JORDAN. Madaba. February 18, 2021. Syrian refugees surviving the cold winter months living in an informal tent settlement on agricultural land on the outskirts of Madaba, Jordan.

Marginalized Jordanian minorities are more likely to experience poverty and gaps in services. Meanwhile, 86% of registered Syrian refugees live below Jordan’s poverty line. The situation of refugee children in Jordan remains precarious, with household savings depleted and employment challenging. Many refugee families rely on international assistance to meet their needs.

The Jordanian Constitution guarantees the right to basic social and health services for Jordanian citizens, and maintains relatively high expenditures on social sectors. However, there is no social protection law, relying on programs embedded into other plans. These programs range from subsidies to a cash transfer scheme, tax exemptions and social services.

Jordan has always been defined by its neighbors and by what it's not. I first began covering Jordan in the early '90s when King Hussein was walking that tightrope between aid from the West and support for Saddam. You could still see the bullet holes in some places from the civil war with Palestinian fighters in the 1970s. The peace agreement that King Hussein signed with Israel hasn't led to a real peace. It's obvious in the camps in Jordan where generations of Palestinians have been born, handing down the keys their parents and grandparents kept from their homes when they were expelled.

The challenge now for King Abdullah is to remain relevant. With the Gulf normalizing relations with Israel there's not much need to support Jordan as a front-line state holding back Israeli expansion because that battle has pretty much been lost. King Abdullah now is struggling amid Saudi pressure to retain custodianship of the holy sites in Jerusalem - the main claim to legitimacy for Jordan's ruling Hashemites. The king and queen are criticized for not being in touch with the Jor