“The Jordanian authorities must ensure safe access to Jordan for all those wishing to seek safety without discrimination,” said Said Boumedouha, Acting Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

“Persons fleeing Syria should not be denied entry even on a temporary basis as this puts their lives in danger. Jordan has an obligation under international law to ensure that its borders stay open to receive refugees.”

Since Wednesday 14 August, Syrian national Amina and her six children have been denied entry to Jordan at the official Nasib border crossing, the organization has learned. Jordanian border officials granted them entrance visas but told them that they could not enter Jordan for one month. Their passports were stamped with the message: “Return in one month”.

Other families were also reportedly turned away, both at Nasib and other border crossings.

Amina and her family are unable to return to their small hometown, Dera’a al-Hara, as it has been attacked and besieged by Syrian government forces. They have been stuck in no-man’s land between the Jordan and Syria border crossing points since 14 August.

“We have no water, no bread and are forced to sleep on the road with about one hundred other families,” Amina said.

The family is struggling to survive by eating what fruit it can find on nearby trees.

Amina told Amnesty International that their home had been hit by a rocket. Other residents from Dera’a al-Hara said that tens of bodies are lying in the town’s streets. Security forces have not allowed the few inhabitants who remained to bury them, they said.

The town is in the south-western governorate of Dera’a where mass protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s government began in March 2011 and were met with excessive and lethal force by the security forces.

For some months Jordan has not allowed certain categories of people to enter, including Palestinian and Iraqi refugees from Syria, people without identity documents or single men.

This new development of Syrians holding valid passports being turned away may indicate a further hardening of the Jordanian authorities’ position.

Recent moves by the Jordanian authorities to deny entry to Syrians with correct identity documents signals Jordan’s growing weariness to host half a million refugees from Syria, with no end to the crisis in sight.

The influx of refugees has placed a strain on Jordan’s infrastructure. It has created an increased demand for water, electricity, housing, schools and food. Some residential areas are struggling to accommodate particularly large refugee populations and frustration among many sectors of the population has grown, as rents and competition for jobs increase.

“Regardless of overstretched resources, the Jordanian authorities still have an obligation to ensure that all those fleeing have access to it’s territory and to safety ,” said Said Boumedouha.

“Crucially, the international community must ensure that Jordan and other hosting countries have the financial and technical support they need to provide adequate protection and assistance for the refugees from Syria.”

Field officers with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported the first group of some 750 Syrians crossed over the pontoon bridge at Peshkhabour at the Tigris River before noon on Thursday, but in the afternoon a much larger group of 5,000 to 7,000 people followed.

“The factors allowing this sudden movement are not fully clear to us at this stage and as of this morning we are not seeing further large-scale crossings,” UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards told reporters in Geneva.

Some of the Syrians had reportedly been waiting near the Tigris River for two to three days, camped at a makeshift site. UNHCR monitors at the border saw scores of buses arriving on the Syrian side dropping off more people seeking to cross.

Mr. Edwards said both the Syrian and Iraqi sides of the frontier at the Peshkhabour crossing are normally tightly controlled.

The vast majority of the new arrivals are families, mainly from Aleppo, Efrin, Hassake and Qamishly. Some families told UNHCR they had relatives residing in northern Iraq, and some students travelling alone said that they had been studying in northern Iraq and had only returned to Syria over the recent Eid holidays.

“UNHCR and partner agency teams, together with local authorities, worked into the early hours of this morning to aid the new arrivals,” Mr. Edwards said.

UNHCR thanked Iraqi authorities and particularly the Kurdistan Regional Government for their involvement in negotiations to permit the new arrivals to cross and the transport and other assistance that was provided at the frontier.

As of Friday, almost 2 million Syrians have fled the war and registered as refugees or applied for registration, with two-thirds of these having arrived this year. There are now more than 684,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon, 516,000 in Jordan, 434,000 in Turkey, 154,000 in Iraq, and 107,000 in Egypt.

UNHCR has urged countries in the region and elsewhere to keep borders open and to receive all Syrians who seek protection amid the fighting that has so far claimed over 100,000 lives since it began in March 2011.

“Last year when the camp opened on 29 July 2012, it was nowhere in the desert. There was absolutely nothing,” UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Communications Officer in Jordan, Mark Vergara, told UN Radio.

Housing more than 120,000 – half of them children – the site has become the fourth largest city in Jordan and is also the world’s second largest refugee camp behind Dadaab in eastern Kenya.

The camp has made progress. It has three “very well provided” hospitals, Vergara said, resulting in better health care for the refugees than the general population. “Mortality rates are lower than outside of the camp,” Vergara said.

He noted that while food, water and sanitation remain key priorities at the camp, a major challenge is education for the 30,000 children that are able to go to school.

“Only 12,000 are registered,” Vergara said. He added that financial strains necessitating children to work and concerns of insecurity are also challenges to school attendance.

“Parents are reluctant to let the child – especially the daughters – walk through the camp to school. We have created some assembly points to escort the children. It’s not really dangerous, but more cases of harassment,” he added.

Lack of electricity in schools, particularly combined with hot temperatures and the holy-month of Ramadan when fasting is obligatory, has also dulled attendance.

In addition, students follow a Jordanian curriculum in the camp, which also adds to the overall challenges.

“But it’s very important that these children as much as possible do go to school because even if the war stops today, which of course is unlikely, unfortunately, it will take years to rebuild Syria. And of course, who will rebuild Syria but the kids who are now in host countries in Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and of course, in Jordan,” Vergara said.

UNICEF is due to start a massive back-to-school campaign next month working with communities, parents and religious leaders in the camp to get children into classrooms and have them stay there.

Following a visit to the region earlier in the month, Leila Zerrougui, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, said without a political solution to the conflict in Syria, the country faces “a generation of angry, illiterate adults.”

Since fighting began in March 2011 between the Syrian Government and opposition groups seeking to oust President Bashar Al-Assad as many as 100,000 people have been killed, almost 2 million have fled to neighbouring countries and a further 4 million have been internally displaced.

Vergara said one of the challenges facing the UN agency and its partners in the camp is how to plan for its future; the camp has already been in use longer than originally expected.

“Life is not perfect in Za’atari,” he said. “If you ask people around the camp the only thing they want to do is go back to Syria and nothing can replace home. But at the end of the day, they are here because they have no alternative.”

UNICEF in Jordan has appealed for $115 million towards the end of 2013 to assist the needs of the refugees. A bit over half of that amount has been funded, according to the UN agency.

“That is not bad, but the question now is not 2013, it is about 2014 maybe 2015,” Vergara said. “How much of this is sustainable? It is a very expensive operation and people are still coming in. It really depends on what happens on the other side of the border.”

“Large numbers of refugees from Syria arrive every day with their lives torn apart and Jordan continues to receive and care for them,” said World Bank Group President, Jim Yong Kim. “That sort of generosity needs our support, and we are pleased to offer this urgent assistance.”

The Emergency Project to Assist Jordan Partially Mitigate Impact of Syrian Conflict was approved by the World Bank Board of Governors on Thursday July 18, 2013. It will focus on support for the healthcare system, under strain from a steep increase in demand, and to households facing rising prices for food and housing due to the larger number of consumers. The project will be implemented under the Bank’s new emergency procedures for Investment Project Financing, which allows for accelerated approval and disbursement in cases of emergency, natural or man-made disasters or conflict.

Inger Andersen, the Bank’s Vice President for the Middle East and North Africa region, visited Jordan in May for a first-hand look at the severity of the situation. She toured Mafraq in the north, where large numbers of Syrian refugees have sought refuge in the town itself and at the nearby Zaatari refugee camp. “I saw Jordan’s generous hosting communities struggling with the enormous inflow of people seeking shelter and protection. And at Mafraq I saw municipalities bursting at the seams,” she observed. “There is acute pressure on local authorities to maintain service delivery and that is where our funding can help.”

There are stresses on health and education services and on water, sanitation and electricity supplies. It is expected that by the end of the year, there will be one Syrian in the country for every six Jordanians. Competition for jobs has driven wages down, while prices have risen for basic necessities, fuel and rental accommodation.

US$50 million of the project’s funds will go toward supplies of vaccines and medicines for the growing population, with US$20 million to relieve the pressure on the government’s budget for the provision of medical services to Jordanians, and the remaining US$80 million to ensure Jordanians have affordable access to basic commodities such as bread and cooking gas.

In addition to the project approved today, a follow up operation will help leverage donor support to strengthen local governments’ service delivery and shore up the capacity of municipalities hosting refugees.

“The World Bank’s contribution is part of our broader program of engagement with Jordan in which we are helping build resilience to the current and future impacts of the regional crisis, while keeping and strengthening our support to the country’s ongoing economic reform program,” said Ferid Belhaj, World Bank Country Director.

Republished by Ilo.org

Twice a week, training specialist, Rania Shanti, visits a garment factory in the industrial city of Sahab, Jordan, and talks to small groups of workers about sexual harassment.

She tries to create a comfortable and – crucially – confidential atmosphere that will encourage participants to speak freely.

One of them is Indrani, a Sri Lankan woman who has worked at the factory since 2009.

“I always thought that when women spoke about being sexually harassed, they meant they were raped. Now I understand that sexual harassment can take place in many different forms,” she says.

Like Indrani, many of the workers at the factory are foreigners – mainly from Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh. So, Shanti, from the ILO’s Better Work Jordan programme, often has to communicate through a translator.

“It’s difficult to assess sexual harassment in these factories due to the sensitive nature of the issue and fears of reprisals among workers. It’s never guaranteed that the workers will label themselves as being victims of sexual harassment,” she explains.

Two years ago, allegations were made of widespread rape being committed against workers at one of Jordan’s largest clothing factories. Although the allegations were not substantiated, reports of unwanted sexual advances towards workers are common across the global garment manufacturing sector.

Better Work Jordan’s own investigation found that many workers had very little understanding of what constitutes sexual harassment – even though they were concerned about it.

As a result, Better Work Jordan launched a pilot sexual harassment prevention awareness project with Indrani’s employer, the Jerash Garment and Fashion Manufacturing Company, which aims to teach line workers, managers and supervisors about how to identify, prevent and report instances of sexual harassment.

During one session held in mid-June, Indrani joined a group of shy and soft-spoken women, who told fellow workers about being groped, having their skirts lifted and even being sexually assaulted by taxi drivers.

Priyadorshani, another Sri Lankan worker at the factory, said the project helped them better understand Jordanian laws and regulations relating to sexual harassment in the workplace.

“We are foreigners in Jordan, so we do not know much about the laws, rules and procedures,” she said. “After the training, I now have a better idea of how to deal with the situation if something happens.”

Shanti notes that while some relevant laws exist, the most powerful and effective policies are those created and adopted internally by the factories, which address all forms of sexual harassment.

“Part of the training is to help the factories create their own policy on sexual harassment prevention. We share our model policy, which they can adapt,” she explains. “This has had a great impact on the factory’s management, as it has given them a great sense of responsibility where they now feel that they are in charge of the situation and can take control.”

Sanil Kumar, the company’s compliance officer, agrees.

“The training helped the managers and supervisors on issues which they were not aware of before, such as certain forms of sexual harassment and how to prevent it or deal with it. And following advice from the Better Work team, we have developed our own internal sexual harassment prevention policy for the factory which has been adopted by the management.”

Unions are also trying to play a role says Mervat Abdel Kareem al-Jamhawi, of the General Trade Union of Workers in Textile, Garment and Clothing.

“We try to raise awareness of the issues among female workers in factories but there are many challenges, such as cultural and language barriers. It is definitely a high priority for us and we need more support from projects like Better Work Jordan to conduct more programmes in a range of factories.”

Better Work Jordan plans to help create independent counseling and referral systems for workers who feel sexually harassed or under threat. The pilot project will also extend to several other factories next year – some of which employ up to 7,000 workers from as many as eight countries.

“We will continue with our training,” says Shanti. “We will continue to spread our message, especially to migrant workers, by telling them that they are not victims, they are not weak. They have come from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and other parts of the world to work here, so they must be strong women,” she said. “They need to know that there are actions that can be taken. If they don’t want to talk to their managers about sexual harassment, they can talk to us.”

“Syria’s neighbors should stop pushing desperate people back to places where their lives are in danger,” said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher at Human Rights Watch. “International donors should help Syria’s neighbors by generously supporting them and humanitarian agencies assisting almost two million refugees.”

HRW which has documented the refugee situation on Syria’s borders says that although Jordan denies it has closed its borders, recently arrived Syrian refugees in Jordan say that Jordanian border guards blocked their and others’ entry for days or weeks in May. Since late 2011, Jordan has prevented Palestinians, Iraqis, single military-aged men, and anyone without identity documents from entering Jordan.

HRW has also found that authorities in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) admit that they closed their border with Syria in May, and that since mid-June only some Syrians in need of emergency humanitarian assistance have been allowed to cross while authorities in central Iraq maintain that they will admit “urgent humanitarian cases” and family reunification cases. But they have severely limited the number of Syrians allowed to enter since August 2012, and new arrivals virtually ceased in late March.

Turkey is blocking the entry of thousands of Syrians at the Bab al-Salam, Atma, and other border crossings with Syria and only sporadically allows small numbers from the Bab al-Salam camp and other displaced Syrian camps in Syria close to the Turkish border to cross into Turkey, with thousands blocked for weeks or months inside Syria, HRW also found.

In October, a senior Turkish official told Human Rights Watch that the country’s refugee camps were full and said that instead of allowing more Syrian refugees to enter, the government was making sure that assistance reached Syrians in areas close to the border.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as of mid-June Jordan was hosting over 480,000 Syrian refugees who were either already registered or being registered by UNHCR, while Turkey was hosting over 387,000, and Iraq over 158,000. Lebanon has over 550,000 UNHCR-registered or registering Syrian refugees, adding approximately 10 per cent to its population, while the Lebanese government estimates the number of Syrians in the country at more than one million.

“Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey risk turning Syria into an open-air prison for tens of thousands of Syrians unable to escape the carnage in their country,” Simpson said. “Neither the pressure those countries are under due to rising refugee numbers, nor giving aid inside Syria, can justify violating people’s basic right to seek asylum from persecution and other abuse.”

The Jordanian Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) on Sunday ordered local Internet service providers (ISPs) to block websites that did not have licenses. The order originated from a memo by Fayez al-Shawabkeh, head of the government’s Department of Press and Publications, on Saturday.

“Censoring 300 websites makes Jordan’s talk of political reform seem hollow,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Coordinator Sherif Mansour. “Authorities should immediately rescind this order and uphold King Abdullah’s stated support for political reform and media freedom.”

It is not clear to what extent the ISPs have followed the government’s orders. The news website Al-Bawaba reported on Sunday that several websites had already been blocked, but that its site, which is also on the list, remained accessible.

As each ISP responds individually to the government’s orders, some websites will be blocked for some users but remain available to others. The government’s memo did not list specific URLs for many of the websites.

The memo cited Article 49 of Jordan’s Press and Publications Law, which was amended amid considerable debate last year to require local and international websites to register with the government, placing them under the same strict regulations as print publications. Websites were given a deadline of January 17 to comply, news sources reported.

“The idea of licensing news websites is contrary to the Jordanian constitution, international commitments, and public statements by the King and government,” said Daoud Kuttab, founder of AmmanNet and a recipient of CPJ’s 1996 International Press Freedom Award. AmmanNet is one of the sites listed in the memo. “It’s also a punishment to the Jordanian public, because they are blocking these sites only in Jordan while the rest of the world can see the contents of these websites,” Kuttab said.

The information minister, Mohammed Momani, said that media regulation aimed to enhance “professionalism and credibility” as a “key component of Jordan’s political reform efforts,” The Associated Press reported today. CPJ has called the amendments “a huge step backward in Jordan’s press freedom record.”

The struggle for freedom, social justice and equality, the fight against oppression, exploitation, poverty and discrimination are at the heart of the democratic and independent Arab trade union movement, ITUC said in an announcement. Based on the rejection of all forms of colonialism, racism, sectarianism and terrorism, the Democratic and Independent Arab trade union movement seeks to unify all its force to fight for trade union rights, for the establishment of genuine social dialogue in the Arab countries, for the creation of decent jobs, in particular for young people, as well as for the defence of the rights of migrant workers and those in the informal economy. The struggle for women’s rights, which are particularly repressed in the Arab region, and for a more equitable participation of women within trade unions is equally a fundamental priority on the agenda of the democratic and independent Arab trade union movement.

The founding organisations have adopted provisional internal rules, and conferred on the representative of the ITUC secretariat the responsibility to submit the adopted documents to the next meeting of the ITUC General Council.

The ITUC represents 175 million workers in 156 countries and territories and has 315 national affiliates.

“With this CERF funding, UN agencies will be able to better meet the needs of the influx of people fleeing the increasingly desperate situation in Syria,” said the acting Humanitarian Coordinator in Jordan, Andrew Harper.

“With the hard climate expected during the approaching summer, the most urgent and basic need is to provide clean water and shelter,” he added in a news release issued by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The Jordanian Government, which estimates that there are currently more than 500,000 Syrian refugees in the country, requested UN support to set up and service a new camp in Azraq town to take the pressure off the Za’atari camp, which has reached full capacity with over 100,000 people.

The CERF allocation will support the first phases of the establishment of the new camp, which is expected to accommodate up to 110,000 refugees by the end of the year.

The funds will be channelled through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to assist the first 50,000 vulnerable refugees in need of life-saving shelter and non-food items as well as water, sanitation and hygiene services in the new camp.

Yesterday the UN reported that the total number of people in need of assistance as a result of the ongoing conflict in Syria is now 8.3 million, representing about 38 per cent of the country’s population. This figure includes some 6.8 million in need inside Syria and 1.5 million who have sought refuge in neighbouring countries, including Jordan.

OCHA has called the situation in Syria a “humanitarian catastrophe” and warned that funding for the response has not kept pace with the growing needs. UN aid agencies and their partners, who appealed for $1.5 billion at the start of the year for the humanitarian response to the Syrian crisis, are expected to announce a revised funding appeal early next month.

Launched in 2006, CERF enables the fast delivery of life-saving assistance to people affected by natural disasters and other crises worldwide. It is funded by voluntary contributions from Member States, non-governmental organizations, regional governments, the private sector and individual donors.

Since May 2011, the Fund has provided more than $84 million to support life-saving operations in Syria and in neighbouring countries.

“During this period, an average of 300 people have been crossing each day, returning to villages close to the border in the governorate of Dara’a,” UNHCR’s chief spokesperson, Melissa Fleming, told journalists in Geneva. “A sizeable part of this governorate remains a battleground and UNHCR fears for the safety of the returnees, the vast majority of whom are families,” she added.

The reasons for returning are varied, including improved security in a number of border villages, safeguarding their property, reuniting with family members in Syria, or travelling to collect and bring back vulnerable family members to Jordan.

But new arrivals to Jordan continue to outpace this limited number of returns, with an average of 2,000 people crossing each day into Jordan. Every day there are wounded new arrivals. The total number of Syrian refugees who have spontaneously returned is less than 1 per cent of the total arrivals.

Although the number returning was relatively small, Fleming said UNHCR was “very concerned that refugees are returning to areas blighted by shortages of food, lack of fuel and electricity and limited services. The security situation is volatile, with reports of artillery shells and mortars being fired into villages refugees are trying to reclaim their homes and lives in.”

Returnees are joining hundreds of thousands of civilians in southern Syria who have long been struggling to survive. Basic staples like bread are often in short supply, while health care and education are often unavailable. “If the conditions do not improve, it will be impossible for many to remain there,” Fleming stressed.

The government estimates that the number of Syrian refugees in Jordan is expected to exceed 500,000 this month. If conditions do not improve inside Syria, the unrelenting flow of refugees fleeing to Jordan can be expected to continue.

“UNHCR does not promote or facilitate these returns, but we are counselling refugees who wish to return of the conditions they will face. We also undertake regular missions to the border,” Fleming said in Geneva. UNHCR is working with the Jordanian authorities to ensure that all refugees have access to their documentation should they make the decision to return to Syria.

Meanwhile, UNHCR has monitored 3,900 returns from Iraq in the past year, mainly from Al Qaim camp in Anbar Governorate to Abu Kamal in Syria. The situation in Abu Kamal is volatile, with bombings and conflict in the province. The main reasons given by refugees for returning are lack of freedom of movement in Al Qaim, limited livelihood opportunities and encouraging reports about security.

“We are closely monitoring the situation and provide individual counselling to potential returnees to ensure they make an informed decision and understand the possible consequences of their return,” Fleming said.

She added that UNHCR provides regular technical support in the voluntary repatriations from Turkey through observation of the interviews conducted by designated Turkish authorities to safeguard the voluntary nature of return.

According to the Prime Minister’s Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate, more than 97,000 Syrians have returned since March 2011. Of this number, UNHCR has observed interviews with 13,000 cases, or more than 24,000 people. Roughly half of those returning said they were going back to Syria temporarily to check on their homes or to attend funerals. Some said they were returning due to reports of an improvement in the security situation.