A new report issued by the World Bank showed that the conflict in Syria which has been going since ten years had social and economic repercussions for neighboring countries in particular, namely Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq, where poverty rates increased, especially among women and youth, and labor markets deteriorated and debt burdens increased, other than the increasing restrictions on the ability to access public services such as health care and electricity supply, as this conflict resulted in the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War, and the number of refugees at the height of the crisis exceeded a quarter of the local population in Jordan and Lebanon in addition to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which is the largest concentration of refugees in the world.
In its report entitled "The Repercussions of War-The Regional Implications of the Conflict in Syria", the bank called on "the need to follow a strategy at the region level to confront the conflict crisis in Syria so that it will be a medium-term strategy in the future to address structural problems, and reduce the negative effects of the conflict by strengthening social safety nets and improving everyone’s access to services and investing in the state’s capabilities, in addition to the importance of adopting a regional approach that focuses on cross-border communication, and can achieve better results, because problems and opportunities cross borders in the Levant, yet this approach requires coordinated efforts and commitment that goes beyond National borders by supporting stability at the regional level.
According to the report, this conflict was the reason for the decline in the rate of economic growth in Jordan by 1.6 points, 1.7 in Lebanon, and 1.2 percentage points in Iraq during the past ten years, indicating that the war's repercussions in Syria spread across multiple channels, in light of the decline in trade transit through Syria and the exporting services sector, such as tourism, whereas the additional impact of the trade shock on GDP reached 3.1 percentage points in Jordan and 2.9 percentage points in Lebanon. By comparison, the demographic shock resulting from the arrival of refugees increased the gross domestic product by 0.9 percentage points in both countries through the increase in total demand and supply of labor.
Source (Al-Dustour Newspaper-Jordan, Edited)
