On Monday, 29 July, the Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD) hosted representatives of the Netherland Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), one of ARDD’s key partners in supporting refugees, IDPs, and host communities. Amid funding reductions and geopolitical instability, the visit underscored the value of locally-led work and the significance of strong relations between local organizations and international donors. ARDD emphasized the importance of amplifying the voices of local communities and highlighted how frontline implementation generates knowledge that must reach the institutional level, through research, legal aid work, and advocacy reports that have, as one MFA representative noted, also informed Netherlands policymaking on migration and displacement. Strong networks, including JONAF, allow ARDD to rapidly consolidate input from local partners and translate it into concrete advocacy, most recently contributing to recommendation papers for the Jordan Response Plan 2027-2029. The delegation also explored ARDD’s MFA-funded partnership with Independent Diplomat (ID), which has helped ARDD reach global advocacy platforms like the Global Refugee Forum and access capacity-building and advocacy training, a collaboration made possible by MFA support.
To ground the conversation in lived realities, ARDD invited community leaders from Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria to share their experience directly with the delegation. Each leader spoke to a pressing issue facing their community: the impossible trade-off between protection status and the right to work, collapsing healthcare coverage, a generation unable to access higher education, and a resettlement pipeline too narrow to offer real hope. Behind every issue, the same forces surfaced: devastating funding cuts and the halt of UNHCR registration, leaving hundreds of thousands in a legal and humanitarian crisis. As Samia Adam, a community leader from Sudan, powerfully captured it, saying “refugees in Jordan are like a bouquet trapped in a closed box, full of life and potential, but unable to flourish or see the sun.” Community Leader
