Refugee crisis: Frosty reception in the UK

This week the UN’s refugee agency announced that 13.6 million people have been displaced by the wars in Syria and Iraq. That’s roughly the equivalent to every person in London being forced to flee from their home.

A startling reminder that the turmoil wracking the Levant remains the biggest humanitarian crisis this century.

While the UK is a country heavily invested, politically and militarily, in the conflict it has proven particularly reticent to take in those trying to escape the quagmire engulfing their homelands.  

“Events in the Middle East have fuelled the greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War which is putting unimaginable strain on the region. The fact that the UK anticipates resettling just several hundred people over a three year period is a woefully inadequate response,” Refugee Council’s advocacy manager Anna Musgrove told Alaraby Aljadeed.

It is the neighbouring countries who have accommodated the vast bulk of the refugee population but this becoming increasingly unsustainable and countries such as Lebanon and Turkey are closing their borders or making it increasingly difficult for people to enter. On average 150,000 refugees crossed into bordering countries each month in 2013. In October this year that figure had decreased by nearly 90 percent.

As the destruction grinds on impervious to the human suffering it leaves in its wake pressure is mounting on Western countries such as the UK to shoulder their share of the load.  

Share the load

“Humanitarian organisations have repeatedly warned that the capacity of the host communities has been stretched to the limits and argued for better international burden-sharing. What we are witnessing now are the results of our failure to deliver the necessary support to the region. We are witnessing a total collapse of international solidarity with millions of Syrian civilians,” said Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Earlier in the year, the UNHCR called on countries to take in an additional 100,000 Syrians in 2015 and 2016. The UK responded with the Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme.  As of August, the total number of Syrians resettled was 50.

The UK home Office have replied to criticisms about their response to the crisis by pointing out that Britain already has an asylum application process for Syrians who were in the UK to work or study, or who managed to reach the UK independently. Since the crisis began the British authorities have granted asylum to almost 4,000 Syrians.

For many of the most vulnerable among the displaced the journey to the UK is both cripplingly expensive and fraught with danger. Stories of refugees killed on the “death boats” crossing the Mediterranean are so ubiquitous they are now mainly found deep in the inner pages of the newspapers - if they make it into print at all. 

While 4,000 is not an insignificant number it is dwarfed by some European neighbours, including those with minimal involvement in the region. Take small Sweden for example, which has taken in 24,667 Syrians or Germany with 23,591.

It is not only with regards to Syria where the UK’s asylum policy has come under scrutiny, but Iraq also. With the country imploding into a long and savagely violent war after the US-UK led 2003 invasion millions of Iraqis would ultimately flee the country.

From the beginning of 2003 through to August 2013, nearly 200,000 Iraqis applied for asylum within the EU, but only 7% of those would find refuge in the UK. Compare again Sweden and Germany who, combined, offered sanctuary to roughly half of those Iraqis who made it to the continent. 

The refusal to give asylum to 91 Iraqis who had served as interpreters for British forces was perhaps the most damning advertisement of the Home Office’s stoney cold reception to those people trying to escape the violence in which UK forces were deeply embroiled.

Moral obligation?

Even if only considering recent history the UK has been, and remains, intricately and profoundly involved in the region, including those countries that are now witnessing the most violence and human displacement.

The British government was one of the principle architects of the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, it was pivotal in the aerial campaign that enabled the overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Ghaddafi in 2011 and continues to be militarily and politically engaged in the conflict engulfing the region.  The financial, never mind the human, cost of this has been huge.

The UK’s involvement in Iraq from 2003 to 2013 racked up a tab of £8.4 billion in military spending, the intervention in Libya cost £212 million and bombs costing hundreds of thousands of pounds a piece are once again falling in Iraq.

Should this make a difference when it comes to decisions over whether or not to open the door and take in people fleeing violence in those countries? Currently, asylum decisions are made on purely humanitarian grounds in accordance with  international law such as the 1951 Refugee Convention.

The US authorities have however recognised their ‘special obligations’ towards Iraqi refugees with steps such as the creation of special immigrant visas for employees who worked alongside their forces and commitments to resettle larger numbers of Iraqi refugees. Such policies have not been adopted in the UK.

“Framing asylum in terms of special obligations has the potential to strengthen calls for refugee protection. Whereas humanitarianism asserts that refugees have a right to protection somewhere, from someone, and in some form, special obligations stem from a direct link between refugees and a particular state,” argues James Souter, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ at the University of Leeds.

Money for elsewhere

While the UK has proven hesitant to offer sanctuary to those escaping war in the Middle East it has proven deep-pocketed in its spending on foreign aid in the region.

The Home Office has been keen to stress that the UK is the second largest bilateral donor to the Syria crisis after the United States and has committed more than £700m to the relief effort, its largest contribution ever given to a single humanitarian crisis.

These vast sums of money do undoubtedly help house, school and treat hundreds of thousands of refugees but with the scale of the problem reaching the magnitude it has questions are now being asked about the sustainability of throwing money at the problem to be dealt with on someone else’s shores.

“The UK’s commitment to the relief effort has been extremely generous, but it’s not the only answer. The Government must show the same leadership in helping Syria’s refugees find safety in the UK. Britain is capable of providing both aid and resettlement places and must do so urgently,” said the Refugee Council’s, Anna Musgrove.