(MENAFN- Jordan News Agency) Istanbul, May 24 (Petra) -- Deputizing for His Majesty King Abdullah II, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, Imad Fakhoury, on Tuesday, took part in the first World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, Turkey.
On behalf of His Majesty King Abdullah II, the minister extended special thanks to the United Nations and to the Government of Turkey for organizing and hosting the Summit, which serves as an important platform for re-inspiring and reinvigorating commitment to humanity and to the universality of humanitarian principles, thus demonstrating sincere desire for global unity and solidarity in the face of human suffering.
"We are living in a new age of unprecedented mass displacement. This is a new global reality. 60 million displaced people worldwide is not a temporary humanitarian crisis; this is a crisis of human development. This new reality presents a challenge on a whole new scale for development and humanitarian agencies as well as international community; one that requires a paradigm shift in perspective and mindset," the minister told the Summit.
Jordan, the minister said, a small country with limited natural resources, and yet one that has consistently served as a forerunner when it comes to embracing the vulnerable and sharing its scarce resources with those fleeing conflict.
He stressed that Jordan has always done the right thing by those who sought its borders for refuge, saying "We have been working tirelessly with all partners to peaceful resolutions in conflict countries in the region that meets aspirations of all components of people and safeguards territorial integrity and political independence." We all recognize that the Syrian crisis is a global crisis that cannot be dealt with on a typical crisis management approach, where in our interconnected world means a crisis in one place is a crisis in all places. It is also a crisis that presents a serious national resilience issue especially for hosting countries.
He told the gathering that Jordan is currently hosting about 1.3 million Syrian refugees. Refugee communities are becoming increasingly vulnerable. About 92 percent of Syrian refugees are living in Jordan's cities, towns and villages exhausting existing social and physical infrastructure. This has put further pressure on our economy and stretched social cohesion in our host communities.
To deal with the impact of the refugee crisis, the Government of Jordan has pioneered a resilience based approach by linking humanitarian and development needs in its response to the Syrian crisis and thus developed the Jordan Response Plans (currently cover the period 2016-2018) based on a comprehensive vulnerability assessment conducted in partnership with the UN and the international community, the minister indicated.
The minister spoke about the London Conference and said it marked yet another major milestone in shaping the international community's response to the Syrian crisis. Jordan started delivering on its commitments of the Jordan Compact, yet our capacity to implement is proportional to the resources the international community will provide especially to host communities, and in proportion of international community fulfilling their side of commitments under the Compact.
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24/5/2016 - 10:44:24 PM
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