Jordan says hosting Syrian refugees has cost $10 billion
AMMAN: Authorities in Jordan on Tuesday estimated at more than $10 billion the cost of hosting thousands of refugees displaced from Syria since the civil war broke out there in 2011.
The UN says that some 650,000 Syrian refugees are currently being housed in Jordan, but the government puts the figure far higher at around 1.3 million people.
In a statement released on social media, the Foreign Ministry said “more than $10.3 billion” had been spent on putting up the refugees.
That figure covered additional expenses in sectors including health, education and employment, and also extra money spent on public services and subsidized food, it said.
Jordan, which shares a 370-km border with Syria, estimates that almost $1.7 billion will be needed to cover the refugees this year.
The kingdom — which has called for the international community to do more on the crisis — has recently come under fire from Human Rights Watch for allegedly “summarily deporting” Syrian refugees.
The group said that on average some 400 refugees were being removed each month at the start of 2017 in a move that could be aimed at preventing the violence in Syria spilling over onto Jordanian territory after several armed attacks.
Authorities insisted that any return of refugees to Syria was voluntary and that they only headed to areas in the country that are considered safe.
The UN refugee agency says 93 percent of the Syrian refugees in Jordan live below the poverty line. Around 180,000 of them are housed in two sprawling camps in the desert.
Fighting in Syria has claimed more than 330,000 lives since a brutal crackdown by the army on protesters in 2011 spiraled into all-out conflict.
The UN estimates that more than 5 million Syrians have been driven from the country by fighting, with the majority settling in neighboring Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
Meanwhile, a rebel group in northern Syria handed control of a major border crossing to a Turkeybacked Syrian opposition government on Tuesday.
By handing over the Bab Salama crossing at the Turkish border, the Jabha Shamiya rebel group aims to strengthen the opposition government and help put an end to factional rivalries, said the head of its political office Khaled Aba.
He urged other rebels to follow Jabha Shamiya’s example by handing over other crossings at the Turkish border.
“The interim government is the solution for the liberated areas to put an end to terrorism, to put an end to factionalism and the state of division in the liberated areas,” said Aba, a member of the opposition delegation to Geneva peace talks.
The Bab Salama crossing is the main gateway into an oppositionheld area of the north where neighboring Turkey carved out a de facto buffer zone during a military incursion targeting Daesh and Kurdish groups last year.
Efforts have been underway in that area to merge and organize a plethora of rebel groups whose rivalries have led to factional fighting that has weakened the Syrian opposition throughout the conflict.
Jabha Shamiya, a major force in Aleppo until the Syrian regime and its allies defeated the opposition there last year, has joined a “national army” operating under the authority of the interim government’s Defense Ministry, Aba said.
It has also handed control of its training camps to the defense ministry, he said.
The opposition government is based out of the town of Azaz, a short distance from the Turkish border.