Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - The Concessional Financing Facility (CFF) has announced its first financing effort for two projects targeting refugees and their host communities in Jordan and Lebanon, to the tune of USD 340 million, the Jordanian news outlet Petra reported this Friday (29). The CFF is an initiative of the United Nations, the World Bank and the Islamic Development Bank to provide low-cost credit to Middle East and North Africa countries that are taking in large numbers of refugees.

According to Petra, these two projects will jobs for 200,000 Syrian refugees and enable the recovery of infrastructure of Jordanian municipalities where refugees live. In a statement, the World Bank said it will finance the projects in partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The CFF pulls together funds supplied by supporting countries and multilateral development banks.

The CFF has a goal of raising USD 1 billion in five years as part of a bigger effort of ensuring from USD 3 billion to USD 4 billion worth of affordable loans to Lebanon and Jordan. The idea is to support refugees and host communities with funding for jobs creation, education, healthcare and infrastructure.

In April of this year, eight donor countries or regions pledged to provide USD 140 million to the initiative: Japan, United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Canada, Netherlands, Norway and the European Union. The World Bank committed to supplying an additional USD 100 million for public education in Lebanon, to allow all Lebanese children and Syrian refugee children to stay in school until the end of the 2016-2017 school year.

Conflicts in the region led to the forcible displacement of 15 million people in the last five years as per World Bank data, in the biggest crisis of this kind since World War 2.

*ANBA