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AMMAN — Deputising for His Majesty King Abdullah, Minister of State for Investment Affairs Muhannad Shehadeh on Sunday attended a ceremony organised by African ambassadors to the Kingdom on the occasion of Africa Day, which marks the anniversary of establishing the Organisation of African Unity.

Shehadeh referred to the Kingdom’s aspiration to benefit from incentives provided by the Jordanian and African markets, highlighting the importance of signing trade agreements and establishing free industrial zones, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

South African Ambassador to Jordan John Davies expressed the group’s keenness to further consolidate ties with Jordan referring to the latest developments of ties and the opening of several Jordanian embassies in the African continent. 

AMMAN — The Anti-Narcotics Department (AND) personnel on Monday arrested three suspected drug dealers following a house raid in western Balqa, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

A security statement said that the suspects were in possession of marijuana, Captagon pills, three guns and live ammunition. In a separate case, the AND personnel arrested six drug users in possession of various quantities of narcotics following an inspection campaign in Irbid, a security statement said.

All suspects will be referred to the State Security Court prosecutor after investigation, the statement added.

AMMAN — The State Security Court (SSC) on Monday commenced the trials of two suspects involved in two bank robberies in Amman, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

During the two separate public hearings, presided over by chief judge Colonel Mohammed Afif, the defendants denied the charges, before the court announced adjourning the trial to next week for the hearing of the prosecution witnesses, according to Petra.

AMMAN — His Majesty King Abdullah on Sunday chaired a meeting, attended by HRH Prince Hussein, where he was briefed on progress made in plans to invigorate the tourism sector and increase its contribution to GDP.

During the meeting, also attended by Prime Minister Hani Mulki, His Majesty urged tourism authorities to harness the sector’s potential and diversify the products to maximise its contribution to the national economy in a way that reflects positively on local communities and generates jobs for Jordanian youth.

The King thanked the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities for its efforts that led to better indicators, stressing, at the same time, on the need to capitalise on these improvements to sustain a growth uptrend. He said that development plans concerning the industry must adopt a modern and comprehensive perspective that focuses on the competitive features of the sector, citing medical tourism as a key economic pillar “which should grow as a real, highly-developed industry, a matter which requires the provision of inclusive and integrated packages of attractive products and services to enhance the competiveness of this vital sector”.

His Majesty also underlined the need for institutionalised coordination and cooperation between the ministry, Jordan Tourism Board and Royal Jordanian as vital in efforts to promote tourism.

For her part, Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Lina Annab outlined the measures taken and accomplishments made after the Crown Prince visited the ministry in December last year to evaluate the situation of the industry and plans to advance it, highlighting a 2018-2022 strategy drawn up by the ministry.

The blueprint seeks to double the number of tourists within five years through enhancing the competiveness of the tourism products, attract new markets, train human resources and improve the quality of services provided to visitors.  

She also underlined a plan to secure low-cost airline tickets to attract groups of tourists after signing an agreement with Ryanair, a major airline in Europe, to operate trips from Paphos, Cyprus to Jordan, while a deal with the UK-based Easy Jet is being finalised to offer cheap flights from UK to Aqaba.

She also noted that the tourism sector grew by 12.5 per cent in 2017, while the number of tourists increased by 8.7 per cent. 

In remarks to the press after the meeting, Annab said that each type of tourism (religious, medical, adventure...etc.) would be handled through a different approach. 

Jordan’s Tourism Board’s chief, Abdul Razzaq Arabiyat, noted that the Chinese market is a major target as far as his agency is concerned, telling the Jordan News Agency, Petra, that low-cost flights will be arranged for potential tourists from the economic giant. 

AMMAN — Planning and International Cooperation Minister Imad Fakhoury and Italian Ambassador to Jordan Giovanni Brauzzi on Sunday signed the Development Cooperation Framework Agreement between the Government of Jordan and the Government of Italy, a Planning Ministry statement said.

The agreement sets the criteria through which Italy will support Jordan in implementing development programmes and pursuing development goals, and is set to replace the previous agreement on technical cooperation signed in Amman on June 1965, according to Fakhoury.

The minister said that the agreement focuses on enhancing development cooperation between the two countries, supporting Jordanian national strategies and raising the efficiency of Italian aid provided to Jordan in line with international principles and commitments stemming from Italy’s membership in the EU. The agreement also includes establishing a three-year aid programme defining priority sectors and projects.

He expressed Jordan’s appreciation to Italy’s focus on the Kingdom as a priority country for Italian development aid in recognition of its regional role and the burdens it is shouldering due to external shocks. 

Fakhoury thanked Italy for its continued support, noting that it is one of Jordan’s most important partners in the development and reform process, which has been contributing to the support of vital sectors such as water, sanitation, tourism, education and other priority sectors, the statement said. 

For his part, Brauzzi stressed that the Italian government not only wanted to limit the resumption of aid to the humanitarian dimension, but also to support the development requirements of Jordan. He stressed the strong partnership between Jordan and Italy, which he attributed to the strong relations between the leaderships of the two friendly countries.

The ambassador affirmed his government’s commitment to continue supporting Jordan’s economic resilience during these exceptional and difficult circumstances and to enable it to overcome the challenges resulting from the Syrian refugee crisis, the statement concluded.

AMMAN — Italian President Sergio Mattarella has granted Planning and International Cooperation Minister Imad Fakhoury the medal of honour of the “commander” rank (Stella d’Italia), a Planning Ministry statement said on Sunday.

The medal, which was presented by Italian Ambassador to Jordan Giovanni Brauzzi on behalf of the Italian president, came in appreciation of Fakhoury’s efforts in enhancing ties between Jordan and Italy.

The minister expressed his delight over receiving the medal, stressing his keenness to serve the Kingdom’s leadership and people and to realise His Majesty King Abdullah’s vision of improving the lives of Jordanians by all means.

He voiced his appreciation for Brauzzi, the embassy’s staff and the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (IADC) in assisting the Kingdom in its development programmes and initiatives.

Brauzzi praised the efforts of the minister in enhancing bilateral ties, especially in the fields of development and economy.

“Minister Fakhoury is a prominent figure of the Jordanian Cabinet with a long and highly qualified experience,” he said, adding that “during his mandate, he has always kept a constructive relationship with the Italian embassy and the Italian development cooperation system”.

Italy has strongly intensified the development cooperation with Jordan, giving the Kingdom a status of a priority country for the Italian development cooperation policy and opening an office of IADC, the ambassador concluded.

AMMAN — The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Hiroshima on Saturday concluded the launching event of the fourth Youth Leadership Programme (YLP) in the Arab states, witnessing the presentation of various action plans aimed at enhancing youth mobilisation for sustainable development.

“YLP is not only a one-time programme,” said Jordanian participant Alaa Haddad, stressing “rather, it is a journey where you continue to develop yourself through different activities. Once you are a YLP, you will always be a YLP!”

The three day launch, which brought together around 100 regional representatives of youth-serving organisations, technical experts and youth graduates of previous YLP, aimed at discussing ways to “unleash young people’s innovative potentials” and “enable youth to make meaningful contributions to the achievement of sustainable development in their communities”, a statement by the organisers said.

The event started off with a presentation of the YLP4 vision, objectives and methodology by UNITAR Senior Specialist Berin McKenzie and UNDP Regional Director Khaled Abdel Shafi.

Voicing his pride to see UNDP Regional Hub for Arab States and UNITAR Hiroshima collaborate on the event, McKenzie said: “This is the first joint initiative between our two organisations, and it is a true pleasure for us to be working together on such a successful programme with a track record of impressive results and impact.”

“It is all about empowering youth to create a sustainable impact for the future,” he told the audience, adding “you have become, from a group of individuals an individual group that shares the vision, compassion and values of YLP.”

Highlighting the “significant role” of youth as sustainable development goals (SDGs) advocates, Abdel Shafi noted: “This first workshop comes as a starting point for a work that requires all of us to contribute with our expertise and energies to develop areas of learning and joint work which will create a series of action plans for national activities to enhance the ability of young people to innovate.”

Representatives from across 13 Arab countries including Palestine, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq, in addition to Jordan, gathered “with a passion to work for a future generation of effective, influential and innovative leaders”. the UNDP official pointed out.

Following a presentation of the Agenda 2030 and sustainable development concepts, participants witnessed a presentation of design thinking as a process to foster youth social innovation by Jennifer Colville, manager of UNDP’s regional innovation portfolio in Arab states. 

She outlined various means to engage youth in collaborative solution-seeking such as hackathons and the project cycle hackers kit.

“We are trying to measure the immeasurable. Forty per cent of the SDG indicators have no measurement framework,” Colville pointed out, urging youth to make use of all social innovation resources to develop their national action plans.

The fourth programme’s sessions covered topics ranging from gender equality incorporation, branding and communication policies, support to youth political participation, risk analysis, among others.

“Talking isn’t training: designing effective learning interventions is critical in knowledge and skills building,” stressed McKenzie, after participants took part in an interactive role play on UNDP branding.

On the last day of the workshop, attending youth organisations proceeded to present their respective action plans for mobilising youth action for sustainable development in their respective countries. 

“As a former YLP finalist, I can’t hide my enthusiasm seeing all the work everybody’s doing to make YLP4. This is going to give its big jump to the Arab youth,” said Tunisian Salma Belhassine, as participants gathered into small groups to reflect on what they were acquainted with throughout the day.

“We need to listen to youth and their concerns to understand how to serve them best,” she stressed, alongside Amer Jeradat, from Jordan.

Closing the three day workshop, UNDP Bureau for Arab States’ regional programme coordinator, Yakup Beris, said: “Over the past 4 years, we brought together around 10,000 stakeholders through this regional programme. We aim to double this in the years to come and YLP network is an important part of this momentum of growth.”

“As change makers, you will need to push the boundaries of the present with pathways that naturally come from assumptions that are based on our experiences,” he concluded.

AMMAN — A desire to bring fresh Middle Eastern voices rarely encountered by English readers pushed Jordanian writer Hisham Bustani to join “The Common”, a young literary journal based at Massachusetts’ Amherst College.

In its latest issue, “The Common” published a special portfolio of Jordanian short stories in English translation, which were presented on Saturday at Fann Wa Chai in Jabal Lweibdeh.

“Jordan, like many smaller Arab countries, has long been assumed to be a literary backwater: it lacks the political and cultural weight and massive population of Egypt, the financial resources of the Gulf states and the glitter of Lebanon,” said Bustani, The Common’s Arabic fiction editor, adding “this issue of Jordanian literature celebrates some of the country’s best authors, showcasing a cross-section of varied styles, themes and generations.”

Presented to a Jordanian audience for the first time at the event, The Common’s Issue 15 includes work by prominent writers such as Ghalib Halasa, Mahmoud Al Rimawi, and Elias Farkouh; established but lesser-known writers such as Jamila Amaireh and Mufleh Al Odwan; and emerging writers Majidah Al Outum and Haifa’Abul-Nadi. 

“Many of these writers are appearing in English translation for the first time. Even Halasa, an influential cultural figure in the Arab world from the 1970s until his death-in-exile in 1989, can rarely be found translated into English,” Bustani pointed out, noting that the event aims at bringing “fresh Middle Eastern voices scarcely encountered in English to an American and broader readership and, in so doing, foster rich cross-cultural exchanges”.

Speaking at the event, editor-in-chief of The Common, Jennifer Acker said: “I am thrilled to continue working with Hisham to showcase the literary richness of contemporary Arabic authors and we are committed to making The Common a home for talented Middle Eastern writers little known in the US.”

In 2016, Bustani and Acker co-edited The Common’s special issue “Tajdeed” dedicated to contemporary Arabic fiction, which was “a step towards remedying the under-representation of Arabic literature in the US”, they agreed, stressing that “less than 1 per cent of all works in translation published in the US every year come from Arabic”.

Following a presentation of the new publication, Bustani read an excerpt from Ghaleb Halasa’s “The Slaves”, a tale of the unexpected revolt of enslaved workers against their Bedouin owners, before another reader took over to present Fairooz Tamimi’s “Operating Manual”.

The other seven authors included in the issue read their work to the public, covering topics ranging from human struggles and longing throughout Jordan’s 20th century, women’s contemplation of life, relationships and motherhood, and the exploration of lineage and identity, among others.

“The pieces were brilliantly rendered from Arabic into English by four award-winning female translators: Maia Tabet, Elisabeth Jaquette, Thoraya El Rayyes and Alice Guthrie,” Acker noted.

The Issue 15 will also be simultaneously published in its original Arabic format in renowned Egyptian literary weekly Akhbar Al Adab, according to Bustani, who highlighted “this cross-continental literary collaboration will further encompass all of The Common’s forthcoming Arabic portfolios in translation.”

The event also featured some of the sketches by Jordanian artist Alaa Tawalbeh included in the issue.

AMMAN — A five-year national population media strategy was launched on Sunday with the aim of supporting efforts to achieve and invest in an expected “demographic window” which officials said Jordan can reach “soon”.

Officials present at the ceremony said that the media strategy will be aiding official efforts to spread awareness among the public of the relevance between the development processes and population issues, particularly the demographic window, which they defined as the period of time when the population at a working age becomes the prominent group in the national economy. 

According to the strategy, a copy of which was made available to The Jordan Times, Jordan is expected to enter the transition to this period of demographic window “soon when the working population in the age group 15-64 years would exceed in number the dependent groups aged under 15 years or more than 64 years”, thus requiring adjusting educational, training, employment, health and other relevant policies.

This transition requires the awareness of the public as a whole of the opportunities inherent in the demographic window which should be invested in wisely, the officials said.

Addressing the launch ceremony, Minister of State for Media Affairs Mohammad Momani said preparing the strategy highlights the importance of the media in addressing various societal issues and in countering challenges. 

Momani called for properly investing in the demographic window to give momentum to the development process, particularly that Jordan, which is countering various challenges at the present time, is capable of turning challenges into opportunities, relying on the efforts of its human resources, which the minister described as the country’s main asset.

Secretary General of the Higher Population Council Maysoon Zoubi said the strategy was intended to meet the continuous developments in the media as well as population fields.

The strategy, Zoubi told the ceremony, aims to draw a “detailed roadmap for the role of the media in population issues over the coming five years in accordance with a clear and flexible vision”.

The council’s most important role in this regard is to provide the media with the needed information, as well as training a specialised group of journalists on dealing with relevant issues in a professional manner.

Jordan Media Institute (JMI) Dean Basim Tweissi highlighted the importance of having media practitioners specialising in demographic issues, which have been changing drastically over the past decades.

The population of Jordan increased tenfold over the past 55 years, with Jordanians constituting only 69 per cent of the total, Tweissi said in outlining the main features of the strategy.  Half of the 31 per cent non-Jordanians of the population are Syrians, said the dean of the JMI, which was one of the council’s partners in preparing the strategy along with USAID’s Tawasol Project, adding that the illiteracy rate was estimated at 9.1 per cent, 6.7 per cent for Jordanians and 14.5 per cent for non-Jordanians.

He said that the population in Jordan has been growing at unreasonable rates due to forced migrations. The average population growth rate in the period 2004-2015 was 5.3 per cent, raised mainly by the non-Jordanian growth rate of 18 per cent, while the growth rate for Jordanians was 3.1 per cent, which he described as being relatively high when compared to global figures.

Still, there is an opportunity for Jordan to work on creating a demographic window characterised by a drop in population growth rate and rise in the workforce figures, he said, thus increasing economic opportunities if well exploited.

Tweissi added that the public needs to be aware of this window through professional media channels that target the society as a whole, including policymakers, with the right messages.

Among these messages that the media strategy aims to highlight are the importance of the nucleus family and reproductive health services, as well as supporting women’s and youth’s role in the economy.

“A small and happy Jordanian family advances through equality between the sexes” is one of the main messages of the campaign, he said. 

Another is: “The key to advancing the Jordanian society and serving its prosperity lies in empowering women politically, economically and socially.”

AMMAN — The Economic Research Forum (ERF) on Sunday inaugurated its policy conference on “Employment, Education and Housing in Jordan: The Impacts of the Syrian Refugee Influx” in Amman, which is set to continue through Monday. 

Held in cooperation with the Economic and Social Council (ESC) and the Department of Statistics (DoS), the conference started with a policy-oriented discussion examining the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on the wellbeing of Jordanians, followed by an academic seminar presenting the results of a survey on the Jordanian labour market.

Planning Minister Imad Fakhoury thanked the partners “for their efforts in presenting facts, statistics and papers that are essential for decision makers and the conduction of national dialogue towards development”.

“However, in order to discuss this, we need to look at the refugee crisis as a whole,” the minister stressed, adding that “Jordan has never relinquished its duty to host our Arab brothers despite the challenges. But, in the 8th year of conflict, the crisis has already affected several sectors in the Kingdom and exhausted capacities”.

 “This adds to the delay — or rather inadequacy — in the support provided by the international community,” Fakhoury continued, highlighting the gaps and imbalances in the aid provided “despite Jordan’s appreciation”.

Outlining the figures provided in the studies, Minister of Education Omar Razzaz said: “Having numbers to analyse rather than just viewpoints gives us something to rely on when building our policies.”

He stressed that Syrian refugee children are distributed among 47 schools in refugee camps and 207 schools in the rest of the Kingdom, with a total of 130,000 children enrolled in formal education. 

 “This raises the question of where all the other children are,” the minister stated, noting that leaving children out of school leads to issues such as early marriage and child labour. 

Secretary General of the Labour Ministry Hani Khleifat underlined the severe impact of 1.4 million Syrian refugees on the Jordanian labour market, “in a context of unemployment rated already on the rise”.

“The Ministry of Labour has followed the Royal directions on dealing with refugees through a humanitarian approach,” the official said, noting that the ministry has issued over 100,000 flexible work permits that allow refugees to leave the camp and pursue employment. 

“But this has impacted the host communities and we need to hold hands with the Syrians while caring for the most vulnerable Jordanian people,” Khleifat continued, noting the ministry’s intention to apply the forum’s recommendations on enforcing labour laws and holding employers accountable for their application. 

“The deteriorating security situation in the region as a whole, and Syria in particular, has resulted in large flows of refugees into Jordan and a reduction in tourism and foreign investment,” a statement by the ERF said, adding that “the challenges facing Jordan have put serious strains on the Kingdom’s economy and its labour market, which were manifested in a substantial slowdown in economic growth and a decline in employment rates among Jordanians”.

Aiming to examine the impact of the Syrian refugee influx on the labour market outcomes and the access to education services and housing for Jordanians, the forum builds on the data collected as part of the second wave of the Jordan Labour Market Panel Survey, in 2016 and 2017, which was implemented by ERF in cooperation with DoS.

 “ERF has continuously supported decision making towards development and capacity building and we have shown great interest in establishing instruments in this direction,” ERF Managing Director Ibrahim Elbadawi said, pointing out that the organisation relies on data from 15 countries across the region, in 93 databases available for consultation by policymakers.