Jordan Closes Camp for Palestinians, Iranians Fleeing Iraq

In early November, after years of Human Rights Watch investigations and advocacy, Jordan closed the Ruweishid camp, which was located in the desolate eastern reaches of Jordan and was home to several hundred Palestinian and Iranian Kurdish refugees fleeing Iraq. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) resettled the inhabitants of the camp to countries outside the region. We first exposed the poor conditions in Ruweishid in 2003. We released two reports in 2006 documenting the conditions at Ruweishid; one focused on the precarious plight of Palestinians and the other discussed the Iranian Kurds. We showed how the camp was unfit for long-term accommodation, and put pressure on UNHCR and policymakers to resettle its inhabitants to third countries. Although Ruweishid’s closure is a step forward, Jordan and Syria’s borders remain closed to Palestinians fleeing Iraq, more than 2,000 Palestinians are still stranded in camps near the Syrian border, and more than 13,000 Palestinians are living in Baghdad at extreme risk. A group of about 200 Iranian Kurds remains stranded in the no-man’s land between Iraq and Jordan. Human Rights Watch will continue to press Iraq’s neighbors and the international community to provide protection and resettlement for these vulnerable populations.