Grace Benton & Rochelle Davis

Grace Benton & Rochelle Davis

https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/rochelledavis/refugee-video-project/

Sample Lesson Plan: Urban Refugees in Jordan

This lesson plan is geared toward secondary school students. It helps define what is an urban refugee and the challenges of providing assistance to them given that they are spread out in large areas. It also helps detail some of the impact on the local communities. The unit is centered around reports created by institutions or academics concerned with urban refugees in Jordan. There is also supplemental material around specific issues faced by urban refugees, governments, local communities, and the humanitarian aid community. This unit is built on a way of speaking and looking at refugees that defines them as in need of “humanitarian aid” and to be taken care of by others; urban refugees sometimes defy that way of looking at them because they weave themselves into the fabric of the city in various ways.

Warm Up and Definitions: What are “Urban Refugees”?

http://www.unhcr.org/pages/4b0e4cba6.html

How are urban refugees different from those in camps? What issues do they face? What issues do governments and aid organizations face in trying to address their needs?

Reports dealing with Urban Refugees in Jordan:

Iraqi refugees in Jordan (2011):

http://ccas.georgetown.edu/urbanrefugees/cairoamman/

See report specific to Jordan.

Syrian refugees in Jordan (2013):

2 reports:

http://reliefweb.int/report/jordan/syrian-refugees-urban-jordan

http://ccas.georgetown.edu/story/1242735967441.html

These reports describe the issues faced by refugees in urban settings in terms of basic needs. What do they also try to do in terms of policy proposals?

What other issues do you think that refugees face as they try to lead “normal lives”? What about issues like getting married, going out, listening to or making music, going to university, etc? Why do you think these reports ignore these subjects?

Other specific issues:

Providing Aid – Dignity and Humanitarianism

ATM Cash Assistance: Does it work? – on the switch from providing food aid to cash assistance to Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria (circa 2009)

http://www.fmreview.org/en/urban-displacement/42-43.pdf

What are the benefits and limits of this program? If you were living in a city, what would you rather receive?

Health Care

http://ccas.georgetown.edu/urbanrefugees/cairoamman/

See report specific to healthcare in Jordan.

How do you understand the government of Jordan’s response to the influx of refugees and the need to provide them with health care? What lessons are to be learned from such a decision?

Social Capital

“With a little help from our friends: a participatory assessment of social capital among refugees in Jordan” by Noel Calhoun, UNHCR, 2010.

http://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/little-help-our-friends-participatory-assessment-social-capital-among-refugees-jordan

Why might an aid agency want to understand this subject? What are the conclusions of this study? How can we learn from it? And what do you think can explain the differences about why certain people (age, origin, gender) might have different relationships than others?

Legal Issues

“Implications of the Geopolitical and Economic Constraints for Providing Legal Aid to Refugees in Jordan” by Samar Muhareb. 2013.

http://www.ardd-jo.org/articles?ID=13

Written by a lawyer who advocates for refugee rights, this piece addresses the many legal issues that arise with the existence of large refugee populations in a country. Whether countries are signatories to the 1951 Convention or not (Jordan is not), is it reasonable for a country flooded with refugees to allow them to work? What then happens to those unemployed in the host country? What are some of the crucial issues that Jordan is facing? What seem to be some solutions that the author and others are proposing? What creative solutions might be possible? What are the advantages and disadvantages of those solutions?