"May God Bless the Hand that Works": Stories from Displaced Syrian Farmworkers during Covid-19

Arrows on the map represent displacement
journeys for the Syrians interviewed in this
study. Green dots are birth locations in
Syria and red dots are current sites of
refuge in northern Syria and neighboring
host countries.
TURKEY
Turkey has a population of 3.6
million Syrian refugees, making
it the country with the largest
absolute number of refugees in
the world.
Turkey is a party to the 1951
Geneva Convention, but not to
its 1967 protocol, and doesn’t
recognise Syrians as “refugees”.
Instead, Syrians are under
“temporary protection”.
RIA
Footnotes:
SYRIA
**UNHCR: The United Nations
High Commissioner on Refugees
(UNHCR) is the UN agency
mandated to aid and provides
legal protection to refugees.
See more at www.unhcr.org.
JORDAN
More than 95% of Syrian
refugees in Turkey live outside
of refugee camps (officially
called Temporary Shelter
Centres).
Large numbers of Syrians have
found employment in agriculture,
particularly in the southeastern
provinces bordering Syria.
There are 660,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan,
less than 20% of whom live in official
refugee camps.
Jordan is not party to the 1951 Geneva
Convention, but UNHCR is allowed to register
refugees and administer services in refugee
camps and urban areas.
Since 2015, Jordan has closed its borders to
Syria, prohibiting Syrians from seeking
asylum in the country.
Syrian refugees may be deported for being
unregistered or working without a work
permit.
**The 1951 Refugee Convention (also called the Geneva Convention) and its 1967
Protocol are the key multilateral treaties governing protection for refugees
worldwide. The Convention defines who a refugee is, establishes the rights of
refugees, and clarifies the responsibilities of the nations party to the
Convention with regard to providing asylum.