Surviving through Human Rights Policy: The Politics of Asylum in Jordan

• In Event: Poster Session: African Politics Conference Group; Middle East and North Africa Politics & Human Rights
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Human Rights

Abstract

Human rights protection is rooted in the social contract between the state and the people. What if the people in danger have not made any contract with a state? Does not the state have a responsibility to protect their rights? This paper aims to study the rights of refugees, whose protection is substantially dependent on others, such as refugee host states. This paper pays special attention to Syrian refugee protection in Jordan to provide a more comprehensive explanation of why and under what conditions, the rights of refugees can be improved in states that have both not signed refugee treaties and resistant to domestic legal reform for refugee protection. Using a combination of qualitative research methods, such as originally collected local newspapers, descriptive statistics, and legal case analyses, this case study suggests that Jordan strategically uses refugee policy to gain support and legitimacy for the current political regime from domestic constituents while the Arab Spring hits the region. This study further argues that promoting refugee-friendly policy not only helps developing authoritarian states to survive from the revolutionary turmoil but also leads them to undergo voluntary political reform for democracy.

Since 2011, Jordan makes its position very clear about the Syrian refugee crisis through a series of press conference and discussion with international organizations and delegates from other states. The government is committed to helping Syrian refugees from a humanitarian perspective (1) despite its significant financial burden on the host communities and economic hardship of the country (2). Therefore, international assistant to Jordan is crucial for them to continue its generous refugee policies (3), and the government is grateful for the local host communities for their cooperation (4). This Jordanian government’s response to the flow of Syrian refugees raises some critical questions. First, why does Jordan keep receiving refugees from Syria despite its limited resources and high economic burdens? Second, why don’t Jordan change the domestic legal framework to accommodate refugees in its territory better although they use human rights languages in implementing refugee policies? Finally, if there are no clear economic benefits for hosting Syrian refugees and the government’s refugee policies are not solely determined by human rights motivations, what is the country’s incentives to use human rights languages in addressing refugee issues?

In this paper, I argue that Jordan used refugee-friendly policy to gain support and legitimacy for the current regime from the domestic politics when the Arab revolutions overthrow governments in neighboring states, such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. By implementing generous refugee policies and promoting dialogues with people from various backgrounds and religions in the country, Jordan advertises the country’s image as a regional model for comprehensive reform and human rights. The government’s these efforts eased the tension among the domestic constituents since the human rights policies aid the government to appear as a more democratic and legitimate, and that ultimately helped the regime to remain in power during the revolutionary period in the Middle East. Therefore, Jordanian’s voluntary political reform and the generous refugee policy toward Syrians should be considered as the state’s strategical efforts to stay in power. This paper suggests that by cooperating with the international community for the world’s most significant humanitarian crisis, Jordan was not only able to survive during the revolutionary turmoil but also able to secure support for the regime from the domestic and the international community.

Author

• Jeonghyeon Kim, University of Nebraska-Lincoln