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‘We only ate rice for a week’: refugees struggle to live in Jordan [1]
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Date: 2023-12
Mohammed and Amal first fled Yemen in 2015. They were living in the capital when it was taken by Houthi rebels, and when the bombs of the Saudi-led, pro-regime coalition began to fall they took off on foot.
By the time they reached family in a neighbouring province, Amal, who was pregnant, was covered in blood. She survived, but they lost the baby. They decided they had to leave Yemen.
“Jordan was the only country that would accept us,” said Mohammed. “We were allowed in on a tourist visa, so we came and stayed for eight months. Then we were told the war had ended, so we went back to Yemen.”
The airstrikes resumed shortly thereafter. The airport closed, and by that point Jordan was no longer granting tourist visas to Yemenis. It took them six years to get back out.
Their chance came in 2021, when they were able to buy forged paperwork for a medical visa back to Jordan. The documents cost $2,800: $800 per adult and $600 for each of their two sons. “We paid everything we had to come here,” said Amal.
Mohammed and Amal are now far from the bombs. But they are still struggling to survive.
Safe, for now
Jordan has a higher number of refugees per capita than nearly any other country. By some measures, it has the most. Yet it is no easy place to be one.
Some 760,000 people are registered with the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR). Sixty percent of those live below the poverty line, and recent cuts to cash assistance programmes have forced them to tighten their belts even further.
Support is also greatly contingent on nationality. For more than a decade now the lion’s share of assistance has gone to Syrians, who make up 88.5% of the refugees registered with UNHCR. Those other nationalities comprising the remaining 11.5% – some 88,000 people – receive far less. There are also over two million registered Palestinian refugees in Jordan, however they receive assistance from a separate UN body, UNWRA.
The least support goes to the estimated 5,500 people who haven’t been able to register due to a 2019 change in the rules. This change to Jordanian law was described by Human Rights Watch as “effectively barring recognition of non-Syrians as refugees”.
Amal and her family are, by a stroke of luck, part of the 11.5%. They managed to keep their UNHCR status from their 2015 trip, which gives them access to some assistance with food and rent. But they still face enormous challenges.
A precarious existence
Asylum seekers often have to forfeit their protected status in order to get a work permit in Jordan. That feels risky to the couple. “There’s no point applying for a permit and giving up our UNHCR papers,” Mohammed said. “Most Yemenis don’t even get accepted.”
Be that as it may, they spent all their money on the trip and cannot live off the support they receive from the UN alone. They must work to survive, so like many in their situation they’ve turned to the informal market.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/we-only-ate-rice-for-a-week-yemeni-sudanese-refugees-struggle-to-survive-in-jordan/
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