Several international humanitarian organizations have already warned that the recent military build-up would worsen the refugee crisis. "The suffering of civilians in Syria has now reached unprecedented levels, and there appears to be no end in sight," said Magne Barth, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Syria, in a press release issued on Thursday.
But relief workers on the ground as well as refugee rights advocates and international officials say that, in spite of all the appeals and reports issued on the situation of the at least two million Syrian refugees, the international community has failed to come up with a plan to handle the exodus and help the host countries.
In the four main host countries, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan, people have already become reluctant to accept more refugees. According to a press release issued by Refugees International, countries across the region have introduced in recent months restrictions aimed at slowing or limiting the arrival of Syrian refugees. The Lebanese government requires Syrians to pay $200 a year in order to maintain legal status, Iraq reportedly set a daily entry quota limiting the number of refugees who can cross its border, and in Turkey, the rate at which Syrians are being processed and moved into refugee camps has slowed, leaving thousands stuck in squalid and unsafe camps on the Syrian side of the border. There are also reportsthat the Egyptian government is deporting Syrians.
However, according to Joelle Eid, UNHCR Public Information associate, “currently, there is no Syria-specific resettlement program and we have no information on when this might change in the future.” She told NOW that the only initiative running is a temporary humanitarian admission program to Germany. “The German government had offered to temporarily admit 5,000 displaced Syrians from Lebanon by the end of 2013 and UNHCR was asked to assist in the identification of cases based on the criteria the German government has set. This includes those with particular needs or close family ties to Germany,” Eid pointed out. She also said that Antonio Guterres, UNHCR’s High Commissioner, has on several occasions noted that Western countries may be asked to accept Syrian refugees in an attempt to lift the strain off the host communities in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey.
Refugees International’s field workers, Marc Hanson and Daryl Grisgraber, are now based in southern Turkey and recently visited Lebanon. They told NOW that a plan to manage the Syrian refugee crisis should have been drafted a long time ago.
“It’s very likely that any type of interference or strike is going to create quite a lot more refugees in all of the hosting countries, all of which are under a significant strain,” Grisbraber, RI’s senior advocate, told NOW. “The resettlement effort of Germany is quite small, it’s just a drop in the bucket. One thing we’ve been talking about is burden sharing from the rest of the world, re-settling some of the Syrian refugees,” she added. But she also added that many Syrian refugees don’t want to be re-settled and she insisted that the international community has to come up with a plan to support the host communities and to provide the finance for the UN appeal to provide these services.
Throughout 2013 the UN agencies have increased their humanitarian aid appeals. The emergency response fund for Syria has been set at $5 billion USD, the largest amount ever asked for a single crisis, but UN agencies only received so far 39 percent of the funding, according to UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Grisgraber also said that the Syrian refugee crisis is not a temporary phenomenon anymore, and the countries in the region are now aware of it. “But in light of the fact that these populations are going to be there for an extended period of time, it’s important to support the host communities because they have to be able to sustain themselves and the refugees for an indefinite period of time,” she stressed.
Hanson, RI’s government relations senior advocate, explained that the re-settlement is a slow and cumbersome process and the international community has only began to discuss it recently. But he argues that it would not bring relief either to the refugees or their host communities. “What we need is a better coordinated shelter strategy, a better coordinated strategy to verify that the refugees have their needs met. But there are also poor people who are living in the host communities shoulder to shoulder and they should also be cared for in a meaningful way,” Hanson told NOW. He added that the aid for the poor host communities has been quite late in coming.
If the international community is taking into consideration a military strike, it also has to think of the humanitarian aspect and come up with a meaningful response plan to the crisis. Hanson added that large development actors, such as the World Bank, have to step in to finance projects, however uncomfortable that might be. “We’re into our third year of conflict here and longer term solutions should have already been planned and we should be investing in them right now. Unfortunately, the international community and the development community are just beginning to scope out what a longer term response looks like,” he concluded.
https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/reportsfeatures/what-about-the-refugees
