Human Rights Watch (HRW) on July 21 called upon the Jordanian government to immediately reverse a policy that mandates displacing a Bedouin community from the Petra area, a UN-recognized World Heritage Site, through forcible evictions. Human Rights Watch deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, Adam Coogle, stated:

Jordan can't claim to protect Petra's living heritage while sidelining the community that embodies it. It should work, together with UNESCO, to uphold the rights of the Bedul and ensure their full participation in the shaping of the future of the site they've called home for generations.

According to the report, the government is forcibly evicting the Bedul, one of several Bedouin communities living in the Petra area in the southern part of Jordan. In targeting the community for eviction, Jordanian authorities are violating their economic, social, and cultural rights, and their rights to housing.

Residents have reported that the suspending of water services has required community members to travel to Um Sayhoun, a village three kilometers away, to access drinking water, or else collect water from a polluted stream used by local restaurants to discard waste. The cut-off has also caused damage to residents' crops, requiring them to spend money on food they would not need to purchase otherwise.

After UNESCO designated Petra a World Heritage Site in 1985, the forced relocation of the Bedul began as a supposed measure to conserve the site's archeological zone. The present wave of evictions started in late 2024, when authorities targeted approximately 25 families living in caves and tents on the site's Stooh al-Nabi Harun Mountain. Residents say that the housing complex the authorities plan to relocate them to is in an isolated area with unreliable public transport, making visiting family and markets difficult.

Fares al-Braizat, chair of the Board of Commissioners of the Petra Development & Tourism Regional Authority (PDTRA), the national institution dedicated to managing the archeological zone and developing the area, portrayed the evictions as a component of a plan "to enhance the rule of law" and remove "sources of threat" to the visitors at the global tourist site.

The Bedul tribe is recognized by UNESCO as part of Petra's living heritage. HRW urged Jordanian authorities, UN agencies, and other actors to formally recognize the Bedu as indigenous people, affording them rights in accordance with international standards.

From JURIST, July 22. Used with permission.