{"id":10893,"date":"2015-10-22T10:22:49","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T10:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/?p=10893"},"modified":"2016-03-18T09:12:39","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T09:12:39","slug":"a-place-to-call-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/2015\/10\/a-place-to-call-home\/","title":{"rendered":"The Syrian refugee crisis: Finding a place to call home"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Syrian conflict shows no signs of abating and half of the country\u2019s population is now displaced, creating the largest volume of refugees since World War II<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"An_Aerial_View_of_the_Za'atri_Refugee_Camp\"While the world\u2019s politicians search for a workable solution to the Syrian refugee crisis, millions of asylum seekers are languishing in makeshift camps, or sleeping rough on the streets, waiting for hostilities to end. More than half of Syria\u2019s pre-war population of 23 million is currently displaced and, while some have found shelter in other parts of Syria, many more have crossed borders into neighbouring countries or are en route to Europe in search of a fresh start.<\/p>\n

The majority of Syrian refugees have taken shelter in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan \u2013 by September Jordan had 629,245 refugees, Turkey 1,938,999 and Lebanon 1,172,753. This means that one in five people living in Lebanon are refugees, while Jordan\u2019s Za\u2019atari camp is now the country\u2019s third largest city.<\/p>\n

Those who flee are escaping not just the fighting in their towns and cities, but also human rights abuses and a lack of basic necessities, including food and medical care. Most are also leaving without much paperwork. Many Syrians do not have passports and for those who did, the deteriorating political situation since the start of the civil war has made it difficult to renew passports or to acquire visas to leave the country through official channels. Hence why so many Syrians, along with asylum seekers from other countries facing difficult conditions, have been risking their lives by getting into boats heading from Turkey to Greece, Italy or Malta, in order to apply for asylum in Europe. It is this swell of people travelling through Europe to try to get to the West that has brought the situation to international headlines.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven Syrians call the boats to Europe \u2018death\u2019 boats,\u201d says Rory O\u2019Keeffe, journalist and author of The Toss of a Coin: Voices of a Modern Crisis<\/em>. \u201cThey know that the boats sink and they know that if theirs sinks they\u2019re likely to drown. But they\u2019re that desperate to get out so they can start again that they will give it a go to give themselves an opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Jordan, Lebanon or Turkey may seem like a more obvious destination for a refugee from Syria than Europe, none of these countries allow refugees to work. In Jordan there are camps run by the UN and the Jordanian government, but in Lebanon there are no official camps, other than the makeshift ones that refugees have set up for themselves and the situation is similar in Turkey.<\/p>\n

\u201cLebanon has pulled out all the stops, but if any country can say that it\u2019s been genuinely overrun, it\u2019s Lebanon,\u201d says O\u2019Keeffe. \u201cThe population of Lebanon has increased by 25 per cent in the last four years. And its infrastructure has been stretched to breaking point. What Lebanon expected to happen, but what hasn\u2019t happened, is that richer countries would step in and say, \u2018Right you\u2019ve taken these people in, we will take some of them and they can live here until they can go home.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Many refugees staying in other Middle Eastern countries find work in the black economy where they can, and end up living in derelict buildings or homemade shelters. For those that go to the official UN camps, there are other challenges. Jordan is struggling to provide enough water for all the refugees \u2013 it is the fourth water-poorest country in the world. And, while education is provided in the camps for children of school age, provision is patchy and not all children have been able to take advantage of it. There are also problems with crime, particularly rape. But, on the plus side, healthcare is available and, at Za\u2019atari, small businesses have been springing up to provide additional services to other residents, including the sale of fruit and vegetables and even wedding dresses.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody really wants to sit in a tent for six months waiting for their life to start again. You just have the feeling in a refugee camp that everybody\u2019s life is on pause. They\u2019re just sitting and waiting to be able to start their lives again. It\u2019s not that they\u2019re desperate to go somewhere else, it\u2019s just that they know they can\u2019t go home and they want to be able to start working again and start their lives again,\u201d says O\u2019Keeffe who has worked for NGOs that support refugees in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the problems at the Za\u2019atari refugee camp is that the numbers fluctuate massively. Every time Syrians hear that fighting has moved away from their area, they go back because they want to just get on with their lives. And then the fighting comes back and they just get swept back to Za\u2019atari, which makes it very difficult to run the camp. It makes it hard to provide education; it makes it hard to provide enough food and water for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many people have wondered why other nearby Arab countries, like Saudi Arabia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates haven\u2019t done more to take in refugees. \u201cI think every country could do more, other than Lebanon, Jordan, Greece, Iraq and Turkey,\u201d says O\u2019Keeffe. \u201cIn the Gulf, only Iraq has refugees \u2013 about 250,000 of them, despite having a civil war itself. Yemen is also caught up in a civil war.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing to remember is that Saudi has traditionally been an enemy of Syria and has opposed Assad at every turn \u2013 particularly because Assad happens to belong to a different branch of Islam to the royal family. Assad is relatively secular and opposes the monarchy. And, obviously, Saudi is a religious state run on entirely monarchical lines. So Saudi Arabia may not be particularly inclined to take Syrian refugees in a crisis. From a Syrian perspective, the chances are Saudi is not a state that you would aspire to live in. I know there\u2019s the argument that if you\u2019re desperate you\u2019ll do anything, but the idea of living in a monarchy run on religious grounds, particularly for women who are used to having more rights and freedom, isn\u2019t something you\u2019d want if there is an alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the EU discusses how to cope with the influx of asylum seekers, some European countries are notably doing more than others to try to accommodate their fair share of refugees. O\u2019Keeffe admits to being disappointed by the response of his own country, Britain, which has said it will take in 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years. Germany started out with the best of intentions, when it said it would open its borders to refugees, but had to backtrack from that when the sheer numbers of arrivals became too much. It is expecting to take in in the region of 800,000 people. France has agreed to take 24,000. Most Eastern European countries have been reluctant to commit to accepting asylum seekers, beyond letting them pass through on the way to Western Europe.<\/p>\n

Mercy Corps, a charity that provides emergency relief in disaster and conflicts, believes that ordinary people can help persuade their governments to do more. Javier Alvarez, senior team leader for Mercy Corps\u2019 Strategic Response and Global Emergencies team, says: \u201cIf there is anything positive from the current situation, it\u2019s that in Germany and the rest of Europe people are asking their government to be accountable to these refugees. That is a sign that people are very sensitive to this issue. People are starting to really care about these things. In Greece we saw volunteers from Hungary, New Zealand, Australia coming to help refugees. There is international solidarity and we should all be channelling that good into pressuring governments to take action. I think what we\u2019re seeing there is a very positive sign that we can do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there is one conclusion to be drawn from the Syrian refugee crisis it is that international, and domestic, protocols for granting asylum to refugees were never intended to cope with millions of people seeking refugee status at the time. The requirement of applying for asylum in the first safe country reached is not workable when it puts an unacceptable burden onto those nations bordering a country at war \u2013 and others in the region that have a long coastline \u2013 and absolves those slightly further away of a duty to help. The 1951 Refugee Convention may need to be revisited as a result of Syria\u2019s civil war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Syrian conflict shows no signs of abating and half of the country\u2019s population is now displaced, creating the largest volume of refugees since World War II While the world\u2019s politicians search for a workable solution to the Syrian refugee crisis, millions of asylum seekers are languishing in makeshift camps, or sleeping rough on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10673,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[205,56,40,9,60,104],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10893"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10673"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10893"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11193,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10893\/revisions\/11193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}