AMMAN
— Her Majesty Queen Rania met with United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees, Filippo Grandi, at the
UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) offices in New York
on Monday to discuss the challenges faced by Syrian and Sudanese refugees and
local communities in host countries. This meeting comes at a time when global
donor support is diminishing, despite the pressing need for increased
international cooperation.
اضافة اعلان
During
the meeting, Her Majesty and Grandi addressed the prolonged Syrian refugee
crisis, which has been significantly underfunded in recent years. Despite being
overshadowed by other global emergencies,
Queen Rania emphasized that "the
Syrian refugee crisis remains a critical issue" for Jordan. The nation,
hosting over 1.3 million Syrian refugees, equivalent to 12 percent of its
population, with around 655,000 registered with UNHCR, is increasingly
shouldering the burden alone. The refugee response is severely underfunded,
leading to dire consequences for the refugees' lives, the Jordan News Agency,
Petra reported.
The
decreasing global support has also forced the UN World Food Program (WFP) to
reduce aid to over 100,000 Syrian refugees in camps and entirely withdraw
support for 50,000 others living outside camps.
Highlighting
the grave implications of this situation for Syrian refugees in Jordan, Her
Majesty stressed the importance of collaborative efforts, echoing Grandi's call
for collective strategic actions to address the challenges faced by refugees
worldwide.
The
High Commissioner and his team provided Her Majesty with an overview of the
dire situation in Sudan, where more than 5 million Sudanese have been forcibly
displaced, with 4 million internally displaced and the rest seeking refuge in
neighboring countries. Since the crisis erupted in Sudan in April, refugees
have been crossing into five neighboring nations: the Central African Republic
(CAR), Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia. Grandi underscored that 90
percent of those arriving in Chad, where he recently visited, are women and
children. He also highlighted the difficulties faced by host nations in dealing
with the increasing influx, given their already limited resources and
preexisting crises.
Emphasizing
the urgent need for greater financial support, Grandi informed Her Majesty
about the insufficient funding for UNHCR's Sudan Emergency Regional Refugee
Response Plan. The plan seeks a little over $1 billion to provide essential aid
and protection to over 1.8 million Sudanese expected to arrive in the five
neighboring countries by the end of 2023. To date, it has received only 27
percent of the required funding.
Her
Majesty also raised concerns about the rising intolerance towards refugees,
noting that in the face of multiple crises worldwide, "feelings towards
refugees and migrants have become polarized and politicized, eliciting strong
emotions from all sides." She added that this polarization of attitudes
can hinder UNHCR's work.
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