• Jordanian authorities increasingly resorted to force, arrests, and politicized charges to respond to continuing demonstrations demanding political and economic reform. The fifth prime minister to serve since the protests started in January 2011, Abdullah Ensour, took office in October 2012. Parliamentary elections took place in January 2013, under a 2012 electoral law that opposition groups complain favors loyalist candidates. The Muslim Brotherhood-led opposition boycotted the election.
  • Iraqi, Jordanian, and Turkish border guards are pushing back tens of thousands of people trying to flee Syria. Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey have either closed numerous border crossings entirely or allowed only limited numbers of Syrians to cross, leaving tens of thousands stranded in dangerous conditions in Syria’s conflict-ridden border regions. Only Lebanon has an open border policy for Syrians fleeing the conflict.

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Reports

  • How Jordanian Laws, Officials, Employers, and Recruiters Fail Abused Migrant Domestic Workers
  • Protection of Migrant Domestic Workers in Asia and the Middle East
  • Palestinian-Origin Jordanians Deprived of their Nationality

Jordan

  • Jul 1, 2013
    Iraqi, Jordanian, and Turkish border guards are pushing back tens of thousands of people trying to flee Syria. Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey have either closed numerous border crossings entirely or allowed only limited numbers of Syrians to cross, leaving tens of thousands stranded in dangerous conditions in Syria’s conflict-ridden border regions. Only Lebanon has an open border policy for Syrians fleeing the conflict.
  • Jun 4, 2013
    Jordanian authorities should immediately rescind an order to censor 263 unlicensed local news websites.The government should also scrap recent legislation that allows it to encroach on online media freedom. The attempts to regulate online speech violate Jordan’s constitutional free expression guarantees.
  • May 4, 2013
    Jordanian criminal justice authorities should immediately drop their three-year prosecution of two intellectuals and withdraw all charges against them.
  • Apr 29, 2013
  • Apr 23, 2013
    The refugee burden that Syria’s neighbors are shouldering is heavy and should not be borne alone. But keeping people fleeing for their lives in buffer zones inside Syrian borders risks trapping rather than protecting them.
  • Mar 27, 2013
    The United States should provide aid to the refugees but ensure that no aid money goes to or through the Jordanian government as long as Jordan sends some refugees back to face death - even as it welcomes others.
  • Mar 26, 2013
    Jordanian authorities should immediately charge or release five Al al-Bayt university students detained since March 12, 2013, after other students alleged they had desecrated a Quran and engaged in “devil worship” . The students, who deny the accusations and have neither been charged nor taken before a judge, were assaulted by a crowd of other students, and their attackers should be brought to justice, Human Rights Watch said.
  • Mar 22, 2013

    During his visit Friday to Jordan, there’s little doubt President Obama will praise it for its hospitality toward some 350,000 Syrian refugees. While praise and support for Jordan’s reception of many Syrian refugees is deserved, the president should not give Jordan a free pass when it comes to its forcible returns of Palestinian refugees to Syria.

  • Mar 21, 2013
    Jordan is routinely and unlawfully rejecting Palestinian refugees, single males, and undocumented people seeking asylum at its border with Syria, said Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic (the Harvard Clinic).
  • Mar 8, 2013
    Saudi authorities should immediately disclose the whereabouts and condition of the Jordanian activist Khaled al-Natour, and free him or charge him with a recognizable criminal offense.