Jordan is willing to create economic zones to give refugees more financial independence, according to Queen Rania Al Abdullah who spoke on Wednesday during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Panellists at the WEF annual Meeting in Davos called for a paradigm shift to help the world’s 60 million refugees, and said that traditional ways of helping refugees no longer work on their own as the world faces the worst crisis of displaced persons since World War II.
“We are willing to create economic zones where refugees can find employment,” said Queen Rania of Jordan, whose country hosts 1.3 million refugees. Foreign and domestic investors can relocate supply chains there and equip refugees with skill sets needed to later bring back to their home countries once peace is achieved.
Refugees need to have independence and economic self-sufficiency, Queen Rania added, or else they open themselves up and become vulnerable to recruitment by extremists.
She noted that the average time spent as a refugee is now 17 years. “Jordan alone cannot deal with the problem,” she said.
International aid pays for only 36 percent of refugee upkeep, with the Jordanian government relying on borrowing to finance the rest.
Queen Rania’s comments come after meeting with UK Prime Minister David Cameron a few days earlier, where he urged for the European Union to ease trade with Jordan in order to “provide real benefits to refugees in the region now, as well as enabling them to play a leading role in Syria’s reconstruction in the future.”
“This is not just in the interests of Syria and her neighbors. It is in the interests of Europe, too. The more we do to enable people to stay in the region, the less likely we are to see them coming to Europe.”
“We need to tackle the problem in a different way,” said Alexander de Croo, Belguim’s Deputy Prime Minister. He called for tearing down the wall between short-term humanitarian action and long-term development, so refugees can gain access to education, labor markets and other benefits.
Over 2,500 leaders from business, government, international organizations, civil society, academia, media and the arts are participating in the 46th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.
Next Post
