On World Refugee Day, Remember the Girls Still Growing Up in Camps

I still remember the first time I visited the Za’atari refugee camp in northeastern Jordan in the fall of 2012. It was dusty and chilly. The camp had been officially inaugurated that past summer to accommodate the hundreds of Syrians fleeing the brutal Assad regime each day. 

I’ll never forget the Syrian children I spoke to that day. Some were playing football with deflated balls; others were collecting pebbles from the rubble around them. Young girls sat with their mothers inside the tents.

Since its inauguration, Za’atari has grown in population, size, and infrastructure. Tents were replaced with homes donated by regional and international governments. Schools were set up and run primarily by UNICEF, and various shops were built by Syrians. The market, bustling with wedding dress shops, pet shops, barbers, and falafel shacks, would later be referred to as the “Champs-Élysées” of Za’atari.

At the time, I was working on football initiatives with Jordan’s Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, then Vice President of FIFA and head of the Jordan Football Association. But what stayed with me most from those early visits to Za’atari was the sight of Syrian children kicking deflated footballs and old cans through the dust.

That image helped inspire some of the first football programs in the camp.

For children living through displacement, play can look simple. A ball, a pitch, a team. But in a refugee camp, these things can mean something far greater: structure, confidence, friendship, dignity, and a brief but meaningful sense of normal childhood.

This was especially true for girls.

In Za’atari, as in many places shaped by crisis and conservative social norms, boys often found their way into public space more easily. Girls were more likely to remain close to their mothers, inside or near the tents, watching from the margins. For many of them, joining a football team was not just their first experience playing organized sport. It was one of their first experiences claiming space for themselves.

As my family and I watch Jordan take part in this year’s World Cup, I find myself thinking not only of the national pride around football, but of those girls in Za’atari who first stepped onto a pitch years ago. I think of what it means for a girl who has lost so much to discover that her body can be strong, that her voice can be heard, that she can belong to a team, that she can be seen.

A year and a half after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the population of Za’atari has decreased from more than 80,000 to a little over 50,000. But Syrians under the age of 18 still make up more than half of the camp’s population. This matters. Even as the world’s attention shifts toward rebuilding Syria and restoring security — both urgent and necessary goals — thousands of young refugees remain in neighboring host countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. Many have no homes to return to yet. Some may never return to the places their families once knew.

Very few developmental programs are still running in the camp today. One of them is an inspiring music program for Syrian children and youth led by the U.S.-based Dream Day Foundation, in close collaboration with Questscope and Playing for Change. Launched in September 2023 by British singer Ellie Goulding, the program now reaches more than 250 children, who are learning piano, drums, guitar, and traditional Middle Eastern instruments such as the oud and qanun.

One of those students is Ghazal, a Syrian teenage girl learning to play the oud. Before enrolling in the music course, she said, she spent her time with no real goals. “Now,” she said, “I have something to invest in: learning. Music gave me a sense of accomplishment and helped me feel more at ease and confident in myself.” 

Ghazal’s voice rings so loud for me as a mother of two young girls, knowing so well how powerful this feeling is.

Today, on World Refugee Day, showing solidarity with refugees means upholding the responsibility to raise Ghazal’s voice and her music to the world stage. If Syria’s future is to be bright, it will depend not only on roads rebuilt and institutions restored, but on young people like Ghazal — girls who are given the chance to learn, to play, to lead, and to believe that their lives still hold possibility.