AMMAN — A monitoring report conducted by "Al-Ghad"
newspaper has brought attention to a significant funding gap in the Jordanian
response plan to the Syrian crisis. The report indicates that from 2015 until
the end of last year, the funding shortfall amounted to a staggering $10.27
billion. These figures were extracted from data published on the Ministry of
Planning and International Cooperation's website, specifically from the
Response Plan platform.
اضافة اعلان
The data highlights that the deficit percentage over the
course of eight years reached 51.84 percent of the total annual budgets
allocated to support Syrian refugees in Jordan, amounting to $20.1 billion.
This funding gap reveals the challenges faced by the Jordanian government in
meeting the needs and requirements of the response plan.
Funding gap analysis
In 2015, the funding gap for the plan was approximately
$1.918 billion, accounting for 64.2 percent of the total estimated requirements
set by the Jordanian government, which amounted to around $2.988 billion. The
following year, in 2016, the deficit reached $1.009 billion, equivalent to
37.99 percent of the total requirements estimated at $2.657 billion.
Further analysis of the Jordanian response plan for the
Syrian crisis shows that the funding gap in 2017 amounted to approximately $950
million, representing 35.15 percent of the total estimated funding requirements
of around $2.65 billion. In 2018, the response plan recorded a deficit of
around $899 million, which accounted for 36.2 percent of the total financing
needs of the plan, approximately $2.483 billion.
Moreover, the annual Jordanian budget deficit allocated to
support Syrian refugees was approximately $1.19 billion in 2019, amounting to
49.56 percent of the total financing targets set by the government, which
amounted to $2.4 billion.
Deficit for the plan doubled in the past two years
The funding gap for the Jordanian response plan in 2020
reached approximately $1.136 billion, accounting for about 50.6 percent of the
total plan requirements for that year, which were estimated at $2.247 billion.
Shockingly, the deficit for the plan doubled in the past two years.
In 2021, the plan's deficit amounted to $1.688 billion, representing
69.4 percent of the total plan size, which was estimated at $2.432 billion.
Similarly, the deficit for the plan in the past year, 2022,
reached around $1.516 billion, accounting for 66.6 percent of the total plan
size, amounting to $2.276 billion.
US is leading donor to Jordanian response plan
The United States emerged as the leading donor country to
the Jordanian response plan for the Syrian crisis from 2015 to 2022, with a
total funding of approximately $2.88 billion.
Germany followed with funding of around $1.53 billion, and
the United Kingdom contributed approximately $425 million, alongside other
countries.
Internationally, the European Union stands as the largest
funder among various institutions, providing nearly $1 billion to support the
plan. The International Multi-Party Fund contributed around $510 million, while
the World Bank Group allocated approximately $200 million, along with other
donor entities.
Jordanian response plan founded in 2017
In 2017, six years after the outbreak of the Syrian crisis,
the Jordanian government launched the Jordanian response plan in collaboration
with ministries, relevant institutions, United Nations organizations, donor
countries, and non-governmental organizations.
Prior to this, the government used to provide annual
estimates to donor entities. The plan has undergone two iterations so far, the
initial plan for the years 2018-2020 with a total size of approximately $7.3
billion, at an annual rate of around $2.4 billion. This was followed by the
approval of a second plan for the years 2020-2022.
The current year's Jordanian response plan for the Syrian
crisis was estimated to require about $2.273 billion in financial funding. This
came after extending the Jordanian response plan for 2020-2022 to include the
current year 2023, maintaining the same collaborative approach and level of
requirements as the previous plan.
A plan to mobilize international efforts
The Kingdom is set to attend the 7th Brussels Conference on
Syria later this month in which they will aim to mobilize international efforts
to increase the level of funding provided to Jordan to deal with the crisis.
The number of Syrians who fled to Jordan after the outbreak
of the Syrian crisis in 2011, according to official Jordanian estimates,
reached approximately 1.3 million people, with only 670,000 registered with the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
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