Only 10 member states have offered to take in only 1200 refugees. Britain has faced heavy criticism along with Italy for offering no places at all.
In a briefing published on Friday, the organization details how European Union (EU) member states have only offered to open their doors to around 12,000 of the most vulnerable refugees from Syria: just 0.5 per cent of the 2.3 million people who have fled the country.
"The EU has miserably failed to play its part in providing a safe haven to the refugees who have lost all but their lives. The number of those it's prepared to resettle is truly pitiful. Across the board European leaders should hang their heads in shame," said Salil Shetty, secretary general of Amnesty International.
The closest European capital - Nicosia - lies a mere 200 miles from Damascus. Yet collectively, EU member states have pledged to resettle just a very small proportion of Syria's most vulnerable refugees.
Amnesty International's briefing also broke down the figures.
It showed that only 10 EU member states offered resettlement or humanitarian admission places to refugees from Syria. Germany is by far the most generous - pledging to take 10,000 refugees or 80% of total EU pledges. Excluding Germany, the remaining 27 EU member states have offered to take a mere 2,340 refugees from Syria. France offered just 500 places or 0.02 per cent of the total number of people who have fled Syria. Spain agreed to take just 30 or 0.001 per cent of refugees from Syria. Eighteen EU member states - including the UK and Italy - offered no places at all.
As winter approaches, conditions for the 2.2 million people who have fled Syria to neighbouring countries are deteriorating rapidly.
"The platitudes of Europe's leaders ring hollow in the face of the evidence," said Shetty. "The EU must open its borders, provide safe passage, and halt these deplorable human rights violations."
Just 55,000 Syrian refugees (2.4 per cent of the total number of people who have fled Syria) have managed to get through and claim asylum in the EU.
For those who manage to break through the barricades of Fortress Europe, many head for Sweden or Germany, which have offered the most help to asylum seekers.
In the two years to the end of October 2013, Sweden has received 20,490 new Syrian asylum applications and Germany received 16,100 such applications. Less than 1,000 people have claimed asylum in each of Greece, Italy and Cyprus. Amnesty International has now called on European member states to significantly increase the number of resettlement and humanitarian admission places for refugees from Syria, strengthen search and rescue capacity in the Mediterranean to identify boats in distress and assist those on board, ensure that those rescued are treated with dignity and have access to asylum procedures and provide legal safe passage for Syrian asylum seekers wishing to travel to European member states.
European Union aid has reached 1.3 billion euros. The UN estimates almost 2.3 million Syrians have fled to neighbouring countries since March 2011.
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
13/12/13
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EU leaders should 'hang their heads in shame' over Syrian refugee crisis, says Amnesty (PHOTOS)...
ReplyDeleteThe European Union has opened its doors to a “pitifully low” number of Syrian refugees and leaders in the region should “hang their heads in shame,” Amnesty International said Friday in a damning report on the international response to the growing refugee crisis.
Only 10 EU states have offered temporary protection or permanent residency to Syrians who have fled their war-torn country since March 2011, Amnesty said in the report entitled “An international failure: The Syrian refugee crisis.”
A total of 12,340 places have been offered across the EU, which Amnesty said was the equivalent to the number of refugees registered in Lebanon in the last five days of November.
Germany has been the most generous of all the EU states, offering temporary protection to 10,000 refugees. But 18 EU states, including Britain and Italy, have offered no places at all.
“The EU has miserably failed to play its part in providing a safe haven to the refugees who have lost all but their lives,” Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International, said in a statement.
“The number of those it’s prepared to resettle is truly pitiful. Across the board European leaders should hang their heads in shame.”
With so few places on offer, tens of thousands of Syrian refugees have tried to reach Europe by land or sea in the hope of being granted asylum. Many have perished along the way, been sent back to where they came from or endured “deplorable conditions” if they were lucky enough to reach their destination, which has been mainly Bulgaria, Greece and Italy, the report said.
Around 5,000 Syrian refugees arrived in Bulgaria in the first 11 months of this year.......http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/syria/131213/amnesty-syria-refugees-report
14/12/13
Syrians internally displaced by war expected to nearly double to 6.5 million by year’s end – UN....
ReplyDelete5 February 2014 – The number of people displaced by the civil war inside Syria is expected to nearly double from some 3.5 million today to 6.5 million by the end of the year, a senior United Nations official said today.
Nearly 2.5 million others have already sought refuge in neighbouring countries, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) Regional Coordinator for Syria, Amin Awad, told a news conference at UN Headquarters in New York, noting that the total funding sought for both refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) for 2014 totals $6.5 billion, $2.4 billion for the former and $4.2 billion for the latter.
“That’s a big amount of money,” he said. “However, that statement is accurate. There are 155 agencies, UN and non-governmental organizations [involved].”
Major targets of the funding are protection, education and shelter for the displaced.
Mr. Awad said 85 per cent of the refugees were not staying in camps but with host communities, putting an “incredible strain and impact” on these communities, given their meagre resources, employment and services, calling it an “overwhelming emergency.” UNHCR planned to boost its support for them, he added.
Beyond the IDPs there are another 3 million people inside Syria in desperate need for help and among the refugees there are 8,000 children who have been separated from their families, he said.
A UNHCR breakdown of refugees by country shows 900,000 in Lebanon, 600,000 in Turkey, 590,000 in Jordan, 215,000 in northern Iraq, 135,000 in Egypt, 20,000 in North Africa, and 30,000 in other countries.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=47084&Cr=syria&Cr1=#.UvOBhvtTNqg
5/2/14