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?
Grace Benton & Rochelle Davis
https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/rochelledavis/refugee-video-project/
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-assessmentsocial-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?