Powder keg Middle East

UNHCR expert warns: “Situation reminiscent of 2015”

Zaatari in northern Jordan near the Syrian border - one of the world's largest refugee camps

(Bild: APA/AFP/KHALIL MAZRAAWI)

The UNHCR is urgently warning of a new wave of refugees. The current situation in the Middle East is "reminiscent of the situation in 2015", says Roland Schönbauer, spokesperson for the UN refugee agency in Jordan. International refugee aid was also cut back then.

"People always talk about smuggling, but these people have not been interested in smugglers for ten years," says the Austrian. According to estimates, around 5,000 refugees set off from Jordan to other countries last year, mainly to Europe, but also to the Gulf states - an increase of ten percent.

Zaatari in northern Jordan near the Syrian border - one of the world's largest refugee camps

(Bild: APA/AFP/KHALIL MAZRAAWI)

"If you put one and one together ..."
"If you put one and one together: Anything other than an increase in this onward migration would be illogical," warns expert Schönbauer. According to the former UNHCR representative in Austria, the fact that people are "increasingly setting off to seek their fortune elsewhere" is behavior that "hurts". After all, the refugees are taking great risks in doing so.

Roland Schönbauer regularly comments on current developments in the Middle East on social media.

Focus on Jordan
With around 720,000 refugees (around 640,000 of them from Syria alone), Jordan is the world's largest host country for refugees in terms of population. After the major refugee crisis in 2015/16, the country promised to take care of refugees if the international community once again assumed the costs. However, this deal has "faltered massively" over the past year and a half, with international funding to Jordan "falling at a breathtaking rate" since 2022.

Surrounded by trouble spots - nowhere else in the world are there as many refugees per capita as in Jordan.

This causes massive human suffering. While more and more NGOs have to stop their work, the refugees are confronted with rising costs due to inflation. Nine out of ten are in debt, and 62 percent say they cannot even cover half of their living expenses with UNHCR grants.

"Parents take their children out of school and send them to beg"
"Desperate behavior is on the rise. Parents are taking their children out of school and sending them to beg," reports Schönbauer. They feed themselves on leftover, "half-rotten" food from the market, and the number of evictions is increasing. This also jeopardizes integration. In Jordan, 72 percent of refugees live in apartments. If they can no longer afford these, the pressure on the camps increases, where care is much more expensive, says Schönbauer. "It is cheaper for the donor countries if people can live integrated in the communities."

Jordan is an extremely refugee-friendly country: no less than 96% of residents say they have sympathy for refugees. "We would like to have such values in Europe."

Aid money for Palestinians cut back after Hamas massacre
One reason for this is that the country also took in hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees when the state of Israel was founded. However, these are not being looked after by the UNHCR, but by the Palestinian relief organization UNRWA, which recently fell into disrepute due to allegations of terrorism. This organization is also running out of money because major donor countries - including Austria - have stopped their payments due to the allegations of terrorism. A vicious circle.