Residents of the Tesreen Camp in Aleppo, Syria. Photo: OCHA/Josephine Guerrero
15 March 2016 – Syria is the biggest humanitarian and refugee crisis of our time, the United Nations refugee chief and the UN agency’s special envoy today said, marking the fifth anniversary of the crisis, and calling on the international community to urgently disburse pledged funding and other forms of international solidarity.
“A tragedy of this scale demands solidarity beyond funding. Put simply, we need more countries to share the load by taking a greater share of refugees from what has become the biggest displacement crisis of a generation,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi and head of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
Five years on, the conflict has spawned 4.8 million refugees in neighbouring countries, hundreds of thousands in Europe, and 6.6 million people displaced inside Syria against a pre-war population of over 20 million.
In London last month, Governments pledged $5.9 billion for the 2016 appeal for humanitarian and development aid. In today’s statement, Mr. Grandi called for additional forms of support, including better access to livelihoods and educations, and a greater sharing of responsibility by countries that are limiting and blocking numbers of refugees seeking safety in their borders.
The UN High Commissioner said the world is at a “crossroads”, and “if the world fails to work together due to short-term interests, lack of courage and knee jerk reactions to shift the burden elsewhere, we will look back ruefully on this lost opportunity to act with solidarity and shared humanity.”
Call for reason, calm and foresight
In Lebanon, UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie Pitt today marked the grim anniversary by helping the UN agency in an informal refugee settlement in Fayda, in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
Speaking to reporters in pouring rain, Ms. Jolie Pitt urged Governments to focus on the absolute root causes, and to display courage and foresight in their decisions.
“My plea today is that we need governments around the world to show leadership: to analyse the situation and understand exactly what their country can do,” she said, to figure out how many refugees can be assisted and in what time frame, and to address the fears among their citizens.
“That starts with having a very robust asylum procedure to be able to hear the needs of the desperate families to identify who is most vulnerable and who has a genuine refugee claim,” she explained.
She appealed also for Governments to uphold the UN Convention on Refugees and basic human rights law: “it is both necessary and possible to protect people fleeing persecution and death and protect citizens at home. It should not be reduced to a choice between one or the other.”
The Special Envoy acknowledged that people in many different countries have fears about the refugee situation and its potential impact on their communities, livelihoods and security.
“It is not wrong to feel unsettled faced by a crisis of such complexity and such magnitude.
But we must not let fears get the better of us,” she said. “It is a time for reason and calm and foresight.”
New pathways
Later this month, UNHCR will host a high-level international conference in Geneva , calling on Governments for a major increase in countries hosting Syrians.
To date, some 170,000 such places have been pledged by governments around the world. UNHCR hopes to increase that to at least 10 per cent of the registered refugee population, currently at 4.8 million people in the immediate surrounding region alone, over the next few years.
High Commissioner Grandi and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will open the ministerial-level meeting on 30 March.
Source: United Nations
By
Karl William
Editor UN
Share this:
Discover more from #News247WorldPress
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.