Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
PALESTINIAN REFUGEES
About one half of Jordan's population, according to
Minorities at Risk
(
www.cidcn.umd.edu/mar
)
, is made up of
Palestinians who fled, mostly from the West Bank, during the wars of 1948 and 1967 and after the Gulf War in
1990-91.
Many Palestinians have exercised the right to Jordanian citizenship and they now play an integral part in the
political, cultural and economic life of Jordan. Others, however, continue to dream of a return to an independent
Palestine. Some commentators suggest that this is partly why so many have resisted integration and continue to live
in difficult conditions in refugee camps that dot the landscape.
Around 350,900 refugees (17.5% of the total refugee population in Jordan) are housed in 10 official camps ad-
ministered by the UN Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA), which is responsible for health, education and relief pro-
grams. As at December 2010, the largest camps were those at Baqa'a (with 104,000 inhabitants), the Amman New
Camp (51,500), Marqa (53,000) and Jebel al-Hussein (23,000), with large camps also at Zarqa, Jerash and Irbid.
The original tent shelters have long since been replaced with more permanent structures and often resemble suburbs
more than refugee camps.
For more information, contact the Jordanian
Department of Palestinian Affairs
(
06-5666172;
www.un.org/
unrwa/refugees/jordan.html
)
.
See
www.unhcr.org
for more on the Iraqi refugee situation.
For this reason, economic migration is common in Jordan and many working-class fam-
ilies have at least one male who is temporarily working away from home, whether in Am-
man, the Gulf States or further abroad. The remittances sent home by these absent work-
ers are increasingly important to family budgets, with each economically active person
supporting, on average, four other people. The absence of a senior male role model,
however, is changing the pattern of Jordanian family lives and tensions inevitably rise
between the expectations of those who are nostalgic for the traditions of home and those
of the families left behind who are forced to steer their own course into a rapidly modern-
ising environment.
The Ongoing Refugee Issue
The biggest catalyst of social change in Jordan
is the ongoing influx of refugees. Occupying
the calm eye of the storm in the Middle East,
the country has a long tradition of absorbing
the displaced peoples of its troubled neigh-
bours - so much so, in fact, that the majority of
its population is now comprised of people who
are not Jordanian in origin.
Official estimates put the total number of Palestini-
an refugees in Jordan at 1.5 million; unofficial fig-
ures, according to the UN Office for the Coordina-
tion of Humanitarian Affairs, are closer to 3.5 milli-
on. In addition, there are 500,000 Iraqi refugees
