MIDDLE EAST EYE (3/7/2022)
Before he fled Sudan, Ahmed was an award-winning runner. Now, as an undocumented asylum seeker in Jordan, he mostly runs away from the police.
“But I’m not a criminal,” he says as he opens his backpack to show his seven medals – gold, silver and bronze – won at junior championships in three different countries. His only crime, he says, was to travel on a medical treatment visa to Jordan, where he hoped to apply for asylum.
Since January 2019, Jordanian authorities have prevented the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) from registering as asylum seekers anyone who enters the country for the purposes of medical treatment, tourism, study or work – effectively barring non-Syrians from being recognised as refugees.
“The medical treatment visa was my only way of leaving Sudan,” says Ahmed, who fled the Blue Nile region in 2019 when he turned 18 and now lives in an apartment with other Sudanese men in a suburb of Amman, Jordan’s capital.
“I ran away from injustice, from war and from discrimination, but I’m treated like a criminal here just because I want to live in a safe place,” he tells Middle East Eye.
The Jordanian cabinet’s decision to freeze UNHCR registrations has left thousands like Ahmed without documentation or access to humanitarian aid and basic services. Undocumented and considered to be in the country illegally, many are at risk of deportation (…)
Read more: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jordan-other-refugees-limbo-frozen-asylum-claims