan, Fumio Kishida meeting with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, in Zaatari Refugee Camp. Photo: UNHCR/J Kohler

2015 in particular has been an incredibly tough year for Syrians families in Jordan, with an assessment carried out which revealed that 86% of Syrian refugees sheltered outside of camps are living under the Jordanian poverty line. That means families are surviving on less than $3.20 a day. As a consequence, we know that 80% of those families are using crisis or emergency coping strategies just to survive, including skipping meals, unable to send their children to school, and even relying on their children to work in difficult conditions. The impact on families is enormous, and a far cry from the lives they fled in search of safety once war took hold.

In 2015 alone, the people of Japan’s generosity has continued to help those most vulnerable families with US$2.7m to cash-based assistance and US$3.7m to health care for Syrian refugees in Jordan, making it one of the biggest donors to our operation.  UNHCR Representative, Andrew Harper, is proud of the impact of the cash programme, “the financial support to families is ever more critical as winter closes in and temperatures drop to freezing overnight. The UNHCR system focuses not only on delivering assistance with dignity, but with efficiency, with overhead costs reduced to 0.58% and using iris scan software in a world first in refugee programming.”

Nami Asaka, the head of the UNHCR office in Irbid, the second city in Jordan and temporary home to 142,000 Syrians has witnessed this support first hand both at work and as Japanese national, ‘though geographically located far away, Japan is receiving asylum seekers from Syria and also has the responsibility as part of the international community to provide humanitarian support to those in need’.  Without the support, many Syrians would face stark decisions. Sheika, a Syrian mother alone in Jordan with her son, depends on the UNHCR financial assistance which provides $70 per month to cover rent, ‘without it, I would have to return to Syria.’

UNHCR protection staff meeting with refugees in Zaatari Refugee Camp. Photo: UNHCR/C Herwig

UNHCR is grateful to the people of Japan for the generous contribution since the beginning of the Syrian crisis. This has allowed UNHCR to maintain support to Syrians, including for registration, protection, shelter and infrastructure, non-food items, recreation activities and educational courses and winterization.

A UNHCR staff member looks for documents in one of the coded envelopes at the Raba’a al-Sarhan registration facility in Jordan.

Working around the clock, UNHCR staff in Jordan have been sorting through hundreds of thousands of precious, sometimes damaged, documents since July. Their goal: to return the papers to their Syrian owners, who handed over the documents on fleeing their battered homeland.

For nearly a year, the identity papers of refugees were taken as they entered northern Jordan and before they were transported to nearby Za’atri camp. In return, the new arrivals were provided with pink receipts for their documents.

By early 2013, as the conflict in Syria intensified and the trickle of arrivals turned into a flood, existing registration and filing systems were overwhelmed. As many of the Syrians had lost their identify papers, the Jordanian border authorities started accepting any paperwork offered by the desperate refugees, including passports, driving permits or family books. Storage of the growing piles of documentation became more difficult.

Finding the documents became an issue when refugees came forward and asked for their papers because they wanted to leave the camp for one reason or another. So, in July this year, UNHCR and the government agreed to work together to ensure that all refugees could have their documents back.

The challenge was to sort through the growing mountain of boxes and enter every document into a database. A joint project was established to organise and file the personal documents that had been stored in a dedicated facility at the new Raba’a al-Sarhan reception centre, which is located about 6 miles from the border.

The laborious work is conducted around-the-clock by about 50 UNHCR staff members working in shifts alongside Jordanian officials. It’s a boring task, but rewarding. “The importance of an identity document for a refugee who has lost everything cannot be underestimated,” says Andrew Harper, head of UNHCR’s operation in Jordan. “You can see the immense relief on their faces when their documents are returned,” the Australian adds.

The hard work is paying off: By early October almost 180,000 documents belonging to members of more than 76,000 families had been sorted, scanned and entered into a secure database. The originals are stored in specially coded envelopes and UNHCR has started the massive task of returning them to their owners in camps or in the urban areas where most have found shelter.

“It’s been very hard work” says UNHCR Senior Registration Assistant Alaa Mahmoud Amoush, who is one of the team leaders for this project and has been involved in the gargantuan sorting effort since day one.

“Scanning all the paperwork and storing it in envelopes labelled with unique computer-readable bar codes ensures it can be easily searched,” Amoush explains. “But I have lost five kilogrammes since it started in July as we have been working around-the-clock, even during Ramadan [from July 9-August 7] when we had to work in the heat all day long without water or food.”

After this week’s Eid al-Adha holidays, UNHCR plans to invite refugees in Za’atri to collect their paperwork and to launch a long-scheduled re-registration and verification of the camp’s population. This will give UNHCR and its partner agencies a precise picture of the camp’s population and needs, which will make it easier to plan delivery of services to residents.

The significant progress UNHCR’s teams have made in recent months sorting through the documents would not have been possible without the support of the Jordanian authorities, who have provided containers for offices, equipment and other logistical assistance.

Later this year, UNHCR and the government of Jordan plan to move most of the daily registration activities from Za’atri to the Raba’a al-Sarhan reception facility. When that occurs, all refugees crossing the border will be registered before they are moved to Za’atri or other refugee camps.

Built with funding from the European Commission, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and other donors, the Raba’a al-Sarhan site will double UNHCR’s existing registration capacity in the region, where many people cross from southern Syria. New arrivals will be medically screened, vaccinated, registered and issued with cards that provide access to education and World Food Programme rations.

“The Raba’a al-Sarhan registration site is yet another component of the contingency planning measures we have put in place in case large numbers of Syrian refugees suddenly cross the border into Jordan,” UNHCR’s Harper says. “Along with other measures, such as the establishment of a new contingency camp site in Azraq that can take up to 130,000 people, the UN refugee agency and its partners are demonstrating to the government of Jordan that we will stand by them in helping the country to cope with this massive refugee influx.”

UNHCR staff register Syrian refugees in Irbid.

IRBID, Jordan, October 3 (UNHCR) – The time that Syrians need to register as refugees in Jordan has been slashed from up to eight months to zero after the UN refugee agency rolled out new technology, added staff and expanded its facilities to eliminate the backlog.

A year ago when a Syrian refugee approached UNHCR’s registration centres in Jordan’s urban areas like Irbid, about 20 kilometres from the Syrian border, refugees often had to wait up to 12 months for an appointment.

Earlier this year, when sometimes more than 2,000 Syrian refugees flooded into Jordan daily, the number awaiting registration was stretching the UN refugee agency’s capacity to the limits, requiring staff to work multiple shifts every day while taxing the patience of exhausted refugees.

In response, UNHCR prioritized registration systems and staffing needs to address the unacceptable delays. But by July 2013, there were still more than 60,000 refugees waiting to be registered.

Thanks to funding from ECHO, humanitarian aid arm of the European Commission, and the governments of Japan, Netherlands and the United Kingdom, registration as a refugee and the renewal of documents are now completed within hours at Jordan’s urban refugee registration facilities.

In the last week, UNHCR has cleared the backlog of urban Syrian refugees at northern Jordan’s Irbid registration centre. UNHCR staff at Irbid are now able to process 1,300 individual refugees a day seeking documentation.

“As of the 25th September we have conquered our backlog and registered 100,000 new arrivals in seven months when we were originally aiming to register 63,000 by the end of the year,” said Naseer Al Nabilsi, UNHCR officer-in-charge at Irbid’s registration centre. “A devoted team of six registration officers worked long hours every day since February.”

Irbid is also the first location worldwide where UNHCR introduced biometric iris scanning to assist in refugee registration. The agency unveiled the new technology in August; it poses no risks to the confidentiality of refugees and prevents double registration.

Moreover, UNHCR staff now collect more detailed information on relatives, education and profession. This enhanced data will help UNHCR address both immediate and longer- term protection needs.

The Anmar Hmoud Registration Centre in Amman’s Khalda neighbournood, which UNHCR opened in the summer also processes refugees within hours of their arrival. The new centre – shaded and spacious – can process up to 3,000 refugees daily, triple the capacity of UNHCR’s previous facility.

UNHCR also expects the new, fast processing equipment to lower the previous no-show rate of approximately 10 per cent as word spreads about the speed of registration. The agency has already seen a noticeable rise in the number of Syrian refugees requesting appointments.

“We think [the rise in the number of refugees coming forward for registration] is related to the start of the school year,” said Berween Younes, registration officer in Khalda. “They know by now that school administrations ask for the registration document.”

Syrian refugees previously had to return after their initial registration and wait another four to six hours outside UNHCR’s main Amman office to receive their documents. Now they need to wait a maximum of 50 minutes at the Anmar Hmod Centre before leaving with all the documentation needed to ensure their families are properly assisted and protected.

“It’s a lot more organized and efficient,” says 86-year-old Amna, a refugee who endured the previous system’s delays. Adding her son to her file had taken more than a year as her son’s appointment was postponed three times.

The improvement has also helped UNHCR staff. Niveen Majthoub, with 12 years’ experience working with the refugee agency in humanitarian crises, said the new site made it easier to identify vulnerable refugees who need priority treatment.

“You can actually see them sitting in a large hall, rather than crammed on top of each other in front of the gate,” she said. “Since it is a more spacious area, we were able to hire more staff who can talk to the refugees at the reception area and spot those that need earlier appointments.”

Khaled Shafagoj, an interviewer at the centre, said: “It has become a one-stop shop where the refugee can be referred to different sections, like legal counselling and community services, during the same visit.

“If I see that the refugee I am registering needs an assessment by community services, we can do this on the spot, rather than have the refugee go back and forth on multiple visits,” he said.

With an efficient registration centre in place, UNHCR is now reaching out to those who can’t visit it. A mobile registration unit caters to refugees in remote locations, registers them and issues documents on the spot.