WFP’s Country Brief - October 2022

Jordan is an upper-middle-income country, with a population of 11 million, 63 percent of whom are below the age of 30. Jordan is also a resource-poor, food-deficit country with dwindling energy and water resources and limited agricultural land. It carries the social, economic and environmental burden of hosting around 676,800 Syrian and 86,000 refugees of other nationalities registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as of October 2022.

The results of WFP’s Food Security Outcome Monitoring (FSOM) of the second quarter of 2022 showed that more than half (58 percent) of refugee households in camps were food insecure and the other half were vulnerable to food insecurity. In Communities, almost three-quarters of refugee households were food insecure (72 percent), and the other quarter were vulnerable to food insecurity. Female-headed households, small households, and households with persons/members with disabilities continued to have disproportionally poor food consumption. According to the Department of Statistics, Jordan’s unemployment rate was 22.6 percent during the second quarter of 2022; with an improvement of 2.2 percentage points compared to the same quarter in 2021. Unemployment is 20.5 percent among men compared to 29.4 percent among women. The youth unemployment rate is 46.1 percent. WFP has been present in Jordan since 1964. Through its Country Strategic Plan (2020-2022), WFP Jordan provides humanitarian assistance to refugees and in line with national priorities, WFP has been rebalancing its portfolio towards Jordan itself by strengthening national capacity to deliver transformative results for residents of Jordan bypassed by economic opportunities, with a focus on social protection, livelihood support and food security governance.