Voices from the Oxford Human Rights Festival: Little Amal visits

Photo: Cathrine Brun

Oxford Human Rights Planning Committee member and CENDEP postgraduate student Victoria Greenwood shares her reflections on the UK Nationality and Borders Bill and Little Amal’s visit to the ‘dreaming spires’ of Oxford.

Elizabeth Laskar, Festival Coordinator writes:

The reflection below has been written by MA student Victoria Greenwood after the visit of a giant puppet called ‘Amal’, who visited Oxford on Tuesday 26 October 2021. The historic city was packed with people from all generations and backgrounds, all following Amal from street to street - everyone wanted a glimpse of her. The spectacle was more than just a puppet show: it was powerful in that her presence and movements embodied not only her story but the story of all displaced children and the inequalities within the city of Oxford and the institutions it holds. It was moving and deeply thought provoking.

As we plan to celebrate our 20th festival in 2022 it’s a timely piece to help ‘kick off’ the discourse on the festival theme of ‘movement’ and human rights. 

Considering ‘Refugeeness’ in Jordanian Policy: Priorities, Ambiguities and Hierarchies

Emily Joel is a graduate in Sociology and Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, with a research focus on forced displacement. She is also a keen advocate for improving opportunities available to refugee and asylum seeking communities. Emily recently worked with CENDEP after securing a student placement wherein she contributed to the ‘Competing Priorities’ project, centred on coherence and competition within migration, education and employment policies in Jordan. Emily writes:

Analysing a country's migration policies is instrumental to understanding the nation's wider approach to forced displacement. In the Jordanian context, what is equally as significant is what - and who - is missing from policy discourse. 

Today, Jordan hosts the second highest number of refugees per capita in the world (UNHCR, 2021a). This includes approximately 2 million UNWRA-registered Palestinians and a government estimate of over 1.4 million Syrians (approximately 670,000 being UNHCR-registered) (UNHCR, 2021b). Jordan is also host to over 89,000 refugees and asylum-seekers from more than 52 other countries, including over 67,000 Iraqis (UNHCR, 2021c), 14,000 Yemenis, 6,000 Sudanese and 700 Somalis (UNHCR, 2021d).

Having a long history of accommodating forced migrants, Jordan is widely recognised as a welcoming host-state to refugees. However, this stereotype is significantly problematised by Jordan’s case-by-case approach to refugee-hosting. In this approach, policy absences, ambiguities – and indeed, comprehensiveness – act as strategic socioeconomic tools, where levels of policy attention are determined by the perceived costs and benefits of prioritising specific needs and communities. In the contemporary context, this has birthed a discourse of migration and employment policies which cohere in prioritising Syrian refugees, whilst excluding other refugee groups.