My comments

The question is: Why did the UNHCR agree to sign an agreement and accept the obligation to find a solution for the refugees within period of 6 months with the Jordanian government while the same UNHCR refused to sign the same agreement within 12 months with the government of Lebanon?

What make this question important and show’s the strange behavior of the UNHCR are these facts:

• Jordan is bigger than Lebanon. If you look in the atlas you'll see that Lebanon is smaller than any Jordanian province! That mean's of course that: Jordan is able to host more refugees than Lebanon.

• Economically, Jordan has natural resources like gas and phosphate. While Lebanon has nothing!

• There are also more agricultural lands in Jordan than in Lebanon.

• If we look at the history of the 2 countries in the past 30 years we will see that Lebanon spent 15 years in very destructive and bloody civil war and also a long war with Israel that occupied south of Lebanon for years. While the last war in Jordan was with Israel at 1973 for 6 or 7 days!!! Lebanon was a war zone still in 1998.

This is a very simple over view of the 2 countries. If we look at the situation of the refugees in the 2 countries before 1998 we can see that the situation of refugees in Jordan was much better than in Lebanon!

The refugees enjoyed protection in Jordan for years even before that agreement. I have never found a report about any refugees being deported out of Jordan or getting killed in Prison or in the streets of Jordan. While the refugees of Lebanon never ever enjoyed the protection until this very day!

Lebanon broke the record in the number of the deported refugees and asylum seekers not only in the region but also in the world according to the Amnesty international reporters. Also there were many reports about refugees and asylum seekers being killed in the streets and jails in Lebanon. And I didn’t find even one report about that in Jordan.

This would indicate that the refugees in Lebanon need an agreement more than the refugees in Jordan. The situation for refugees and asylum seekers in Jordan is very good and certainly much better than Lebanon. Another strange thing about that agreement, it changed nothing for the situation of the refugees in Jordan! If you notice there are 3 points in that article Jordan-UNHCR agreement on refugees.

“institutionalises procedures already in place regarding those who are seeking asylum and refugees in Jordan,” said Kamal Abdul Rahman, officer in charge of the UNHCR branch in Amman.

Ala’ Abdelat, director of the Department of Refugee Affairs at the Ministry of Interior, said that although the Kingdom rejects the principle of local integration, it has traditionally allowed six months for asylum seekers to either find a third country in which to resettle or has tried to alleviate the expense of repatriation to the country of origin by forgiving residence fees and exit taxes incurred for the duration of stay in the country.

As you see (what is underlined), the agreement or the Memorandum, what ever it's name was or will be, did nothing for the refugees! Every thing mentioned in the agreement was exist before! And for some strange reason the UNHCR agreed to commit itself to an obligation that never existed before in the history of the UNHCR for 50 years. I never found or read about such deal to solve the problem of refugees in any country with any limited period of time and even to take legal responsibility if it failed to solve the problem, read this please:

According to Mr. Abdelat, the memorandum with UNHCR will allow the same treatment to asylum seekers recognised as refugees by the UNHCR, which will bear the responsibility for finding third countries in which to resettle refugees.

The UNHCR has tried for 50 years to solve the problems of the refugees in the world, and UNHCR accepted the obligation to solve the problem of the refugees in Jordan within 6 months! So why it didn't do that in all the countries in the world?!

I think it's funny that the UNHCR needed to sign a memorandum to bear the responsibility toward the refugees! Didn't UNHCR bear the responsibility for the refugees before that memorandum at 1998 so the government of Jordan pushed the UNHCR to bear the responsibility? What is the UNHCR doing in the world? Does each government need to shout in the face of the people of UNHCR to push them to bear their true responsibility toward the refugees? I know that UNHCR is refusing to bear that responsibility toward the refugees in their care in Lebanon (like I explained before) and refused to sign an agreement with the government of Lebanon to solve the problem of the refugees within 1 year!

It's possible to understand the motive of UNHCR to sign such an agreement with the government of Jordan if there are any obstacles facing UNHCR, preventing UNHCR from practicing its job there or if there was a need for urgent action from the government of Jordan. Strangely, nothing of that exists in 1998. No wars, no disasters happened at that year or many years before that year. The last war happened in Iraq (the eastern neighbor of Jordanian) happened in 1991!!!

With all of these details the question: ‘Why UNHCR agreed to sign such agreement and accepted the obligation to find solution for the refugees within period fro 6 months with the Jordanian government while the same UNHCR refused to sign the same agreement within 12 months with government of Lebanon?’ Still unanswered! you can contact the UNHCR in Lebanon to ask them about the answer using this email: lebbe@unhcr.ch or you can keep reading if you like to find the answer.