Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - The number of Syrian students at Jordan's higher education institutions has reached 5,000, according to Assistant Secretary General of the Association of Arab Universities (AAU), Dr. Abdul Rahim Hunaiti.

Hunaiti's remarks came during a coordination meeting at the AAU's headquarters in Amman on Wednesday to partners in the project to support education of Syrian refugee students financed by the European Commission (EC) within the framework of Erasmus Plus program.

"Jordan currently hosts some 1.3 million Syrians, 655,000 of whom are registered with the United Nations," he said, adding the kingdom has allocated large proportion of its budget to spend on Syrian students, whether in higher, or public education sectors.

He called on the international community to shoulder its responsibilities in support of Jordan for hosting a large number of Syrian brothers because of the situation in Syria.

The project includes Lebanon, Iraqi Kurdistan and Jordan in cooperation with Turkey, Germany and the Union of Mediterranean Universities.

On Jordan's efforts, Hunaiti expressed his thanks to the Ministry of Higher Education for its contribution to solving the problem of the many undocumented Syrian students by accepting them at Jordanian universities and giving them sufficient time to obtain their documents due to the circumstances in Syria.

Hunaiti said the AAU will continue to support Syrian students, and will work in cooperation with Jordanian and Arab higher education institutions to provide what they need to continue their academic life in a scientific environment incubating creativity and excellence.

The participants stressed the importance of providing a suitable educational environment for Syrian students to develop their scientific, and technical skills in line with the requirements of the local, regional and international labor market.