Humanitarian security in Jordan's Azraq Camp

In: Security dialogue, Volume 48, Issue 2, p. 97-112

Abstract

Azraq, a new camp for Syrian refugees in the Jordanian desert, presents an unprecedented integration of humanitarian service delivery and harsh security measures. I argue that Azraq's 'innovative' order can only be explained in reference to three security claims that international refugee aid answers to: the claim to secure Syrian refugees, the claim to secure the Jordanian state and the claim to secure aid workers. Implementing these claims entails contradictory practices, which should create dilemmas for humanitarian aid, yet in Azraq these practices merge with each other. This merging (or integration) is aided by the humanitarian sector's eager embrace of hi-tech solutions, especially digital data management. The article contributes to the growing debate about how security is articulated in the humanitarian arena by placing this debate's key findings into conversation within a richly researched study of Azraq's 'material assemblage' (Hilhorst and Jansen, 2010; Meiches, 2015). Further, the article emphasizes the importance of the under-researched area of aid organizations' own security management.