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AMMAN — UNICEF's work with Syrian refugees in the Kingdom will not affect the agency's country programme in Jordan, according to a senior UN official.

“We are here to serve every child, regardless of their status, thanks to the Convention on the Rights of [the Child (CRC)]," Michele Servadei, deputy representative and officer in charge of UNICEF Jordan, said in a recent interview with The Jordan Times.

"Every child is under our mandate in four to five sectors that include health and nutrition, water and sanitation, child protection and education,” Servadei added.

In the last two years, the UN agency's office in Jordan grew financially and in terms of human resources because of the Syrian crisis, “but we want to make sure that these resources benefit Jordanian children while we are here”, he noted.

“We are trying to link up what we have in our regular programmes for Jordanians with the emergency [ones] and we are also dedicating the emergency resources to serve more Jordanians. So, we have resources to do things that we could not [do] before,” he explained.

The UN official noted that the focus of his agency on local programmes this year will be the same as before the crisis began.

“Our focus before the emergency was a lot on child protection; we are very happy that the government is taking the CRC seriously," he said, adding that the Kingdom's implementation of the convention will be reviewed in June next year.

However, this year the agency is shifting from providing institutional care for children to foster care.

Servadei explained that there are some 2,000 children in Jordan with problematic parental care.

“What we advocate for is to shift services provided to these children from institutional care to foster care, as we have evidence that shows children in foster care are developing much faster than children in institutions,” he noted.

“It is better for a child to be in a family environment, and we want to help the government to shift towards foster care.”

The shift is expected to cost 50 per cent less than keeping children in institutions, Servadei said, adding that UNICEF has started a pilot programme with these children and will also help in building the capacity of public social workers to follow up with children in foster care.

Another priority for UNICEF in 2014 is to advocate for further action to combat violence against children.

“The issue is not only related to teacher-child violence, but also to child-to-child violence [and] to lower levels of domestic violence and sexual harassment,” the UNCEF official said, adding that violence in Jordan is “in many cases… quite hidden”.

Thus, UNICEF is advocating for a comprehensive reporting system for victims of violence to use.

Currently, victims of violence can use the hotline of the Family Protection Department or report to hospitals.

“What we would advocate for is to have one comprehensive system, not only to track violence but also one single hotline [number] that every Jordanian knows and [can address] any type of violence against children, ” Servadei said.

“We would like to attract more funding for this purpose and this could be through the emergency programme.”

The agency will also continue working with young people through the UNICEF Change Agents Network that was created last year.

Participants in this network receive training on community-based projects and leadership. The network offers them a platform to discuss different issues through social media and face-to-face.

In addition, UNICEF is supporting the Health Ministry in its programmes that seek to reduce neonatal and infant mortality

“Last year, we [prepared] a study and showed that 40 to 50 per cent of cases are preventable. Thus, we are working with the ministry on qualitative services,” Servadei said.

UNICEF also supported the nationwide immunisation campaigns that were launched last year.

“Because of the Syrian crisis, measles is back in the country, and cases of polio were discovered in Syria,” he noted, adding that the measles vaccination campaign reached 3.3 million people, while over one million children were immunised against polio.

The UNICEF official said the agency worked on building the capacities of the public health sector by buying vaccines and providing cold chains to help the authorities respond in future emergencies.

Education and refugees

In general, Jordan has made remarkable progress in education in terms of enrolment, according to the UNICEF representative, who noted that the Syrian crisis led to double-shift schools and some restrictions and burdens on the state budget.

“A lot of new resources are coming in — more money — so we should channel this money properly,” Servadei said, thanking the government of Jordan for opening its schools to Syrians as “very few governments in the region have been that generous”.

Although he acknowledged that UNICEF will not be able to help in building schools, he said the agency is assisting in constructing prefabricated classrooms.

“It is very difficult to build new schools because [of] budget constraints… what we are trying to build is the capacity of the government to respond in the future,” he explained, adding that UNICEF also provides training for teachers.

Some 30,000 Syrian refugee children eligible for formal education are not in school, while more than 50,000 are not eligible for formal education, according to Servadei.

“We have registered 107,000 Syrian children so far... A lot more needs to be done and we will use the child-friendly spaces for those children,” he noted.

However, there are some challenges facing the agency's work, the UNICEF representative said.

“We have to admit that there are Jordanian children that are out of school and those are probably the most vulnerable — children from minority groups, children with disabilities and working children.”

In order to provide all services in response to the needs of Syrian refugees, the agency requires $170 million in emergency funds for the current year.

AMMAN — The Lower House’s Public Freedoms Committee is in the process of revisiting several laws governing the media and freedom of expression to come up with amendments to boost media freedoms, the head of the panel said Thursday.

“The committee has formed several teams to study 10 laws in this regard, including the Press and Publications Law and the Information Systems Crime Law, in order to remove some articles and amend others that hinder media freedoms and represent an obstacle to human rights and expression of opinion,” MP Rula Hroub told The Jordan Times.

The teams will work with the Jordan Press Association (JPA), the Centre for Defending the Freedom of Journalists, the government, the National Centre for Human Rights, and other human rights and media entities to study the loopholes in these laws and come up with a unified vision on how best to enhance media freedoms and human rights, she said.

“We will exert our utmost efforts to revisit all these laws during the current Lower House session, which is scheduled to finish in two months,” she said.

After holding a series of meetings with involved stakeholders, the committee will outline its vision and proposed amendments to the Lower House speaker, and then MPs will be asked to vote on them.

If a majority of MPs vote in favour of these amendments, they will be referred to the government, which is then obligated to draw up new laws taking the proposed amendments into account and send them to the Lower House for endorsement.

“It is a long process, but we have to start because Jordan is signatory to international conventions that call for enhancing media freedoms and human rights, and some articles in the current legislation are against these international agreements,” Hroub said.

JPA President Tareq Momani voiced support for the House committee’s move, stressing the need to enhance legislation to boost media freedoms in Jordan.

“We need to amend several laws related to the media, especially some articles in the Press and Publications Law that hamper media freedoms,” Momani told The Jordan Times over the phone on Thursday.

“We need consistency in legislation governing the sector. Between 1993 and 2013, the Press and Publications Law was amended 10 times. This is too much. Some articles in the law are loosely worded and can lead to a number of interpretations,” he noted.

AMMAN — The Host Communities Support Platform (HCSP) met in the capital on Thursday to discuss endorsing the government’s National Resilience Plan (NRP), according to a Planning Ministry statement.

“The NRP provides a strategic framework for Jordan’s response to the impact of the Syria crisis, with a focus on supporting Jordanian host communities in the most affected areas of the Kingdom,” the ministry said.

The platform, established by the government last September, comprises representatives of ministries, the international community, the UN and key development partners, and it seeks to support the government as it responds to a variety of challenges brought on by the crisis.

“The government has been systematic… in its approach to the impact of the crisis,” the statement quoted Planning Minister Ibrahim Saif as saying ahead of the meeting.

“In September last year [the government] commissioned the Needs Assessment Review (NAR) to obtain the first comprehensive resilience-based reading of the gravity of impact across all the major sectors, and in November it launched an intensive and participatory planning process led by key-line ministries that has now resulted in the production of the National Resilience Plan.”

The NRP seeks to address three major areas of stress identified in the NAR — the accumulating fiscal burden the crisis has brought on at the national level; the strain on local services’ ability to cope, such as education, health and water; and the social and economic consequences facing local communities that are hosting nearly 600,000 refugees.

Following on from the NAR, the government, supported by the HCSP secretariat, the donor community, NGOs and a team of multidisciplinary UN experts prepared a three-year programme of priority investments to address the major challenges presented by the Syrian crisis, the Planning Ministry said.

Saif praised “the robust engagement” of international partners in supporting the preparation of the NRP, underscoring their vital role in its implementation and financing.

The NRP includes a $2.4 billion programme of priority interventions over the 2014-16 period across the eight major sectors of education, energy, health, housing, livelihoods and employment, municipal services, water and sanitation, and social protection.

It also lists the fiscal support required to compensate for the increased cost of subsidies and security support on the budget — $758 million and $965.3 million respectively.

After its endorsement by the HCSP, the NRP will be presented by Saif at the Kuwait high-level Pledging Conference for the Syria crisis next Wednesday, the statement said.

AMMAN — Jordan attaches great importance to expediting the implementation of a project to extend an oil pipeline from Basra in Iraq to Aqaba, Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour said on Thursday.

At a meeting with Iraqi Minister of Oil Abdul Karim Al Luaibi in the capital, Ensour said Iraq’s stability and security is an issue of great importance to the region’s stability, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Discussions focused on the proposed oil pipeline project and the stages achieved so far, regarding related studies and the tenders that are to be awarded within the next few months.

The project entails providing the Kingdom with 150,000 barrels of oil on a daily basis at prices that the two countries agree on, with the remainder to be exported via the Port of Aqaba.

The $18 billion pipeline, which is projected to transport 2.25 million barrels of oil per day through the Kingdom, would generate between $2 billion and $3 billion a year in revenues for the Kingdom, according to estimates of Iraqi and Jordanian officials.

Ensour said the private sector should participate in implementing the project, highlighting the possibility of extending the pipeline to Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.

Luaibi said the project will be economically beneficial to both Amman and Baghdad, pointing to the potential of establishing an oil refinery and an electricity generation station in Aqaba, some 330km south of the capital.

In remarks to the Lower House in late December last year, Ensour said the Iraqi side has the blueprints for the pipeline in place and will start implementation by the end of January.

The ministers of industry and energy, Hatem Halawani and Mohammad Hamed, also attended Thursday’s meeting.

Hamed met separately with Luaibi to outline the framework of Jordanian-Iraqi cooperation in the oil sector.

The ministers asserted the importance of stepping up bilateral cooperation in the energy sector.

In a statement following the meeting, Hamed said discussions focused on all issues related to increasing the quantities of crude oil exported to Jordan, improving its specifications and also increasing the amounts of heavy fuel oil imported by the Kingdom.

Moreover, the two officials discussed the proposed oil pipeline project and later signed the meeting’s minutes.

AMMAN — For Wahid Yaseen, living in a tent in Amman is much better than staying in the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Mafraq or in his home in Syria.

The 50-year-old Syrian said living in the capital enables him to work and cover his expenses.

“Although it is good to receive aid from organisations, it is really important to depend on yourself and work to help your family financially,” he told The Jordan Times outside his tent.

Yaseen is one of many Syrian refugees who are staying in a makeshift camp in the capital and enjoying more freedom compared to the Zaatari camp, over 80km northeast of Amman, or in Syria.

The camp comprises 142 tents erected by the refugees themselves.

One of the camp’s residents who preferred anonymity said there are two camps in the Khreibet Al Souk neighbourhood, but the one where The Jordan Times interviewed refugees is the largest in the area.

The camp hosts refugees from Hama, Halab and Raqqa, according to Yousef Ali.

Abdul Munem Al Taqi, a Syrian refugee known as Abu Naim, said the majority of the camp’s residents are from Hama, which lies around 200km north of Damascus.

“A limited number of Syrian families had been living on this plot of land before the violence started in Syria,” he noted.

Ali, who was forced to leave the city of Hama, said the situation in Syria is difficult not only due to the violence, but also because the of the soaring prices of commodities.

“High prices and the difficulty of finding a job were the main reasons that drove me to leave Syria. For instance, the price of a kilogramme of rice is JD30 in Syria. Here [in the makeshift camp], it is better because I work and the situation is safe,” the father of nine noted.

Ali commended the positive spirit of the Jordanians who live near their camp, adding that they are always ready to lend a helping hand.

Yaseen noted that most refugees work at a fruit and vegetable market near the camp, and are paid JD0.9 per hour.

“The owner of the land where we have set up camp owns the market, and he allows us to stay here as long as we work at the market. The good thing is that we are being paid as well, so we can help our families financially,” he added.

Many other Syrian refugees complain about the lack of assistance or job opportunities, Yaseen charged.

“There is no need to complain. Some people are used to complaining even though they are rich. If you need a job, you can go out and search for it,” he added.

Although Amman received heavy rain and snow recently, the tents in the camp were not flooded, according to Yaseen.

“Many people worked hard to protect their tents from the rain. Only the tents of those too lazy to do something to protect themselves and their families were flooded,” he added.

Abu Naim, whose seventh child was born in the camp a month ago, said his family feels more comfortable there than in Zaatari, where there is less privacy.

“Women do not feel at ease in the Zaatari camp because everyone can see them, and since most of them wear hijab, they don’t have a place where they feel comfortable enough to take it off as if they were in the privacy of their own home,” he noted.

“The tents in Zaatari are too close to each other, so they don’t have any privacy even in their own tent,” said Abu Naim, who has been living in the Amman camp for two months with his family.

Abu Mohammad, who is from Hama, said he does not trust his compatriots in the Zaatari camp, which is home to over 100,000 refugees.

“If parents want to take their child to hospital for example, they might come back and find everything in their tent stolen,” he claimed.

“Here, we are all from the same area and we know each other. No one is a stranger.”

AMMAN — Jordan and the US on Thursday signed a five-year aid agreement worth $140 million that seeks to boost economic and political development across the Kingdom.

According to a US embassy statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times, the agreement was signed in the northern governorate of Irbid by Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Ibrahim Saif, US Ambassador to Jordan Stuart Jones and USAID acting Mission Director Douglas Ball.

The grant aims at supporting the rule of law, citizen engagement and participation, and civil society across the Kingdom, the statement said, adding that the funds will also help local governments identify and address community needs by establishing mechanisms to bring residents and their elected officials together to identify, prioritise and fund small and necessary projects to improve their communities.

“Small investments can have a huge impact on entire communities,” Jones was quoted as saying at the signing ceremony, indicating that under the same programme, there would be larger grants in the future to Jordanian organisations that are best placed to understand the needs of local communities.

“I am proud that our partnership with the government of Jordan and the people of Jordan has improved Jordanians’ lives,” he said.

While in Irbid, the ambassador also visited two of the 12 recently completed development projects in the governorate that were part of USAID Community Engagement Project (CEP), the embassy said.

The project, implemented by Global Communities, awards rapid grants to community-based organisations to achieve quick results in responding to local priorities.

Projects in Irbid varied from maintenance and enhancements of roads, schools, healthcare centres and parks, to the creation of football fields for local youths, lighting installations, and clean-up campaigns, according to the statement.

The awards in Irbid were part of a total of 29 rapid impact grants awarded by USAID CEP to community organisations in Mafraq, Irbid and Tafileh in 2013 totalling approximately $300,000.

Government and embassy officials also toured Al Seeleh Healthcare Centre located in New Yarmouk Municipality, as the centre was provided with new equipment including an ultrasound machine.

The group also visited Abu Alloqous Primary School for Girls, where a grant to the Abu Alloqous Charitable Society improved the educational environment for students. 

AMMAN — The government will not decide to proceed with the national nuclear programme until after some 20 months from now, Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour said Thursday.

At a meeting with a number of ministers, nuclear experts and opponents of the project, Ensour said the government is open to all opinions regarding the plan, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

“We are now in the stage of preparing the decision, which means holding deliberations and conducting technical and economic studies. We will not enforce a decision on Jordanians unless they are in favour of it,” he noted.

The premier urged economic experts to judge the project on the basis of its feasibility and its expected contribution to the economy, stressing that the government realises that those opposing the scheme have safety concerns or doubt its economic viability.

At the meeting, attended by Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) Chairman Khaled Toukan, the anti-nuclear energy activists presented their argument to Ensour, noting that the nuclear programme is not considered a Jordanian priority in light of the lack of resources and the insufficient quantities of uranium.

They claimed that the commission did not conduct environment and economic studies on the project and that world countries are abandoning nuclear energy projects in favour of other resources, according to Petra.

Thursday’s meeting was held at the request of the activists.

In October last year, JAEC announced plans to construct twin 1,000-megawatt reactors in the Qusayr Amra region east of Amman.

It listed the site’s distance from major urban centres and proximity to the Khirbet Samra Wastewater Treatment Plant among its advantages.

The commission selected Russian state-owned firm Rosatom as the preferred vendor to construct the reactors by 2021.

Activists and local residents claim that the reactors threaten the underground aquifers in Azraq, some 15 kilometres from the proposed site.

The reactors are projected to meet 40 per cent of the electricity demand of the Kingdom, which imports 97 per cent of its energy needs at a cost one-fifth of the gross domestic product.