Water crisis hits Palestinian refugee camp in Syria regime-controlled area

A Palestinian refugee camp in Syria is experiencing severe water shortages, adding further burdens on impoverished residents.

The Sbeineh camp, in a regime-held area of the southern Damascus countryside, has reported a worrying lack of access to water, exacerbated by electricity cuts, The New Arab’s Arabic-language service Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported.

NGOs said that electricity cuts in the region - often for as long as 22 hours per day - caused water pumps to stop working contributing to the crisis.

"The camp has a water network provided by the state, but the problem lies in the power outage for 22 hours a day in the camp, and the number of hours increases on some days," Fayez Abu Eid, media director of Action Group for the Palestinians of Syria, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed. 

"This affects the water pumps and the basic feeding of the main reservoir in Sbeineh camp."

Any water accessed by residents, often involving arduous and expensive trips, has been of a "very bad" quality, he said.

Abu Eid added that camp residents have submitted complaints to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) about the issue but to no avail.

As a result, citizens travel long distances to obtain water, which they get from wells or tankers – which can be costly for citizens - from street vendors.

"Sometimes, the water cuts inside the camp last for two weeks, and electricity, at best, reaches us for two or two and a half hours a day intermittently. There is no other better place for us to go," camp resident Ahmed Abu Yamen told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

Before the outbreak of war in Syria in 2011, around 22,000 people lived in the camp with unofficial estimates of only 10,000 currently residing in the camp. 

More than 40 towns in northwestern Syria are also in the grips of a water crisis, affecting hundreds of refugee camps, NGO workers said in November. 

Water shortages and a lack of sanitary water in displacement camps have led to cholera outbreaks in the north of the country.

Such shortages have also endangered Syrian camps' agricultural projects such as gardens for residents to grow their own food amid money shortages.

On 7 October 2013, the camp was vacated by its residents when fighting intensified and remained closed to civilians since then.

Sbeineh camp was home to about 25,000 Palestine refugees before the beginning of the war in Syria and civilians were officially permitted to re-enter the camp on 30 August 2017.