A job center on Sunday opened in Jordan’s second-largest camp for Syrian refugees, the latest sign of an EU-backed policy shift meant to improve the lives of the displaced in regional host countries and discourage them from migrating onward.
Dozens of refugees crowded around long tables in a community center in the Azraq camp to register with potential employers for jobs in factories and on farms.
“Any work is okay for me,” said Sumaya Mohammed Jidaa, a 39-year-old widow and mother of six inquiring about a sewing job. “Just give us money to take care of our children.”
Under the so-called Jordan Compact, a deal struck with donor countries in 2016, the kingdom promised to provide 200,000 work permits for Syrians over three years, in exchange for several billion US dollars in development assistance and reduced tariff barriers on Jordanian exports to Europe.
Implementation has been slow because of Jordan’s economic downturn, high unemployment and the slow pace of regulatory change.
About 90,000 Syrians have obtained work permits so far and only two factories are exporting goods to Europe under the new rules, officials said.
“You cannot expect the private sector to simply make use of a trade agreement if the proper support is not being provided,” said Patrick Daru, country coordinator of the International Labour Organization (ILO).
The job center is a project of the ILO, the UN refugee agency and the Jordanian Ministry of Labor.
Jordan has been struggling with the fallout from prolonged conflict in neighboring Syria and Iraq, leading to unemployment of about 18 percent, with twice that rate among the young.
At the same time, the kingdom has more than 300,000 registered foreign workers and up to 1 million unregistered ones, the ministry said.
Most are Egyptian and South Asian migrants in low-skilled jobs like domestic care, construction and agriculture.
The government has attempted labor reform, but many Jordanians disparage the manual labor traditionally performed by migrant workers, leaving a gap that Syrian refugees might now partially fill.
Job creation is Jordan’s central problem, Daru said.
“It’s a problem of investment. It’s a problem of getting European companies to source from Jordan and this is the main game-changer,” he said.
At the job fair, Emad Hussein offered jobs for up to 100 refugees, hoping that by hiring them his textiles company would become eligible for reduced European tariffs.
Hussein said he employs 700 Jordanians, 1,700 South Asians and two refugees.
“It’s less expensive to hire Syrians, because we don’t have to pay meals and accommodations for them,” he said. “Even if there’s no European customers, we still need Syrians. We have to help people because of humanity and we know they have experience.”
The job center, supported in part by the Dutch embassy, contributes to the goal of keeping refugees as close to home as possible, said Dutch Ambassador to Jordan Barbara Jozaisse.
“At least people now can apply for a job and earn their own income, so you have some dignity, you have pride, you have income, you can continue building your life and developing yourself and your family,” she said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion