When human catastrophes seem beyond description, we turn to the appalling statistics. This year, around the world, more than 345 million people face food insecurity, daily hunger or starvation. Among the most vulnerable are 108 million refugees, people who have been forcibly displaced from their homes and ways of life. And 40 per cent of those refugees are children, the most defenceless of all. Yet the numbers cannot really convey the tragedy or the failure. Refugees are our brothers and sisters. They look to our countries to help end the crises that have driven them from home. Refugees are mothers, fathers and grandparents, who have made perilous journeys to save their families. They are young people with big dreams and little children who deserve the chance to dream big. They depend on the international community for their survival, and multiple United Nations agencies provide vital services to help meet the need.
But in recent months, one by one. those agencies have been delivering difficult news. A severe shortfall in international funds has forced them to cut support. Is that what we have come to? Is the international community going to watch as refugee families find themselves forced to send their children to work instead of school? In Jordan, where refugees make up more than one third of our population of 11 million, cuts have already thrown the lives of hundreds of thousands of refugees into uncertainty. The impact of such humanitarian shortfalls is never limited to a country or region. Fear and want bring on sharp increases in the number of refugees fleeing to Europe and beyond on journeys that too often end in tragedy.
Jordanians are serious about our duty to those in need. We have done everything we can to secure a dignified life for refugees. Nearly half of the almost 1.4 million Syrians whom we host are under 18 years of age. For many of them. Jordan is the only place they have ever known. More than 230.000 Syrian children have been born in Jordan since 2011. We are sharing precious resources to help them meet basic needs — food, energy and especially water. We are among the water-poorest countries in the world, even as our water supplies face extraordinary demand. And we face those pressures just when another crisis has hit our region: climate change, with its destructive heat waves, drought and flooding. And to meet the refugee burden, we have been carefully managing to combine our limited resources with essential support from the international community, because the responsibility to act falls on everyone’s shoulders and the world cannot afford to walk away and leave a lost generation behind.
But today Jordan’s capacity to deliver necessary services to refugees has surpassed our limits. The Syrian refugees’ future is in their country, not in host countries. But until they are able to return, we must all do right by them. And the fact is that refugees are far from returning. On the contrary, more Syrians are likely to leave their country as the crisis persists. And Jordan will not have the ability or the resources to host and care for more.
We must find a political solution that is consistent with Security Council resolution 2254 (2015) and the step-for-step approach, which offers a path forward. Proposed by Jordan as the basis for engagement with the Syrian Government and coordinated with the United Nations, that approach sets out a road map for incrementally resolving the crisis and dealing with all its consequences. Until then, we will protect our country against any future threats that the crisis could pose to our national security.
Jordan’s case is a microcosm of our entire region. For all our peoples’ immense potential, repeated crises have held back the promise of greater development and prosperity. Our region is a focal point, where some of the most urgent global challenges are converging. How will our world respond? Will we come together in global solidarity to get to the root of the problem — the conflicts and crises that destroy life and hope? Will we work as one to rebuild the lost trust in international action and help those in want?
Our region will continue to suffer until the world helps lift the shadow of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the central issue in the Middle East. No architecture for regional security and development can stand over the burning ashes of that conflict. But seven and a half decades on. it still smoulders. Where are we going? Without clarity on where the future of the Palestinians lies, it will be impossible to converge on a political solution to the conflict. Five million Palestinians live under occupation — no civil rights, no freedom of mobility, no say in their own lives. Yet every United Nations resolution since the beginning of the conflict recognizes the equal right of the Palestinian people to a future of peace, dignity and hope. That is the heart of a two-State solution — the only path to comprehensive, lasting peace.
We can see the Israeli people actively defending and engaging in the expression of their national identity. Yet the Palestinian people are deprived of that same right to express and fulfil their own national identity. The basic requirement for that right is the establishment of their own independent and viable State on the 4 June 1967 lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital, living alongside Israel in peace, security and prosperity. Delaying justice and peace has brought endless cycles of violence — 2023 has been the deadliest for the Palestinian people in the past 15 years. How can people trust in global justice while settlement-building, land confiscations and home demolitions continue? Where is the global solidarity to make United Nations resolutions believable for people in need of our help?
Jerusalem is a flashpoint of global concern. Under the Hashemite custodianship of Islamic and Christian holy sites. Jordan remains committed to safeguarding the city’s identity. But we all share the responsibility of preserving Jerusalem as the city of faith and peace for Islam. Christianity and Judaism. And we must not abandon Palestinian refugees to the forces of despair. Sustainable funding is urgently needed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which provides vital relief, education and health services to millions of Palestinian refugees. It is essential to protecting families, keeping communities stable and preparing young people for productive lives. We must protect young Palestinians from extremists who prey on their frustrations and hopelessness by making sure that they continue to learn at schools under the blue flag of the United Nations, because the alternative will be the black flags of terror, hate and extremism.
We come together here as partners to deal with our challenges and shape a better future. We speak here for our people. We speak for families and the younger generations. We speak for victims of conflict, displacement, hunger, climate-change disasters and more. They are not mere statistics. They are our fellow human beings, sharing our world. Only by restoring trust, only by acting in solidarity will we create the future that all our peoples desire and deserve. We cannot allow a lost generation on our watch.