Forum warned not to be distracted from plight of refugees and hosts
Jordan’s King Abdullah II has warned that wars in Gaza and elsewhere must not distract the international community from the need to provide assistance to the large number of refugees who are already in the kingdom.
“As serious crises compete for international attention, the plight of refugees and their host countries has taken a back seat,” the monarch said.
His remarks reflect the reliance of Jordan on external funding. The average Jordanian earns $4,300 a year, and the country’s economy has been stagnating for a decade.
The continuing Israel-Gaza war has done significant damage to the kingdom’s tourism industry, a key foreign currency earner, compounding pressures on living standards. “With no clear long-term commitments in flexible international funding, the vulnerability of refugees and Jordanian host communities will grow even more precarious,” he said in a keynote speech to the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, a UN event.
Global powers can “ill afford” to bear the consequences of this lapse, he said, adding that aid for Syrian and Palestinian refugees in the kingdom has been waning.
“With all eyes on Gaza,” King Abdullah said, developed nations “must recognise … that global crises demand longterm responsibility-sharing.”
Jordan depends on aid from the West, and particularly from the US, which is also the main donor of funding for Syrian and Palestinian refugees in the country.
The kingdom signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, becoming the second Arab country after Egypt to do so. The three countries are the top three recipients of US aid.
About 670,000 Syrian refugees are registered with the UN in Jordan, as well as two million Palestinian refugees. Many of the Palestinians have Jordanian citizenship, and the kingdom closed its border to Syrians fleeing their country in 2014.
A large proportion of the billions of dollars in assistance sent to Jordan for Syrian refugees over the past 14 years has gone to host communities in the kingdom, aid officials have said.
Grants pay for infrastructure in Jordanian urban centres and rural areas where refugees live. Germany, for example, pays the salaries of Jordanian teachers who give afternoon classes to refugees.
But some aid, such as food subsidies for the most impoverished refugees, has decreased since Russia launched its fullscale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, as some resources were diverted to deal with human suffering from that war.
The King said “severe shortfalls” in funding for UN aid agencies have undermined “the level of services, including cash assistance, education, and healthcare” for refugees in Jordan.
“A deterioration in food security and self-reliance has become
Some aid, such as food subsidies, has decreased since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, as resources were diverted
a painful reality for the vast majority [of refugees],” he said.
A large proportion of Jordan’s population of 10 million are descended from Palestinians who fled to the kingdom when Israel was created in 1948. Others were displaced when Israel took control of the West Bank from Jordan after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.