Number of registered Syrian refugees reaches 637,000 — gov’t

AMMAN — The total number of Syrians residing in the Kingdom has reached around 1.4 million, of whom 637,000 have been registered as refugees, according to Interior Ministry figures.

In a statement carried by the Jordan News Agency, Petra, the ministry’s spokesperson, Ziyad Zu’bi, was quoted as saying that the monthly increase in the number of Syrian refugees registered with the UNHCR since the beginning of 2014 has reached 2,500.

Zu’bi added that the number of Syrians residing in official camps stands at 100,000, constituting 15 per cent of registered Syrian refugees and 7 per cent of the total number of Syrians in Jordan, according to Petra.

The official also put the number of Syrians in the Zaatari Refugee Camp at 85,000, while Azraq camp houses 11,000 refugees. 

Amman, Mafraq and Irbid host the largest number of Syrian refugees living outside camps in Jordan, Petra reported.

In December, Interior Minister Hussein Majali told a group of MPs that there are over 791,000 Syrians residing in the capital, whose overall population has recently been estimated at 4 million. This means Syrians constitute nearly 20 per cent of Amman’s population.

According to the UNHCR website, the agency’s financial requirement for the region to deal with the Syrian crisis and provide humanitarian assistance for refugees is set at $1.89 billion.
As for Jordan alone, the agency says it needs nearly $404.4 million.

Late last year, the government launched Jordan’s Response Plan of $2.87 billion that seeks to address the repercussions of the Syrian crisis for the year 2015, which makes the needs of the country and UNHCR Jordan over $3 billion.