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AMMAN — With notable success in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Jordan is gearing up for the implementation of the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the upcoming 15 years.

Speaking at the opening of a three-day workshop discussing means of implementing the SDGs on Tuesday, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Jordan Edward Kallon said Jordan has made significant strides in achieving the MDGs over the past 15 years, particularly in the fields of education, environment and healthcare, yet more needs to be done to achieve targets related to poverty reduction, employment and gender parity.

“The 2030 agenda, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets, is a plan [for] action for people to end poverty in all forms; an agenda for the planet, our common home; and an agenda for shared prosperity that also seeks to strengthen universal peace…,” he said at the meeting, attended by HH Princess Dina Mired and a large number of officials and diplomats.

Meanwhile, the UN official noted that regional unrest, scarce resources, the global financial crisis of 2008, the “Arab Spring” and the continuous influx of refugees into Jordan has hindered some of the progress made in achieving the MDGs.

Kallon said the past two years witnessed consultations with 3,000 Jordanian men and women over the SDGs, in addition to over 50,000 votes for the MY World survey, where participants rated what they thought are their top development priorities.

As the new development strategy pledges to “leave no one behind”, Kallon said the UN is ready to support Jordan in achieving the SDGs, including mainstreaming, policy integration, the design of policies, and programming and monitoring results.

For his part, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Imad Fakhoury highlighted Jordan’s commitment to incorporating the MDGs into national strategies and plans since their announcement in 2000, adding that the vast majority of the targets were either accomplished or marked by significant progress.

For the new SDGs, which were incorporated into Jordan’s 2025 vision, “transparent and comprehensive” consultations with all stakeholders, including civil society organisations, women, young people and the private sector, have taken place to ensure inclusiveness of development planning and gains, the minister said.

He added that the implementation of the 2030 targets will be carried out in partnership with UN agencies in Jordan and all consulted stakeholders, calling for intensifying efforts to spread social awareness about the SDGs.

Furthermore, Fakhoury suggested mapping SDGs with national development priorities in order to highlight commonalities and bridge gaps.

Environment Minister Taher Shakhshir, who is vice president of the Higher National Committee for Sustainable Development, highlighted the new agenda’s emphasis on the environment.

He reviewed Jordan’s efforts in addressing climate change, noting that the Kingdom needs the support of donors and the international community to reduce emissions by 12.5 per cent.

He cited the impact of regional crises on Jordan’s ability to address climate change effects, highlighting the need to build partnerships.

As the new SDGs encourage national ownership of the goals, all national institutions have to play a key role in adapting the new development framework to local contexts, said Jordanian National Commission for Women (JNCW) Secretary General Salma Nims.

She added that increasing the government’s allocations for the commission fourfold to enhance its capacities and to carry out nationwide consultations with civil society and the private sector will expand its role in the implementation of the SDGs.

The JNCW, Nims noted, was engaged in the process of preparation for the Jordan 2025 vision and the mainstreaming of gender in the Government Executive Plan for 2016-2018. 

The commission is also engaged in ensuring the gender-responsive implementation of the 2030 agenda.

King Abdullah II Fund for Development Director Saeb Al Hasan highlighted the importance of sharing information about the new goals with young people across the country and building their capacities in order to play an active part in the implementation process.

He called for capitalising on innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as promoting values of tolerance and acceptance through cross-cultural programmes.

Jordan Chamber of Industry Vice President Mazen Tantash highlighted private-public partnership as key for achieving the goals, citing the private sector’s role in reducing poverty and unemployment rates.

AMMAN — The Jordan Bar Association (JBA) on Tuesday decided to summon lawyers who are reportedly breaking the syndicate’s law by personally profiting from road accidents’ insurance.

According to the JBA, a number of lawyers buy car accident reports from people in order to sue insurance companies and take the money for themselves.

The JBA’s by-law prohibits “purchasing rights subject to disputes”, according to JBA Vice President Rami Shawawrah.

“The association summoned the lawyers found involved in such practices and will refer them to a disciplinary committee,” he told The Jordan Times on Tuesday, stressing that these acts violate the profession’s code of conduct.

He noted that the JBA is cooperating with the Jordan Insurance Federation (JIF) to track down the violators.

“Cases of lawyers who purchase car accident reports for their own interests are rare, but we are committed to stopping them,” said Shawawrah.

By the end of July 2015, 72,290 traffic accidents were recorded in the Kingdom resulting in 338 deaths and 6,102 injuries, according to Public Security Department figures.

Around 8 per cent of the 1.42 million vehicles registered in the Kingdom are involved in causing traffic accidents each year, JIF President Ali Wazani said in previous remarks to The Jordan Times.

Wazani noted that the number of cars involved in accidents is around 114,000 on a yearly basis.

AMMAN — The political, social and intellectual “indifference” of Arabic speakers towards their language puts the once historically renowned language at the risk of dying, according to Tunisian sociologist Altahir Labib.

At a lecture organised by the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation on Monday evening, Labib noted that discussions of linguistic topics are no longer an issue of public interest and are nowadays limited to intellectuals and those studying the language.

He attributed Arabic speakers’ lack of interest in their language to a number of factors, including their weak awareness of the correlation between politics and language, as well as the “geopolitical war” among languages.

Labib cited some “superficial and misleading” statistics that depict an internationally advanced status of the Arabic language among other languages, without specifying which dialect of Arabic.

He explained that some studies claim Arabic to rank fourth internationally when considering its 450 million speakers, while another states that Arabic is the second internationally in terms of the number of countries speaking it.

The issue present in these studies, according to Labib, is that they do not recognise the differences between standard and standardised Arabic, in addition to a wide array of dialects, some of which are completely different from one Arab country to another.

However, the linguist highlighted the role of a “political willingness” to revive the language, giving the example of Hebrew as a language that died at some point in history but was revived for the purpose of uniting Jewish settlers who came from several parts of the world to Palestine.

He added that the spread of sciences in other languages has limited the use of the Arabic to the humanities.

This gap was accompanied by an incapability to develop the language through translation and Arabisation of foreign words.

Labib said thousands of languages have died, although some of them were written languages.

There are around 6,000 languages in the world, with estimates that 50 to 90 per cent of them will die before the end of this century, according to the researcher, who explained that the death of a language does not necessarily mean that its speaker will stop using it. 

Although the Koran guarantees the survival of the Arabic language, this protection might remain limited to those who engage in religious studies, Labib said.

“I do not see any political will to safeguard the language… and it saddens me that those celebrating the flourishing of Arabic are disturbing it as it lies on its deathbed.”

AMMAN — HRH Prince Feisal, special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff, on Tuesday received a US delegation from the US Air War College, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

At the meeting, attended by senior Jordan Armed Forces-Arab Army officers, Prince Feisal and the delegates discussed ways to enhance cooperation among military institutions and colleges, exchanging expertise, and regional and international developments.

AMMAN — The Lower House on Tuesday referred a ruling by the Law Interpretation Bureau on the jurisdiction over appointments at the two Houses of Parliament to its legal committee for examination.

In its interpretation of Article 12 of the 2016 State Budget Law, the bureau kept the jurisdiction of the Council of Ministers, prime minister and finance minister in deciding the budgets of the two Houses of Parliament.

But some MPs said the bureau’s ruling contained a suspicion of unconstitutionality, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Speaking at the House session, Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour called for referring the ruling to the Constitutional Court for an opinion.

AMMAN — As a response to an ongoing sit-in on campus to protest tuition fee hikes, the University of Jordan's (UJ) president and board of trustees met with some protesters on Monday to find a solution. 

At the meeting, students and university officials agreed to form a committee to review suggested and suitable solutions to end the protest and meet demonstrators' demands within the capabilities of the university.

The students, whose protest entered its 10th day on Tuesday, want the university to reverse a decision taken some three years ago to raise tuition fees in the parallel, post-graduate and international programmes.

One credit hour for the parallel programme costs JD180, students said, noting that before the decision it cost around JD80. 

Activist Ahmad Mustafa told The Jordan Times that the UJ administration offered to transfer parallel programme students with a general point average of 3.5 out of 4 and above to the less costly regular programme, provided that the protest ends. 

Mustafa said the protesters did not accept these terms and continued the sit-in on Monday evening, with several media representatives and students from other universities joining them.

“Students were told that the protest will be dispersed by force, and some campus security personnel told students the university will not be responsible if any protesters were attacked or injured after 10pm,” he claimed.

Alaa Hajjeh, another protester, said the suggestions by the board of trustees do not meet the demands of students. 

“The protest brought students from different parties together — leftists, Islamists, and others… We have been protesting the decision since June 2014, we never stopped,” Hajjeh told The Jordan Times.  

He stressed that students will not end the protest until the UJ administration reverses the decision to raise tuition fees.

UJ President Ekhleif Tarawneh said the committee formed on Monday includes the president, students from several parties, members from the board of trustees and the finance department and academics.

The committee, Tarawneh said, will review the needs and costs of all majors, starting from the post-graduate programme, to find a solution to the issue.

“Students who attended the meeting agreed to our terms, but shortly after that, other protesters refused the conditions and suggestions and continued to protest,” he told The Jordan Times.

Tarawneh added that the timing of the protest is inappropriate and that many political parties are promoting their ideologies through the demonstration.

“Reviewing the decision is something I have been demanding since 2012. I was happier than the students when the committee was formed,” he said. 

Tarawneh noted that no measures will be taken against the protesters as long as they are protesting “peacefully”. 

AMMAN — The army said on Tuesday that Border Guards received 104 Syrian refugees during the previous 48 hours.

The troops transferred the refugees to shelters and camps, and Royal Medical Services personnel treated the injured, according to an army statement carried by the Jordan News Agency, Petra.

AMMAN — Construction on a project to convey and collect treated wastewater for the irrigation of 5,000 dunums of fodder has started south of the capital, according to a senior government official.

Under the project's first phase, a total of 1,200 dunums of land will be planted with fodder and irrigated with treated wastewater from the south Amman wastewater treatment plant, which currently generates 7,000 cubic metres of treated wastewater, Water Minister Hazem Nasser said in a statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times on Tuesday.

A pipeline for transferring treated wastewater from the plant is under construction, as well as an artificial pond for holding 30,000 cubic metres of the treated wastewater, according to the minister.

Fifteen projects for planting maize for fodder and berseem clover will be implemented under the first phase, Nasser said.

The fodder projects will support local communities by creating agricultural investment projects as well as improving the area's environmental conditions, Nasser highlighted.

The remainder of the treated wastewater generated from the plant will be transferred to the Jordan Valley for the irrigation of certain crops, according to the ministry.

The plant is located in Jizah, south of the capital, the ministry's spokesperson, Omar Salameh told The Jordan Times, highlighting that the plant started official operation in October last year.

Constructed at a cost of $121 million, the plant's treatment capacity stands at 52,000 cubic metres per day and serves 600,000 people in south Amman. 

AMMAN — Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh is scheduled to participate in the fifth joint ministerial meeting for foreign ministers in the Gulf Cooperation Council to be held on Wednesday, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

The meeting, scheduled to be held at the headquarters of the council’s secretariat general in Riyadh, will review joint work between the council and the Kingdom, and ministers will also discuss regional and international issues of interest to the region.

Also on Wednesday, Judeh is scheduled to attend the Arab ministerial committee meeting on ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, to be held at the general secretariat of the Arab League in Cairo.

AMMAN — A three-year-old child died and seven people were injured when their vehicle overturned in Karak on Tuesday, according to a Civil Defence Department (CDD) statement.

CDD cadres administered first aid to the injured and took them to Karak Public Hospital where they were listed in fair condition.

Also on Tuesday, two people died and four were injured in a two-vehicle collision in Mafraq and CDD cadres took them to Mafraq Public Hospital. Moreover, six people suffered smoke inhalation in a house fire in Amman’s Bayader area.

CDD firefighters controlled the blaze and the injured were taken to the hospital, where they were listed in fair condition.