Ahead of a donor conference in Geneva Tuesday, rich countries are being urged to resettle just five percent of Syrian refugees by the end of 2015.
Some 30 human rights groups and aid organizations, including Amnesty International, Oxfam and the Danish Refugee Council, have signed a letter stressing the need for greater resettlement efforts.
Currently, only 7,000 Syrian refugees have been resettled in a third country through the UNHCR, out of a total of some 3.59 million. Others have been resettled through a third country’s own schemes, but the open letter is encouraging all resettlement to be done through the U.N. refugee agency.
The UNHCR has certain categories of refugees who should be resettled first: women at risk, children, medical cases, survivors of torture or trauma, those facing immediate security risks or a heightened risk of sexual violence or exploitation, and those who require resettlement to ensure family unity.
The concern with country-specific resettlement programs is that refugees may be prioritized on the basis of religion or sect, according to a media officer from one of the NGOs involved in the campaign.
Syria’s neighbors are bearing the brunt of the refugee crisis, with Lebanon and Turkey each hosting over one million. But Gulf countries haven’t taken in a single refugee, and nor have Latin American countries, with the exception of tiny Uruguay.
The international community has thus far pledged to resettle just two percent of the total, representing around 71,800 people, but over a vague timeline.
Germany is in the process of taking in 30,000 people but the UK has resettled just 90 Syrian refugees thus far.
“This is one of the worst refugee crises since World War II, displacing millions of civilians, mostly women and children,” said Mark Goldring, executive director of Oxfam GB. “We’re counting on governments in Geneva to move quickly to demonstrate the kind of international solidarity that is desperately needed to transform the lives of the most vulnerable refugees.”
On top of registered refugees, there are also roughly 7.6 million internally displaced people within Syria, and many more trying and failing to escape violence the country.
In October 2014, only 18,453 refugees registered with the UNHCR in neighboring border countries, an 88 percent drop from the monthly 2013 average, which gives an indication of the extent to which people are increasingly trapped inside Syria.
“With the collapse in the international solidarity, Syria’s neighbors are now increasing their border restrictions,” said Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland.
“Desperate Syrian civilians are unable to escape the war. Wealthy countries need to scale up their resettlement pledges and at the same time increase the support to the region so that borders are kept open.
“Just because we happen to share no border with Syria, this does not free any of us from responsibility.”
Also Monday, the UN appealed for a record $16.4 billion to provide aid to nearly 60 million people worldwide next year, with almost half the amount aimed at helping victims of the Syrian war.
“We are facing needs at unprecedented levels,” said United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos.
Noting that 2014 had been marked by a sharp rise in the number of people affected by violent conflicts, she said that some 102 million people worldwide were currently in need of aid.
A full $7.2 billion of the amount requested for 2015 will be aimed at helping an estimated 18.2 million people victimized by the bloody civil war, which grew out of a civilian uprising in March 2011.
That amount should enable aid to some 12.2 million people inside the country, including displaced people, and to the Syrians living as refugees in neighboring countries.
It would also provide assistance to three million people in the communities hosting the refugees.
Also, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF declared 2014 a devastating year for children, with as many as 15 million caught in conflicts in the Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and the Palestinian territories.
In Syria, UNICEF said more than 7.3 million children had been affected by the civil war, including 1.7 million who had fled the country.
In neighboring Iraq, an estimated 2.7 million children have been affected by conflict, it added, and at least 700 are believed to have been maimed or killed this year.
“In both countries, children have been victims of, witnesses to and even perpetrators of increasingly brutal and extreme violence,” UNICEF said.
Asylum, Resettlement and humanitarian admission
Resettlement is an option whereby a third country (i.e. not the one the refugee has fled from, or the country of first asylum or habitual residence) offers refugee status to that individual in its territory.
For example, this could mean a refugee from Syria living in a camp in Jordan being offered status, and related reception and integration support, in the US.
Humanitarian admission programs are much like resettlement, but normally involve expedited processing, often without the involvement of UNHCR, and may provide either permanent or temporary stay depending on the legislation or policy of the state offering this option. For example, Germany offered temporary status to hundreds of thousands of Bosnians in the 1990s, who then returned to Bosnia when the war there had finished and it was safe for individuals to do so. Humanitarian admissions criteria are sometimes based on factors other than protection risk or vulnerability, such as existing links to the country offering admission.
Other forms of admission could include allowing Syrian refugees legal access to third countries by relaxing requirements for entry visas to work and study, not necessarily based upon their vulnerabilities.
By Olivia Alabaster
