Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - (VOA)conveyed statements from Edward Kallon, the U.N.’s resident humanitarian coordinator for Jordan, calling on the international community to boost its support for the Hashemite kingdom in order to forestall a potential domestic backlash against the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees that have flooded into the country over the last three years:

“A hungry Syrian child or a Jordanian child is a hungry child,” he said. “There is no way how we are going to discriminate. … We should try to enhance social cohesion rather than creating sensitivities that result in resentment, which is not going to help our total humanitarian effort in Jordan.”

Kallon says the situation in Syria is not getting better and refugees will be living in Jordan for a very long time. He says the international community must come to the table and share the burden assumed by Jordan and other countries of asylum.

Only about one quarter of a U.N. appeal for $4.2 billion – all to be delivered in 2014 – has been fulfilled.

The United States for its part earlier sealed an agreement this week to extend loan guarantees to Amman:

“The United States’ loan guarantee will allow Jordan to access affordable financing from international capital markets, ensuring that Jordan can continue to provide critical services to its citizens as it enacts trans-formative economic reforms and hosts 600,000 refugees who have fled the violence inside Syria,” the State Department announced. “The loan guarantee agreement is designed to support specific economic reforms the Government of Jordan is pursuing to promote the economic stability and growth needed to provide opportunity and prosperity to the Jordanian people.”

Observers had feared in early 2013 that the country was entering a cycle of instability – where a poor economy drove unrest, and unrest prevented economic fixes from taking hold – but angry demonstrations had eventually tapered off. Recent months have however seen a spike in tensions, and last week there was a wave of violence in southern Jordan that included the death of a civilian apparently at the hands of security forces.