Refugees in Jordan

Due to its geographical location in the Middle East and its relative political stability, Jordan’s history is characterised by the reception of large numbers of refugees throughout the decades. Although this trend had started even before the country became independent, it accelerated thereafter:

• In 1948/1949, some 500,000 Palestinians fled from lands that became part of Israel and added to the local population which counted just about 400,000 people itself.

• In 1967, some 380,000 Palestinians left the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which had both been occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War.

• Between 1975 and 1990, about one million Lebanese and Palestinians came from Lebanon to escape the Lebanese Civil War. (Most Lebanese returned though during the 1990s.)

• In 1982, a small group of Syrians came to escape from the massacre of Hama.

• In 1991, some 350,000 Jordanian and Palestinian migrant workers returned from the Gulf countries: first from Kuwait because of the country’s occupation by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and then from Saudi-Arabia and other countries, which expelled people with Jordanian passports to sanction the fact that Jordan had remained neutral in the war between the Gulf states and Iraq.

• During the 1990s, some 250,000 Iraqis fled to Jordan to escape from persecution, violence, and the poor economic situation in their own country.

• During the 2000s, another 750,000 Iraqis followed to escape from the civil war that had started after the US American occupation of their country. (However, most Iraqis have in the meantime returned to their country.)

• At the same time, a considerable number of Egyptians came as labour migrants. (Many returned to Egypt again, but some 600,000 Egyptians still reside in Jordan.)

• After the uprisings in several Arab countries in 2011, about 20,000 people came from Libya, about 30,000 from Yemen, some from Egypt and Somalia, and up to 1.3 million from Syria (De Bel-Air, 2016).

Today, Palestinians represent the largest group of non-natives in Jordan even though it is difficult to estimate their total share of the population:

all Palestinians who came until 1949 or resided in the West Bank until 1967 were conceded Jordanian passports, thus they and their descendants are counted as Jordanians in national statistics. Guesses of their number range between 1.6 and 4.5 million (25-70 per cent of the total population of Jordan), which would mean that only between 2 and 5 million (30-75 per cent) of the population of Jordan originate in fact from its current territory.

Exact data exist only on the number of Palestinians who came to Jordan from the Gaza Strip or Israel after 1949 and their descendants (634,182) because they were not given a Jordanian passport but only an identity card (Department of Statistics Jordan, 2015; see also Figure 1).

Figure 1: Jordanian population by country of origin (But many authors argue 6%

that this number is highly inflated)

Notes: The methodology and results of the census are highly debated in the academic literature. Especially the figures for Syrians having come to Jordan before 2012 and the number of Iraqis living in Jordan are said to have been inflated (Lenner, 2020). In addition, the number of Egyptians living in Jordan may have decreased significantly since 2015 (Krafft, Razzaz, Keo, & Assaad, 2019).

Source: Authors, based on data from the Department of Statistics Jordan (2015) publishing results of the Jordan Population and Housing Census of 2015

Apart from the Palestinians, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Jordan by 2019 registered about 654,000 Syrians, 67,000 Iraqis, 15,000 Yemenis, 6,000 Sudanese and 2,500 people from 25 other countries (UNHCR, 2020). On top of this, many more unregistered refugees and migrant workers are living in Jordan (see Figure 1). These include, among others, an estimated 17,000 Syrian Palestinians who could not register because the government of Jordan forbid Palestinians from Syria from seeking refuge in Jordan (Grawert, 2019, p. 37). Some estimates set

the actual number of Syrians living in Jordan to more than 1.2 million (see Figure 1), while other sources argue that their number cannot be much higher than 500,000 (Krafft et al., 2019; Lenner, 2020). Finally, Jordan also hosts a considerable number of migrant workers, some 600,000 alone from Egypt (Schubert & Haase, 2018, p. 102; see also Figure 1).

As only about 20 per cent of refugees live in camps, their presence has a strong effect on the economic and social life in their host communities. The refugees need water, food, shelter, clothes and education for their children, as well as medical treatment (Hagen-Zanker & Mallett, 2016; Schubert &

Haase, 2018).

Despite the fact that the Jordanian-Syrian border has been recently opened again, it is unlikely that many Syrian refugees will return to Syria in the coming years. In general, Syrian refugees only returned infrequently as there are still persistent concerns regarding the security situation in their country and due to a new Syrian property law that effectively expropriates many refugees of their previously owned premises (HRW [Human Rights Watch], 2018). A study on the mobility of Syrian refugees finds that, in addition to the security situation, low provision of education, health and basic services in Syria deters refugees from returning (World Bank, 2019a).

In order to gain official recognition and enjoy some social benefits (such as food services and free treatment in Jordan’s public health system, see subsection 4.1), Syrian refugees need to register with an office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and then with the Jordan Ministry of the Interior (MoI), which gives them a magnetic “MoI service card” or “security card” (biṭāqa amniyya). By March 2019, 654,266 Syrians had registered with UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) (out of whom 299,168 of working age) (UNHCR, 2020) but only about 405,000 with the MoI (Hagen-Zanker, Ulrichs, & Holmes, 2018).

On average, the Syrians have just JOD 285 (Jordanian dinar) to spend per household per month, and 69 per cent of their spending is for housing – just 11 per cent for health and food, 9 per cent for education; and 8 per cent for transportation. As a result, 17 per cent of adolescents suffer from hunger, while 35 per cent report chronic illnesses (Jones et al., 2019).

Although Syrian children are officially entitled to go to school, 20 per cent of them (and even more than half of those older than 15 years) are still not yet enrolled. Net attendance rates are 47 per cent lower among Syrian

refugees of secondary school age than among their Jordanian peers. And those who go to school are normally educated in a separate afternoon shift.

Of Syrian students, 41 per cent have experienced corporal punishment and discrimination (Jones et al., 2019).