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11 May 2005

 

Update from Jordan: Minister says no to asylum

 

On 20 April, Jordan’s interior minister Awni Yervas said that his country will never grant asylum to refugees under any circumstances, Jordan’s official news agency (Petra) reported. Yervas spoke during meetings with a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

 

Jordan is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, and for years has relied on UNHCR to conduct refugee status determination for non-Palestinian asylum-seekers. The largest group of such refugees had been Iraqi, and resettlement was the primary durable solution for most, at least until the fall of Saddam Hussein.

 

UNHCR’s Amman office received more than 3,500 individual applications for refugee status in 2003, and it continues to promote protection of people displaced from Iraq.

 

Yervas complained that “the suffering of these refugees has taken too long and the time has come to put an end to it.”

 

 

For more information, read Ayman Halasa’s description of refugee protection in Jordan, published in RSDWatch’s forum on 20 April 2005.

 

 

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