U.S. Committee for Refugees World Refugee Survey 1998 - Jordan
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Date:
1 January 1998
At the end of 1997, Jordan hosted more than 1.4 million refugees in need of protection, according to UNRWA and UNHCR. These included 1,413,252 Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA and 763 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 150,000 Iraqis live in Jordan, it is unclear how many are refugees. Palestinians Palestinians in Jordan registered as refugees by UNRWA represented 41 percent of all UNRWA-registered refugees in 1997. 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 2.5 percent of the UNRWA-registered refugees in Jordan, the lowest percentage of any of the areas of UNRWA operation. Jordan also boasted the lowest percentage of Palestinian refugees living in camps. Although Jordan maintained ten camps that sheltered 264,322 refugees during the year, 81 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, many Palestinians in Jordan 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 are treated equally with other Jordanian citizens. Palestinians not only vote in elections, but some hold public office. However, although 7 of Jordan's 31 cabinet ministers in 1997 were of Palestinian origin, as were 6 of the country's 40 senators and 11 of 80 members of parliament in the lower house, these figures under-represent 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 public-sector 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. Previously, Jordan issued two-year passports to Palestinians who were resident in the West Bank when Jordan renounced all legal ties to the West Bank in 1988. That passport allowed Palestinians to travel internationally but did not grant them Jordanian residency rights. When entering Jordan from the West Bank, two-year passport holders were issued green cards. In 1996, however, Jordan began issuing five-year passports to Palestinians, but reiterated that they were for travel purposes only, and did not connote nationality. By the end of 1996, Jordan had issued about 300,000 such passports. The number of passports issued to Palestinians in 1997 was not available. UNRWA Financial Crisis Since 1993, UNRWA has struggled to maintain its services to a growing refugee population with a budget that has remained roughly constant. This trend led the agency to rack up a string of successive annual budget deficits that severely eroded UNRWA's financial position. Despite austerity measures in place since 1993 and the introduction of new ones in 1996 and 1997, during the summer of 1997, UNRWA still faced a budgetary shortfall of $20 million for the year, forcing it to announce a new round of program cuts. In August and early September, international donors funded $19 million of the shortfall. UNRWA was able to cancel the most severe of this latest round of austerity measuresschool fees, and hospital reimbursements and referrals. But the 15 percent reduction in international staff and the freeze on recruiting extra teachers, among others, remained in place. With respect to its operations 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 third straight year (by 1.4 percent during the 1996-97 reporting year), children in UNRWA schools continued to experience overcrowding, inferior facilities, and no extracurricular facilities 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. Further eroding UNRWA's ability to secure adequate school space, six UNRWA school buildings and two rented facilities were declared structurally unsound and unfit for use during the 1996-97 reporting year. UNRWA did secure funding to replace five of the condemned school buildings. UNRWA health care was similarly strained. Budget constraints forced UNRWA to end individual subsidies for treatment at private hospitals and, more generally, prevented the agency from keeping pace with the demand for refugee health services. Government Assistance In part due to UNRWA's severe and prolonged budget deficit, Jordan has increased its share of the costs of caring for refugees in recent years, spending nearly three times more than UNRWA on refugee services in 1997. During the year, Jordan announced a plan to improve living conditions in the country's ten Palestinian refugee camps as part of a larger nationwide effort to alleviate poverty and improve the economy. Although eventually welcomed by most, the plan initially generated controversy. Palestinian officials reportedly expressed concern that improved conditions for Palestinian refugees in Jordanian camps might imply a permanence and an acceptance of their exile, which could be interpreted as a weakening of Jordan's resolve to settle the Palestinian refugee issue in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Jordanian officials argued that they merely were acting to improve refugees' living standards and in no way intended to undermine efforts at reaching a permanent solution on the refugee questiona position that the Palestinian Authority appeared reconciled to after meetings on the issue in July. Of the estimated 800,000 people living below the poverty line in Jordan, some 235,000 are refugees, according to the government. While stepping in to alleviate the effects of UNRWA's reduced capacity to deliver services, Jordan led protests against UNRWA's budget cuts announced in 1997, warning of the burdens such cuts would place on Palestinian refugees. The latest round of austerity measures announced in August also sparked popular protests among the Palestinian refugee community in Jordan. Non-Palestinian Refugees At the end of 1997, 763 UNHCR-recognized refugees were in Jordan. The overwhelming majority, some 563 refugees, came from Iraq. Other principal countries of origin included Bosnia, Russia, Somalia, and Sudan. In 1997, UNHCR assisted 24 Russians, 6 Bosnians, and 1 Somali to repatriate. Another 1,102 refugees were resettled from Jordan, the largest number to the United States, during the year. Iraqis Estimates on the number of Iraqis living in Jordan range from 50,000 to 150,000, depending on the source. 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. There were several reports of deportations to Iraq during 1997, some of which may have constituted refoulement. On March 18, the Jordanian authorities forcibly returned a group of 30 Iraqi nationals who had attempted to cross into Jordan clandestinely the day before. The Jordanian government told UNHCR that no one in the group requested asylum, and asserted that it would have referred anyone in the group to UNHCR who expressed a fear of persecution upon return. On March 25, the Jordanian government reportedly forcibly repatriated an Iraqi male claiming to be a member of the Iraqi opposition, despite his request for asylum. In June, a Jordanian human rights organization alleged that a similar incident took place, involving the refoulement of another Iraqi claiming membership in the Iraqi opposition.
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