Amman - In 2013, Nour Issa and Ahmed Hakim, both in their 20s, fled Sudan's war-torn Darfur region to Khartoum, and then flew to Jordan.
But last December, hundreds of Sudanese refugees, including Issa and Hakim, were arrested and taken to Amman's Queen Alia International Airport for deportation. The move came after the men and women, mostly from Darfur, held protests for weeks outside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) headquarters in Jordan against perceived discrimination.
The UN agency contested the government's decision, but Jordanian authorities reportedly said that asylum conditions did not apply in these cases, saying that the group came to Jordan seeking medical treatment. During protests at the UNHCR offices, though, several people told Al Jazeera that they were seeking refugee status. Jordan is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, despite acting as host to more than two million refugees.
Hakim, who was briefly jailed upon his return to Sudan, says that he and other returnees deported from Jordan are now being detained and pursued by Sudanese authorities, leading them to again seek asylum abroad.