HASHEMITE KINGDOM OF JORDAN：
ONGOING NEGOTIATIONS ON REFUGEES’ CONDITION

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Jordan hosts over 632,000 refugees from Syria and is one of five main host countries in the region which together host over four million refugees from Syria. Only 52% of Jordan’s UN humanitarian funding requirements for 2015 have been met by the international community. In addition, only 160,664 resettlement places have been offered to Syria’s most vulnerable refugees in the region, which is less than 2% of the total Syrian refugee population there.

Jordan has gradually restricted access to Syrians since 2012, and stopped keeping its borders open for Syrians fleeing conflict. The official border crossing between the Jordanian city of Ramtha and Dera’a in Syria was closed in 2012 and entry for certain categories of people, including Palestinians fleeing Syria, unaccompanied men who cannot prove family ties to Jordan, and people without identity documents have been barred since then. In mid-2013 the western and eastern border crossings were also closed to Syrians, with a few exceptions made for the war-wounded and the most vulnerable by Jordan’s own criteria, some of whom are treated and then sent back to Syria, in contravention of Jordan’s customary international obligations. In May 2014 Jordan began stopping Syrians arriving at its international airport from entering unless they had a Jordanian residency permit or met a limited number of special exceptions. In July 2014 Jordan started severely restricting access through its north-eastern crossings, leaving many stranded at the Hadalat and Rukban crossings.

Jordan has not provided any official reason for closing its borders. In March 2015, at the Third International Pledging Conference for Syria, which aims to raise humanitarian funding for the UN’s regional response to the Syria crisis,  Jordan’s prime minister said that the country’s capacity to respond to Syria’s refugees had been exceeded. Amnesty International recognizes the incredible strain that Jordan and other countries in the region are under and the urgent need for the international community to share more responsibility, but Jordan has a duty to protect refugees from Syria fleeing conflict and persecution and to allow them to enter the country.

Jordan has not ratified the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, or its Protocol of 1967. However under international customary law and other instruments, such as the International Convenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture, Jordan is obliged not to return people to a place where they would be at real risk of persecution or other serious human rights violations or abuses. This is known as the principle of non-refoulement and prohibits the rejection of asylum-seekers at the border and the deportation of refugees.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Jordan has gradually restricted access to people from Syria since 2012. The official border crossing between Dera’a in Syria and the Jordanian city of Ramtha was closed in 2012 and entry for certain categories of people (including Palestinians fleeing Syria, single men who cannot prove family ties to Jordan, and people without identity documents) has been barred since then. In mid-2013 the western and eastern border crossings were also closed to people from Syria, with a few exceptions made for the war-wounded and the “most vulnerable”, based on criteria set by the Jordanian authorities. In May 2014 Jordan began stopping people from Syria arriving at its international airport from entering the country unless they had a Jordanian residency permit or met a limited number of special exceptions.

With most of the border closed, tens of thousands of refugees began to gather at Jordan’s informal Rukban and Hadalat border crossings in a desert area known as the ‘berm’. Since October 2015 a gradual build-up of people at the berm has led to over 71,000 people stranded at the Rukban border crossing, and around 7,000 people at the Hadalat border crossing. Due to security concerns, aid agencies were only allowed to distribute aid and provide health services to those at the berm from a designated service area. In March 2016, Jordan agreed to admit up to 20,000 refugees from the berm, who were transferred to Azraq camp for processing. On 21 June a suicide bomber in a truck laden with explosives went through an opening usually used for humanitarian deliveries, carrying out an attack which killed seven and injured 13 Jordanian security personnel. In response, King Abdullah stated that Jordan would handle terrorists ‘with an iron first’, the border was sealed and aid agencies were effectively prevented from reaching the refugees stranded in the berm.

Jordan hosts over 657,000 refugees from Syria – 87 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants – and is one of five main host countries in the region, which together host over four and a half million refugees from Syria. While the arrival of a large number of refugees from Syria is putting a strain on Jordan’s services and resources, wealthy countries have not shouldered their part of the responsibility for them. Only 45% of the total Inter-Agency humanitarian funding requirements for 2016 had been met by the international community by the end of June 2016. In 2015, only 62% of that year’s Inter-Agency funding appeal was funded by the end of the year. In the first quarter of 2016, 12,889 refugees from Syria were submitted for resettlement from Jordan. However only 5,448 travelled to their country of resettlement.

Amnesty International recognizes the incredible strain that Jordan and other countries in the region are under and the urgent need for the international community to share more responsibility, and recognises that the Jordanian government has made efforts to allow some aid to reach the berm. However, Jordan has a duty to protect refugees from Syria fleeing conflict and persecution and to allow them to enter the country. Closing the border to those in need of protection and directly or indirectly forcing them to return to Syria by imposing intolerable living conditions on them is a violation of Jordan’s obligations not to return people to a place where they would be at real risk of persecution or other serious human rights violations or abuses. This is known as the principle of non-refoulement.

All asylum-seekers from Syria should be presumed to be in need of international protection, as the conflict in Syria includes serious human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity. In particular, single men risk arrest or forced conscription if they are sent back to Syria.