Khaberni - The World Food Program, in its assessment of the 2023–2027 Country Strategic Plan recently published, said that Jordan faces a range of humanitarian and developmental challenges due to its location at the heart of a highly turbulent region, which suffers from prolonged conflicts and chronic emerging crises.
The assessment clarified that the escalation in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon during the last year has exacerbated the regional instability and increased the pressures on Jordan, which seeks to maintain its internal stability amidst the ongoing fallout of surrounding crises, according to Al-Ghad.
Despite these conditions, the Jordanian economy recorded a modest but stable growth of 2.9% in 2023 and 2.5% in 2024, "although the reclassification of Jordan in July 2023 from a high middle-income country to a lower middle-income country reflects the ongoing economic pressures".
According to the assessment, unemployment rates still represent a fundamental challenge, as Jordan ranks 122 out of 148 countries on the global gender gap index, and 11.1% of the population aged over five years suffer from one form of disability or functional difficulties, highlighting the necessity of enhancing comprehensive services.
The World Food Program noted that Jordan is one of the largest host countries for refugees relative to its population, with over 2.39 million registered Palestinian refugees, most of them living outside camps, in addition to more than 433,375 refugees registered with the Commission, including 376,312 Syrians as of last September.
The assessment confirmed that the fall of Assad's regime in December 2024 led to an increase in the pace of voluntary return of Syrian refugees from Jordan to their home country.
It mentioned that despite policies directed towards the integration of Syrians, vulnerability remains high; 67% of them live below the poverty line, while 9 out of 10 refugees resort to borrowing to secure their basic needs such as rent, food, and medicine. The assessment also points to high rates of food insecurity, where 83% of refugees living in local communities and 53% of camp residents suffer from it, and the assessment views "that initial return trends may contribute to alleviating pressure on public services".
Regarding food security, Jordan is classified as a food-importing country and suffers from increasing fragility in food systems due to water scarcity, land degradation, and repeated climate shocks. Projections show a further 30% decrease in water availability per capita by 2040, which will reflect on agricultural production, food security, rural employment, and social systems, necessitating – according to the assessment – the implementation of stronger projects capable of adapting to climate change.
Nutritional challenges in Jordan include multiple forms of malnutrition, ranging from micronutrient deficiencies to rising obesity and non-communicable diseases linked to dietary patterns, with 7.4% of children under five suffering from stunting, and 9.2% from overweight, while rates of anemia among women of childbearing age rise to 37.7%, in addition to a high obesity rate.
On the financing front, the report indicated that 75% of humanitarian funding has been disbursed since 2021 through the regional refugee plan, which has seen a significant decrease in financing needs by 43%, from 1.6 billion dollars in 2021 to less than a billion dollars in 2025.
Despite stable funding levels at an average of 33% annually until 2024, the plan faces a sharp shortage in funding for the year 2025, where funding levels did not exceed 8% until the end of last September.
The World Food Program was the largest recipient of funding in 2021 and the second largest in 2022 within the regional refugee plan.
The assessment showed that official development assistance funding constituted 7.5% of the total national income in 2021 and 4.1% in 2022, ratios that align with regional trends in Iraq and Lebanon, with the exception of Syria, which relies much more heavily on these aids.
The current five-year Country Strategic Plan was approved in November 2022, following a series of previous plans, including a transitional plan (2018–2020) and a three-year strategic plan (2020–2022).
The World Food Program has been operating in Jordan since 1964; it gradually stopped providing direct food assistance in 2007, before resuming it again in 2012 in response to the influx of Syrian refugees.
