Jordan

Jordan hosted over 656,000 Syrian refugees in 2017, although authorities closed the Syrian-Jordanian border to new entries following a border attack on Jordanian soldiers in June 2016. Thousands of Syrians remained stranded in remote border areas with limited access to humanitarian aid. The government curtailed freedom of expression, detaining and bringing charges against activists, dissidents, and journalists, sometimes under broad and vague provisions of the country’s counterterrorism law or electronic crimes law. In March 2016, Jordanian authorities proposed sweeping amendments to the country’s association law that, if implemented, will hamper the ability of NGOs to form and operate. Jordan discriminates against women by not allowing them to pass Jordanian citizenship to their children. In March 2016, Jordan launched the Comprehensive National Plan for Human Rights, a 10-year initiative that calls for changes to numerous laws, policies, and practices. Positive changes included a commitment to allow suspects the right to a lawyer at the time of arrest and to move jurisdiction over crimes of torture and ill-treatment from the police court to regular courts.