Country profilesJordan

Humanitarian profile

Tens of thousands of Palestinains fled to Jordan during the 1967 Middle East war that resulted in Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Jordanians of Palestinian origin, mostly refugees from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, now make up the majority of its seven million people.

Jordan is heavily dependent on aid. Short of water and energy, Jordan has few natural resources and its fragile economy is among the smallest in the Middle East.

Country snapshot

Jordan’s fortunes have been closely tied for a century to those of the Palestinians and to the wider Middle East conflict.

Jordanians of Palestinian origin, mostly refugees from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, now make up the majority of its seven million people.

The country, for decades led by King Hussein and now by his son, King Abdallah, has sought to cooperate with its neighbours and tread a careful path between Western, Israeli, Palestinian and wider Arab interests.

Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab countries to have signed a peace deal with Israel.

Short of water and energy, Jordan has few natural resources and its fragile economy is among the smallest in the Middle East.

Government

Jordan is a constitutional monarchy in which the king has considerable executive power and heads the military.

King Abdallah heads a council of ministers, appoints governments, approves laws and has a veto that only a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament can override; but he can dissolve the lower house.

He did so in 2009, saying this would speed up a 10-year programme of political, social and economic reform which he supports.

He dismissed the cabinet a month later, appointing Samir al-Rifai as prime minister. The king called for early elections by the end of 2010 and the government late scheduled these for November.

The lower house of parliament, the House of Deputies or Majlis al-Nuwaab, is elected every four years, most recently in 2007. A few seats are reserved for women, Christians and Bedouins.

Most deputies were pro-government independents. 

A new electoral law will take the number of seats in the next chamber to 120 from 110, with six of the additions reserved for women.

The king came to the throne in 1999 on the death of his father King Hussein who had ruled Jordan since 1953.

Abdallah’s heir is Crown Prince Hussein, who was born in 1994.

Economy

Jordan’s economy has been undermined by the chronic geopolitical conflict in the region.

It has a worrying shortage of water and has to import most of its energy. Much of its oil came from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, with which Jordan for a long time had good relations, and now Saudi Arabia sells it oil, some of it at preferential rates.

The pro-Western government depends heavily on foreign aid, and the average Jordanian’s income is around $3,300.

King Abdallah has introduced reforms to modernise the economy, eliminating most fuel and farming subsidies, fighting corruption, promoting privatisation and reforming the tax system.

This has attracted some foreign investment and spurred growth before the global recession.

Hoping to integrate more strongly into the global economy, the country joined the World Trade Organisation in 2000.

It has a fast-growing population that adds to economic headaches that include long-term poverty and unemployment, inflation and a large budget deficit. In 2009 revenues were estimated at just under $6 billion but expenditure was closer to $8.4 billion.

Public debt was about two-thirds of GDP that year.

History

Jordan is part of the historical Fertile Crescent region and has seen waves of invaders come and go, from the Hittites and Babylonians to the Turks and the British.

After World War One it became a semi-autonomous part of a British mandate covering much of the Middle East, and in 1946 became an independent kingdom.

Jordan’s pre-independence population were mainly Bedouins loyal to the royal family which had come from Arabia. Today they are outnumbered by descendants of Palestinian refugees from Israel and the West Bank.

In 1948 Jordan, along with several other Arab countries, went to war with the newly created Israel. Waves of Palestinians migrated to the West Bank and Jordan.

Jordan annexed the West Bank – across from it on the west side of the Jordan river border – in 1950.

King Abdallah I was assassinated in 1951 by Palestinian gunman who accused him of colluding with Israel in the carve-up of Palestine.

King Hussein took over the next year and ruled for 46 years, dealing with competing demands on his country from the West and the Soviet bloc, Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs.

Israel took Jerusalem and the West Bank during the Six-Day War in 1967, causing a second influx of Palestinian refugees into Jordan which took their number over a million.

Tensions rose between the old and new inhabitants.

Government forces and Palestinian guerrillas clashed in 1970 in a civil conflict known as Black September, after which the king tried to act as a unifying figure for the country’s two big population blocs.

King Hussein later recognised the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the Palestinian people’s sole legitimate representative but severed links with it in the mid 1980s.

Jordan’s ties with the West were strained when it declined to join the Gulf war to oust Iraq from Kuwait in 1990-91. They improved in the coming years after political parties were legalised in 1992 and talks began with Israel that led to a bilateral peace treaty in 1994.

King Abdallah II moved quickly to reaffirm the peace treaty and ties with the United States when he became monarch in 1999, even though these are unpopular at home. He backed the U.S.-led overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Jordan took in thousands of Iraqi refugees but the normally peaceful country itself became the target of Iraq-based Islamic militants in 2005 when suicide bombers killed some 60 people in Amman hotels.

Abdallah dismissed the parliament and government in 2009, saying this would speed reforms.

Legal snapshot

The legal system is a mixture of Islamic law and French legal codes.

Jordan has not accepted compulsory International Court of Justice jurisdiction. It has signed up to the International Criminal Court.

The Court of Cassation (Supreme Court) is the highest judicial authority. A special High Tribunal can review legislation.

The king appoints and may dismiss all judges by decree.

Military courts handle security cases and economic crimes outside the jurisdiction of the civil legal system.

Jordan received an overall “very weak” rating from the U.S.-based non-governmental organisation Global Integrity in its most recent report measuring anti-corruption measures and government accountability.