In 2020, the pandemic
had little to do with killing my income as a home-based freelancer. From a
macro lens, the loss of my income boils down to the laws and policies that do
not translate well for the little man or
woman.
اضافة اعلان
This story is the
story of a Jordanian woman with some entrepreneurial spirit who — because of
inequitable laws and policies — can’t make a living any more.
My story showcases the
inability of people at the top, in charge of broad economic policies, to imagine
the impact of their inequitable laws on regular citizens. It also signifies
Parliament’s
failure to act as a true filter to government-proposed laws, with no real
political will to gauge the day-to-day ramifications of such laws, before green-lighting
them.
I would go so far as
to say that the tradition of not running “social impact assessments,” risk studies,
or even a simple SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats)
before passing sweeping economic laws in Jordan, is undoubtedly another reason
I have not made a single dime since mid-2020.
Two laws have hampered
my ability to earn a living as a home-based freelance creative. In this article,
I am focusing on the one that had the earliest impact, i.e. the Anti-Money
Laundering and
Terrorism Financing Law. The other law, to be discussed in a
separate article, has to do with ambiguous USAID-backed guidelines introduced
in recent years to license “home-based businesses” (HBBs).
Created in 2006, with new
amendments ratified by Parliament in 2015, the Anti-Money Laundering and
Terrorism Financing Law had little-to-no impact on the finances of regular
citizens, as per personal observation. But sometime in 2019 and at the worst possible
timing (a mere few months from the pandemic), everything changed. My local bank’s
clerk informed me that the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) had sent out directives
stating customers were no longer allowed to receive money transfers from
abroad, with the exception of expat family members (the exact timing of the
directives is best documented at the CBJ, however the news trickled down to me
in 2019).
This unforgiving
amendment to local banking has impacted a large number of middle-class freelancers,
especially those with clients in Dubai and Arab Gulf countries, among other
places.
Personally, and as a freelance
content creator working from home, my artwork had little demand in the local
market. This pushed me to come up with a new strategy in 2016; find an
alternative market abroad. I taught myself to build a website that showcased my
portfolio to foreign businesses wishing to employ my creative and intellectual
services. I even had my website on a UK-based server to help it rank higher in
search results in Britain. One year later, my website started bringing me
clients from Europe, who, up until 2018, were able to send me bank transfers
with total ease.
This, more or less,
sounds like a success story, celebrated in women-empowerment and creative-industry
newsletters as a sign of individual resilience and creative problem solving.
Instead, it is a story of crushing disappointment brought about by laws that escalate
economic inequity, and a blatant disregard to the entrepreneurial spirit of the
middle class.
This also brings us to
the inevitable question: What does a law designed to prevent large businesses
from evading millions of dinars in taxes through unlawful fraud, as well as the
financing of terrorism by nefarious parties, have to do with a peaceful, stay-at-home,
freelancing and upstanding citizen?
Exactly! Nefarious and
peace-loving should not be beaten down with the same hammer. Anti-money
laundering laws need to take into account the naïve and well-meaning financial
transactions of ordinary people trying to make a living, at home and across
continents. The economic ecosystem needs to honor citizens that have good
intentions with laws that match their aspirations, encouraging them to think
big beyond their limiting circumstances. Instead, what we have are laws that
beat hardworking Jordanians down, impeding their ability to make an honest
living while depriving them from their rightful access to opportunity.
As a hardworking middle-class woman, it is quite
surreal seeing how I am being subjected to the same laws that scrutinize
corrupt businesses with sizeable access to wealth and opportunity, while also being treated on an equal footing
with terrorist-sponsoring organizations!
Economic equity means Jordanian
citizens like myself — with their own health problems, daily challenges, and
reasons to leave work in the formal market to become home-based — need to be
treated with the support and dignity that enables them to be productive and
functional without the paranoia of terrorism and tax-evasion looming overhead.
Economic equity also
means that the fiscal laws, tax structures, punitive measures, and the people
in leadership positions creating them, need to be perceptive and balanced enough
to allow citizens to participate in the economy without experiencing any financial
detriment or hardship.
Leadership, on the
other hand, is about adapting laws that stem from international treaties, such
as the Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Law, to local contexts,
with an eye towards offsetting any negative repercussions to the citizens of a
small country like Jordan. Such laws, in their international version, are
created to suit larger and more complex economies in countries like the United
States that boast populations of well over 300 million people!
This said, is it not time
we changed our ways to make room for true economic and social “empathy”? How
about we start with embedding “socioeconomic impact assessments” into every
process that results in legal frameworks, policies and general governing
attitudes that impact people’s subsistence and livelihoods?
Read more
Opinion & Analysis
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