Jordan has been facing a great deal of criticism over its treatment of Iraqis at Jordan’s Queen Alia airport, some of it deserved, some not so much. However, I have not seen many reactions or blog postings hailing Jordan’s decision to allow the entry of Iraqi children into the public schools.
AMMAN — Public schools in the Kingdom are witnessing a heavy turnout of Iraqis residing in the country, who want to enroll their children before classes start next week. Last Monday, the Ministry of Education finalized a decision to allow Iraqi students to study in public schools as of the beginning of this scholastic year, without the prerequisite residency permit.
The decision, which was taken in response to the humanitarian situation the Iraqis are going through, is intended to ensure that Iraqi children have access to education, according to an Education Ministry official. Previously, private schools were accepting Iraqi students, and only Iraqis holding residency permits were allowed to enroll in public schools. "Large numbers of Iraqis are registering their children in schools across the country," Managing Director of General Education and Students Affairs Mohammad Okour told The Jordan Times yesterday. Figures of how many Iraqi school age children have been registered so far are not yet available, he said. According to Okour, some 50,000 Iraqi students are expected to enter the country’s public schools, in addition to 14,000 who are already in the educational system. Source: [The Jordan Times]
In my humble opinion, I think this is a very courageous and noble step by Jordan. I wonder how the expected enrollment of 50,000 Iraqi children will change the makeup of Jordanian public education in the long-run. How will Jordanians react to this huge influx of Iraqis into their children’s schools when there is already a great deal of tension between Jordanians and Iraqis over the refugee issue and others. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, where is the applause?
Update: Here is a quick update from The Jordan Times.
HRW hails acceptance of Iraqis in schools
AMMAN — The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday welcomed Jordan’s decision to accept all Iraqi school-age children into public schools, but criticised country’s refusal to recognise Iraqis as refugees. In a press release, the group said: "For the first time, Jordan has officially pledged to allow Iraqi children to attend public schools regardless of their residency status." Responding to the statement, a senior official reiterated that Iraqis residing in Jordan do not meet the criteria of refugees as stated in the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees. Read more.
Harrega,,,there is no such humans called illegals except in your mind and the minds of right winger,all humans are legal.
Elliot, you cannot compare Katrina to Iraq, or the US to Jordan. It’s so wrong for so many reasons.
American can afford a disaster like Katrina, one city in the whole US was destroyed. But see how much illegal immigration is causing a debate in the US, and it’s only 12-15 million illegal immigrants, less than 5% of the whole US population, how about 50 million Mexicans coming to the US within THREE years, and your country is running out of resources? Now you can start thinking of a comparison
No Hamzeha,i did not contradict my self,I was trying to show their hospitablity,and in return,we must treat them the same and better.
Hamzeha and mohannad,,you are missing my point,educatio in Iraq was free to everybody including Americans and the policy was instituted long before Saddam and his party came to power,
At those days we didn’t hear Iraqis complaining about this policy ,to them ,It was a matter of principals and duty to provide Education for all people who chose to come to Iraq and study.
To add to Hamzeh, how many refugees did Iran take?Oh, I forgot they exported people to Iraq!Hamzeh I totally agree with you! Attack is the best way to defend, because no one understand crap, they think that jordan is dubai and saudi arabia, they don’t know that we have 30% poverty rate, they don’t know that 80% of the population make under 200$ a month, they don’t know that jordanians prefer to eat dry breat with some tea with their diginity and never ask for help, because diginiy and honor is a foreign term to many people out there!!
Urduni,
It was saddam who admitted jordanians and especially palastenians in iraqi universities, and that why now they are being persecuted by the militias, not even one jordanian or palastenian student was able to pursue his studies in iraq after saddam fell.
I am not advocating for saddam, but give credit for who did the thing, it was saddam’s policy to support jordan and it was jordan’s policy to accept this support, so for you and iraqies to come now and say we did this and did that I think it is a little bit hypocrite, most iraqies hate saddam and hated his policy, most iraqies hated that jordan stood by saddam against iran, so for you to come and say this is WRONG..
And amigo nothing was for free, only jordan provides free stuff and only jordan is cursed, and for all of those who critisize jordan, look at your countries first, non of you have done what jordan done, we clean up your mess and you just ask for more so please shut the hell up or do something!
Natasha, honestly, I don’t think defending Jordan is going to work. They say the best defense is a good offense.
Instead of writing to defend Jordan by pointing out what it has been able to do so far to cope with the extraordinary circumstances that were brought upon it by an illegitimate war, we should by attacking other countries that are completely ignoring the Iraqis. Other neighboring countries of Iraq and other countries in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE. Some of these countries played an integral role in creating the refugee crisis, what are they doing now for those refugees?
And of course, the US and Britain. How many refugees have they taken? How many dollars have they allocated in their war budgets to helping out the refugees wherever they are?
In the sphere of information sources that I frequent, I have not read a single article about what any of those countries has done. All I’ve read is about Jordan and what it has failed to do for its Iraqi refugees. Clearly, there is an imbalance in coverage of this topic with respect to duties of certain members of the international community towards the refugees.
This is why I think we might have been better off not defending ourselves by posts like this, but attacking the countries that are not doing anything.
Don’t you think you’ve contradicted yourself with these two back-to-back points? In other words, if khamesan is true, why did you bring up rabe3an? Doesn’t make sense.
Again reiterating, in this situation, it shouldn’t matter if they’re a refugee or a rebel, these are kids who need education now. I could care less what the HRW had to say, and so should the Jordanian Government. Be humanistic, not narcissistic, about educating the younger generation, regardless of their country of origin.
I think most of you missed a point.
The Jordanian government only agreed to this after pressure from the US.
The United States started an uncalled for horrible racist war on the Iraqi people.
The United States is responsible for these refugees.
How many refugees does the US accept a year?
Do people really want to know?
The United States has MUCH more infrastructure ands resources to absorb them.
Instead it bullies little Jordan to do it because it’s too racist to accept the (terrorist?) refugees it created.
We should be pointing fingers and saying shame on the US instead of saying bravo for little Jordan having to buckle under pressure clean up a superpowers mess that it should have sole responsibility for creating.