AMMAN, 8 August 2007 — Tens of thousands of children of Iraqi refugees in Jordan are to be allowed into state schools after the summer holidays, officials announced yesterday. “The Jordanian Ministry of Education’s decision to accept Iraqi children in public schools without the need to obtain residency permits ... will solve a big problem for the Iraqi community,” Iraqi Ambassador Saad Hayani told AFP.
Education Ministry official Mohammed Akur said “around 50,000 Iraqi students” are expected to enroll in public schools when the 2007-2008 academic year starts later this month. The move “is in response to the humanitarian situation the Iraqis are going through. It is meant to ensure Iraqi children access to education,” Akur told the pro-government Jordan Times daily.
Akur, who heads students affairs at the ministry, said 14,000 Iraqi pupils were already enrolled in schools across Jordan, but he did not specify if they were in state or private schools.
According to Hayani, Iraqi children needed to have Jordanian residency permits to be allowed into state schools although the requirement was dropped last year for private schools. “Most of the Iraqis in Jordan do not have residency permits,” Hayani said.
Jordan in July hosted a conference of countries sheltering Iraqis who fled the violence in their country, including Syria, Egypt and Turkey as well as representatives of the United Nations. The meeting underscored the need for international assistance” to host countries “so that they can continue to provide an adequate level of services to Iraqi nationals,” particularly health and education.
Last month, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the children’s fund UNICEF issued an appeal for 129 millions dollars to send 155,000 Iraqi children in Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon to school from the next academic year. According to the United Nations, some four million of Iraq’s 26 million people have fled the violence, including those who left before the 2003 US-led invasion. An estimated 1.4 million went to Syria and 750,000 to Jordan.
In Damascus, a Syrian rights group has warned that the number of Iraqi refugees who have gone to Syria is now almost at 2 million, with many of them facing a desperate situation, the group’s head said yesterday.
According to a report earlier this week by the Syrian Organization for Human Rights, the number Iraqis who fled the spiraling violence at home to seek shelter in Syria has topped 10 percent of Syria’s population of 18.5 million.
Abuld-Karim Al-Rihawi, head of the organization, told The Associated Press in Damascus that of the 2,000 daily influx of Iraqis to Syria, only a few leave Syria for a third country and scores fail to register with the UN refugee agency in Damascus. “The suffering of those Iraqis is very big, they haven’t got enough money to afford the soaring prices in Syria of almost all items, in addition to the lack of job opportunities in a country which itself is suffering from a rise in the unemployment rate,” Rihawi said.
The Iraqis are considered by the Syrian government as “guests” and not refugees, and cannot get work permits. If they are caught working, that is considered illegal. Many of the refugees live on savings brought from Iraq or depend on money sent to them by relatives from abroad, Rihawi said. Those who run out of money are forced to take on any kind of work, usually with very low wages.
Iraqis enter Syria without a visa and can legally reside for up to three months, at which point they must leave Syria for at least one day. After this, they can re-enter with a new residency. Exceptions are made for students at Syrian schools and universities, and Iraqi men married to Syrian women.
Sybella Wikes of the UN refugee agency said the latest UNHCR figure for Iraqi refugees in Syria was 1.5 million, but that the number of new arrivals daily indeed is 2,000. That figure was first reported by the World Health Organization during a refugee conference in July in Damascus. The gathering concluded that Syria is overwhelmed by the large number of Iraqis who continue to pour in and faces a looming refugee crisis.
