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Scalding temperatures, a lack of electricity and soaring food prices have created harsh conditions in the desert camp. Alisa Reznick | 01 Jun 2015 09:30 GMT | Humanitarian crises , Middle East , Refugees , Jordan , Syria Along a 15km stretch of rocky desert in northern Jordan, in what used to be a camp for displaced Iraqis and Kuwaitis during the first Gulf War, rows of white metal shelters now make up the Azraq camp for Syrian refugees. Azraq opened in April 2014 with the capacity to house up to 130,000 refugees. Back then, the Jordanian government and the United Nations said it would likely become one of the world's most populous refugee camps - b ut one year on, it is nearly empty, with a population of around 18,500. Residents say scalding summer temperatures, a lack of electricity and soaring food prices have created harsh conditions inside the desert camp. Despite major funding rollbacks by international aid agencies, most of Jordan's...

Photo:  Anna Jefferys/IRIN UNHCR staff investigate cases of false refugees at the "Centre de Litige" in Mbera camp MBERA/BASSIKOUNOU, 19 November 2013 (IRIN) - Since April, when the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) started biometric registration of the Malian refugees in Mauritania's Mbera camp, 8,000 of the 68,000 registered refugees have been de-activated from the system - almost all of them Mauritanians from nearby towns and villages hoping to access aid handouts. In September, a small group of camp residents tried to destroy the registration centre in protest of the new system, raising a key question: when and how should aid agencies helping refugees also try to assist vulnerable host populations? The situation in Mauritania is by no means unique; many refugee camp populations are swollen with locals trying to access aid. Locals have even outstripped refugee populations in some crises, said a UNHCR source. UNHCR and other aid agencies often assist host populations to...