At the end of 1998, Jordan hosted more than 1.46 million refugees in need of protection, according to UNRWA and UNHCR. These included 1,463,064 Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA and 777 refugees registered with UNHCR. In addition, Jordan estimated that another 800,000 Palestinian "displaced persons" were residing in Jordan. Palestinians constitute more than half of Jordan's total population. Although up to 180,000 Iraqis live in Jordan, it is unclear how many are refugees.

Palestinians

Palestinians in Jordan registered as refugees by UNRWA represented 42 percent of all UNRWA-registered refugees in 1998. They appeared the most secure economically and legally of any of the Palestinian refugees in the areas of UNRWA operation. UNRWA's budgetary difficulties, however, resulted in a deterioration in health and educational services. On the positive side, hardship cases represented only 2.6 percent of the UNRWA registered refugees in Jordan, the lowest percentage of any of the UNRWA areas. Jordan also boasted the lowest percentage of Palestinian refugees living in camps. Although Jordan maintained ten camps that sheltered 269,749 refugees during the year, 82 percent of the registered refugees in Jordan lived outside camps.

In addition, the Jordanian government unofficially estimates that it hosts 800,000 Palestinians displaced because of the 1967 war. The government called the 1967 arrivals "displaced persons" rather than refugees because, at that time, Jordan claimed sovereignty on both the east and west banks of the Jordan River. Currently, Israel, Egypt, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Jordan have established a technical committee and a ministerial committee to discuss repatriation issues concerning those displaced since 1967.

In addition to the waves of refugees absorbed in 1948 and 1967, Jordan experienced a major influx during and after the Gulf War of 1991 of about 360,000 Palestinians from Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states, of whom about 300,000 remained in Jordan. (About 30,000 to 40,000 who held valid Israeli-issued documents traveled to the West Bank. The remainder moved on to Canada, Australia, and other countries outside the region.) Since the overwhelming majority of the 1991 arrivals already possessed Jordanian travel documents, they do not represent a separate legal category, but are categorized according to their (or their ancestors') original refugee departure stemming from 1948 or 1967.

Legal Status

Palestinian refugees in Jordan have a unique legal position. Unlike the other states hosting Palestinians within the UNRWA mandate area, in Jordan, many Palestinians have full citizenship rights, including the right to vote. UNRWA defines Palestinian refugees as persons who resided in Palestine two years prior to the outbreak of hostilities in 1948, who lost their homes and their livelihoods as a result of the conflict, and their descendants. UN General Assembly Resolution 194 recognizes only repatriation or compensation as permanent solutions to the Palestinian refugee problem. Citizenship in another country, therefore, does not terminate refugee status as it would for other refugee groups covered by the UN Refugee Convention and Protocol. The UN Refugee Convention excludes Palestinians who were already under UNRWA's mandate in 1951. In effect, this means that UNHCR does not concern itself with (or count) Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, or the West Bank and Gaza Strip, although it may assist Palestinian refugees outside the UNRWA mandate area.

UNRWA does not specifically track the number of refugees in Jordan who have Jordanian citizenship, which it considers irrelevant to its mandate. In general, Palestinian refugees with Jordanian citizenship have the same rights as other Jordanian citizens. Palestinians not only vote in elections, but some hold public office. However, although 4 of Jordan's 23 cabinet ministers in 1998 were of Palestinian origin, as were 5 of the country's 40 senators and 10 of 80 members of parliament in the lower house, these figures underrepresent Palestinian numerical strength, which has become an outright majority of the total Jordanian population.

Jordan does not offer citizenship to those Palestinians who originated in the Gaza Strip, over which Jordan never claimed sovereignty. Instead, Jordan issues them two-year passports carrying a stamp indicating that the holder is originally from Gaza, and entered Jordan in 1967. They are not allowed to vote or to hold publicsector jobs.

When the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Gaza began issuing Palestinian passports in 1995, Jordan announced that it would not allow Jordanian Palestinians to carry Palestinian passports or to hold dual nationality, saying that the Arab League bars dual Arab nationality. Beginning in 1995, Jordanian authorities began to revoke the passports of Palestinians who moved to the self-rule areas. Some later returned to Jordan and reapplied for Jordanian passports. Jordan reviews these applications individually.

In some respects, however, Jordan has liberalized its passport policy. Whereas Jordan previously had issued two-year passports to Palestinians who resided in the West Bank, Jordan began issuing five-year passports to Palestinians in 1996. However, Jordan's government reiterated that they were for travel purposes only, and did not connote nationality.

UNRWA Services Strained

UNRWA's weakened financial state, particularly acute in 1997, improved little in 1998. Since 1993, UNRWA has struggled to maintain its services for a growing refugee population with a roughly constant budget. This trend led the agency to rack up a string of successive annual budget deficits that severely eroded UNRWA's financial position. The agency has been forced to implement austerity measures that continued to severely strain UNRWA's ability to assist Palestinian refugees in 1998.

In Jordan, UNRWA's financial difficulties had the greatest impact on education and health. Although the number of students enrolled in UNRWA schools declined for the fourth straight year (by 1.7 percent during the 1997-98 reporting year), children remaining in UNRWA schools continued to experience overcrowding, inferior facilities, and no extracurricular activities because 93 percent of UNRWA schools in Jordan operated on double shifts, the highest in any of the agency's fields of operation. The decline in enrollment resulted, in part, from students transferring from UNRWA schools to Jordanian government schools, which generally had smaller student-teacher ratios, shorter school weeks, and better facilities. Refugee families moving to the West Bank and Gaza Strip also accounted for the decline in enrollment.

UNRWA remained particularly concerned with the poor condition of many of its school buildings in Jordan in 1998. More that half of the agency's 106 school buildings needed to be renovated or replaced, UNRWA reported. On a positive note, UNRWA began construction on two school buildings to replace five dilapidated schools in Irbid camp during the 1997-98 reporting period. UNRWA also constructed five classrooms, five toilet blocks, and one science laboratory between June 1997 and June 1998.

UNRWA health care was similarly strained. Budget constraints forced UNRWA to end individual subsidies for treatment at private hospitals in 1996, a measure that remained in place in 1998. More generally, UNRWA's weakened financial state prevented the agency from keeping pace with the demand for refugee health services.

In part because of UNRWA's severe and prolonged budget deficit, Jordan has increased its share of the costs of caring for refugees in recent years. During UNRWA's 1997-98 reporting year, Jordan spent $353.2 million on behalf of Palestinian refugees and displaced persons, nearly five times more than UNRWA spent on refugee services in Jordan during 1998.

Non-Palestinian Refugees

At the end of 1998, 777 UNHCR-recognized refugees were in Jordan. Some 676 came from Iraq. Other principal countries of origin included Russia, Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria.

In 1998, UNHCR helped 68 Bosnians and 34 Russians to repatriate. Another 934 refugees were resettled from Jordan to third countries, the overwhelming majority Iraqi.

Although Jordan is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, Jordan signed a memorandum of understanding with UNHCR in April 1998 concerning the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees. According to the memorandum, Jordan agrees to admit asylum seekers, including undocumented entrants, and respect UNHCR's refugee status determinations. The memorandum also adopts the refugee definition contained in the UN Refugee Convention and forbids the refoulement of refugees and asylum seekers.

Despite the memorandum, neither the Jordanian government nor UNHCR considers Jordan to be a permanent country of asylum. Third country resettlement is therefore the only durable solution for the overwhelming majority of those whom UNHCR recognizes as refugees in Jordan.

Iraqis

Estimates on the number of Iraqis living in Jordan range from 50,000 to 200,000. It is unclear how many are refugees. Many Iraqis fearing persecution in Iraq are believed to slip across the border into Jordan, where they remain without status or seek to move on to other countries.

In February, Jordan reportedly refused to admit about 400 Iraqi asylum seekers arriving at its border and forcibly returned them to Iraq. As tensions mounted in the Middle East in February and November 1998 over the issue of UN weapons inspections in Iraq, Jordan announced that it would close its borders to Iraqi refugees in the event that hostilities were to produce a significant refugee influx, saying that it would assist any refugees on the Iraqi side of the border.

With Iraqi government agents reportedly able to operate freely in Jordan, safety in the country is particularly tenuous for some Iraqi nationals known or perceived to oppose Saddam Hussein's government. Several Iraqis were murdered in Jordan in 1997 and 1998, presumed to have been killed by Iraqi government agents.

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