Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Position Paper, regarding Refugee Crisis, Asia World Model United Nations
So, this was the beginning of my first time joining an international conference. At such a not-a-particular-student age, I still cannot move on to the dreams that I should pursue. And here it is, a glimpse of my writing, regarding the position paper stuffs.
Ever since the first wave of Palestinian exodus in 1948, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (HKJ) has been the host country of the asylum seekers. Today, the total number of registered refugees that are dwelling in the HKJ is no less than 4 million people, including the 20th — 21th century’s major waves of forced migration — adding the second wave of Palestinians, Iraqi, and Syrians refugees migration in the past 7 years. The vast influx that shaped nearly half of the Jordanian populations delivers new challenges to balance both humanitarian resolution and multidimensional stability of a country.
As a part of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), HKJ is actively involved in various agreements and declarations. Needless to say, 3 out of 5 of the most countries to allocate refugees belongs to the member of OIC — Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, which burdened neighboring countries. Given the fact that 57 OIC members hosted approximately 10.7 million of refugees, close collaboration of OIC and UNHCR is vital. In 2006, OIC and UNHCR started to hold conferences to level perceptions and challenges of refugees particularly within the scope of the Muslim world. Ashgabat Declaration on Refugees in the Muslim World 2012, which resulted in 19 points of declaration, was criticized by being incapable to produce concrete resolutions. Despite of its limitation to produce actionable resolutions, both declarations served as a trigger to address the issue. OIC then continued to invent more evolutionary acts.
The Programme of Action (PoA) 2025, held in Saudi 2017, was initiated by OIC and UNHCR to contribute more detailed goals which highlighted on the following aspects, which are peace and security, human rights and good governance, science and innovation, dialogue and humanitarian actions, and sustainable economic development. Report has shown that in the 2017–2018 PoA’s implementation, positive trends occurred in parallel with OIC’s willingness to pursue.
Jordan’s involvement in international actions led us to be the host country of Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) 2018 workshop, as an implementation of The New York Declaration of Refugees and Migrants 2016. The workshop recognized the necessity to comply with regional and international approach on national policy coherence. Complementary, the durable and sustainable elucidations outweighed short-term aids in addressing the refugee situations.
Prior to the institutional resolutions, HKJ along with UK, EU and World Bank, signed an agreement named the Jordan Compact in 2016. Due to large numbers of protracted refugees — Syrians civil war refugees — a new approach should be conducted in response to the issue. Jordan recognized that through the importance of shifting the short-term humanitarian aids to a sustainable development plan, the refugee crisis could gradually fade.
Although this compact has been the model of innovative approach, the needs of further participation by the Muslim world to promote well-being of refugees is non-negligible.
The compact has led to a significant improvement on growing numbers of children in education enrollment — from less than 85,000 Syrian children attended formal and informal education in 2014 to 126,127 children in two years — as reported by Jordanian Ministry of Education. Labor market participation was also increased by the rise of 60,000 work permits in two years — in 2014 only 10,000 work permits were issued.
Albeit all inadequate efforts, we, as part of an international community must endeavor to formulate innovation for the prominence of our friends, as well as to leverage our capacity to bring a better living state for refugees. Jordan reaffirms that the goal of diminishing the crisis could not be obtained only on one’s own. Yet, strengthening our partnership to cooperate with the global world is indeed mandatory, and simultaneously, improving human capacity which could affect positively to our social and political affair, is the path HKJ would propose coherently.
Thus, HKJ proposes that OIC should be the game-changer by providing and bridging regional and global partnership to deliver aids in promoting refugees’ welfare for its members. The institution should open its collaboration without limitation to the public/private sector. Also, equally significant, ensuring protection is the second pillar to enhance legal certainty among the refugees. With the continued growing number of displaced people, stronger partnership with legal advocacy institutions — UNHCR, Refugee International and INGOs — is urgently needed.
Even though Jordan is geographically situated in the crux of Middle East’s instability, HKJ is confident to form and implement actionable insights that will be impactful to the receiving countries. Jordan, as reflected in our policy, aims to promote the development of the refugees by inviting the members of OIC to concur in the following recommendations. Three concepts to stimulate these transformation are through enhancing empowerment, delivering connectivity, and providing community building amongst the refugees.
Alongside with providing work permits, we recognize that empowering refugees to have entrepreneurial skills in this borderless era is feasible. Entrepreneurial skills are worthless if it is not supported by infrastructure.
Connectivity is the infrastructure to enter the 4.0 world. The needs to be connected with each other has evolved to the occurrence of the gig economy and borderless education. Working remotely should not be a barrier for refugees to have a job, as well as to obtain informal education for their children through internet platforms.
Communicating with communities could lower refugee’s insecurity and ensure transparency in monitoring mechanism of our program. Refugees also need to be supported in a positive environment in order to develop. Through community building, the degree of adaptation with Jordanian communities could be improved to integration.
These three breakthroughs could be achieved when OIC, as the key player, maximizes institutional endeavors to encourage broader partnership, in which private sectors could help build digital infrastructure, labour training and education, and also provide communication with communities through NGOs partnership. Also, the fundamental thing that should not be abandoned is ensuring the legal certainty.
Eventually, neither the declaration nor the agreements will come into a favorable result. Willingness and commitment are the things that preserved our talks come into a reality.
References
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Hunt, A., Samman, E. and Mansour-Ille, D. (2019). “Syrian women refugees in Jordan, Opportunity in the gig economy?” [online] Available at: https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/resource-documents/11742.pdf (Accessed 5 Oct. 2019).
Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation. The Jordan Compact: A New Holistic Approach between the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the International Community to deal with the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Amman, Jordan, 2016. [online] Available at: http://www.mop.gov.jo/DetailsPage/NewsDetailsEN.aspx?NewsID=718
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Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (COMCEC). Forced Migration in the OIC Member Countries: Policy Framework Adopted by Host Countries. [online] Available at http://www.sbb.gov.tr/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Forced_Migration_in_the_OIC_Member_Countries_Policy_Framework_Adopted_by_Host_Countries%E2%80%8B.pdf (Accessed 5 Oct. 2019).
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