Wealthy countries should resettle almost half a million Syrians to ease the strain on Middle Eastern host countries, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday at a UN Syrian refugee conference in Geneva.
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Resettlement and other pathways for admission – including broadening family reunion criteria and issuing humanitarian visas as well as labour and study opportunities – are a critical element of the response to the Syria crisis, ensuring predictable, manageable and safe passage for the most vulnerable refugees in dire need of protection.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (L) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, Italian Filippo Grandi (R) give a joint statement after the meeting on global responsibility sharing through pathways for admission of Syrian refugees, at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, 30 March 2016.
The United Nations is aiming to resettle some 480,000 refugees, about 10 per cent of those now in neighbouring countries, by the end of 2018, but concedes it is battling to overcome widespread fear and political wrangling.
“Six years into this bad crisis, more than 4.8 million Syrian people are now refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere in the region”.
Wednesday’s conference aims to bolster support for resettlement programs and facilitate other solutions to aid frontline countries impacted by the conflict-induced migration flow. Ban said countries should not demonize refugees but should see the opportunities that the people could bring to their new host countries. The conference seeks to identify mechanisms for states to resettle thousands of refugees in the coming months.
And wealthy countries have pledged 178,000 of the 480,000 resettlement spots needed for Syrians, according to United Nations estimates.
After Geneva, McCallum is headed for Germany, now the only country which has opened up more spaces for formal resettlement of Syrians than Canada.
Instead, Assad said that a national unity government would be formed by various Syrian political forces – “opposition, independent, the current government and others”.
In a November article from the British publication the Guardian, it was reported that the U.S. has provided asylum to 2,174 Syrian refugees, roughly 0.0007 percent of America’s total population. The meeting was the first of several planned for this year to address new solutions to the Syrian refugee crisis and future pledges are expected.
Annual resettlement for refugees has run at an average of about 100,000 in recent decades, Mr Crisp added, about 70 per cent of which went to the USA, but even that haven is now become more complex.
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The charity warned that the burden was being placed on countries with fragile economies and weak infrastructures.
