Syrians struggle to survive in ‘no man’s land’ desert camp

Women and children protest against the living condition in Rukban camp in March. Camp residents say it is getting harder to live there [File: Rukban Network]

The Syrian government and its Russian backers have tightened their blockade on Rukban camp, a makeshift settlement housing about 10,000 internally displaced Syrians in the arid “no man’s land” between the Jordanian, Iraqi, and Syrian borders.

Nearly 80 percent of the camp’s residents are women and children, living in squalid conditions. For more than three years the al-Assad regime has blocked United Nations aid from entering the camp, forcing its residents to survive off menial amounts of smuggled-in goods.