Syrian refugees once had lives that were just the same as ours

The international community is already facing a refugee crisis largely driven by the war in Syria.  Hundreds of thousands of refugees are currently fleeing wars in the Middle East for the relative safety of Europe.

But that crisis could get even worse, if Turkish officials are to be believed, due to Russian airstrikes. According to Turkish estimates, 3 million more Syrians could flee from Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Bob Kitchen, the International Rescue Committee’s director of emergency preparedness and response writes: “As an aid worker leading the International Rescue Committee’s humanitarian relief team in Greece, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to Syrians as they flee the war into Europe.

“I’ve worked with refugees around the globe in almost every war zone in the last 15 years; while the desperation for the safety and well-being of their families is the same the world around, one thing has struck me during all of the interviews I’ve done:

“I recognize the lives the Syrian refugees used to live, and want to live again.” [IRC blog]

Good Samaritans in Lebanon hosting more Syrian refugees than the entire US

There is a small village in the mountains of Lebanon that is hosting more Syrian refugees than all 50 U.S. states combined. Ketermaya is a quiet little place surrounded by patches of farmland. It isn’t a particularly wealthy town, but the residents here have taken in thousands of refugees fleeing the war in Syria.

“We have a history of welcoming refugees,” says Ali Tafesh, a local business owner. “In 2006 we did the same,” he adds, referring to the displacement of people caused by Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon that year.

Tafesh has done more than most. When Syrian families started to arrive in the town in the early days of the civil war, he arranged housing for them. When there were no more places left to stay he offered up his own land. “We built the first tent for two families. Then more people came and we built a second, and then it just kept growing,” he says.

Tafesh hosts 330 Syrians on his one-acre plot–a stony patch of land on the side of a hill, with olive trees scattered in between makeshift tents. At his own expense, he built a toilet and installed running water into the camp. He doesn’t charge the residents of this camp, but people like him are in the minority. Most refugees pay rent to landowners, even when their accommodation is little more than a wooden shack.

The U.S. has resettled 1,500 Syrian refugees since war broke out in 2011 (the small village of Ketermaya hit this number in July 2014), and aims for that number to reach 5,000 by the end of the year. President Barack Obama announced recently that he had ordered his administration to prepare for double that number in 2016. Aid agencies have said this is not enough: Oxfam America had been calling for the U.S. to resettle 70,000 Syrian refugees.

There are currently more than one million registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon (the actual number of refugees is thought to be much higher). If you include the estimated number of unregistered refugees, Syrians now account for more than a quarter of the country’s population.

There are no official refugee camps in Lebanon. Instead, refugees are scattered across the country and make their home on whatever land they can find.

[Global Post]

Sweden to accept 80,000 refugees

Sweden expects to receive 80,000 refugees this year and has more asylum seekers per capita than any other European nation thanks to a generous immigration policy allowing automatic permanent residency for Syrians.

Sweden’s Migration Agency said more that 13,700 had arrived in the country in the past five weeks. Sweden stands out in the Nordics as an exception.

Denmark has recently tightened immigration and citizenship rules, including cutting benefits for refugees by up to half in a bid to discourage them from staying here. Denmark’s tough refugee policy mirrors similar trends in Finland and Norway where right-wing anti-I refugee parties are on the ascendant and part of coalition governments.

Refugees have been streaming in by two routes from Germany — crossing by train overland into Jutland, the western part of Denmark that is connected to continental Europe, or by ferries carrying trains that arrive in Lolland, an island linked by bridges to Zealand, where Copenhagen is located.

One group of Danish volunteers said they had been giving lifts to refugees for 48 hours straight, leaving them at Copenhagen’s central station rather than in Malmo (Sweden), to avoid charges of human trafficking.

The refugees are part of a wave of refugees sweeping north through Europe, many escaping the war in Syria.

[DNAIndia]

Germany bracing for 800,000 refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq

Thousands of Syrian migrants are being welcomed with cheers, candy and open arms as they finally reached the lands of their new beginnings: Austria and Germany.

Islamic State militants have seized control of one-third of Syria and are driving the civil war responsible for more than 250,000 deaths and more than 1 million people wounded.

Many of the migrants cry tears of joy at their westward journey’s end, becoming the first wave in a flood of 800,000 asylum seekers expected in Germany by the end of the year. Those arriving in Munich were greeted by local residents with applause, sweets and stuffed animals for the kids.

Thousands more were following in their footsteps. Trains with refugees are arriving in Salzburg, Austria, at least once an hour.

While the migrants were being welcomed into Germany, others were photographed collapsing to the ground and begging for food in port cities in Greece.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her nation would continue with its open-arms approach in the crisis. “As a strong, economically healthy country we have the strength to do what is necessary (to place) no limits on the number of asylum seekers,” she said.

Her finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said the German government was creating a supplementary budget for the rest of 2015 to cover the expenses of the new arrivals.

The offer of assistance from Germany and Austria was hailed by the global human rights group Amnesty International. “After endless examples of shameful treatment by governments of refugees and migrants in Europe, it is a relief to finally see a sliver of humanity,” said the group’s deputy director for Europe, Gauri van Gulik. “The pragmatic and human approach applied here should become the rule, not the exception.”

[News Wire Services]

That little Syrian boy: Here’s who he was

The numbers associated with today’s migration crisis are huge: 4 million Syrians fleeing their country; 3 million Iraqis displaced. But it was the image of a solitary child — a toddler in a red T-shirt, blue shorts and Velcro sneakers, found face-down on a Turkish beach — that shocked and haunted the world this week.

The drowned boy was 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, from Syria, part of a group of 23 trying to reach the Greek island of Kos. They’d set out in two boats on the 13-mile Aegean journey, but the vessels capsized.

Aylan Kurdi’s 5-year-old brother Galip also drowned, as did the boys’ mother, Rehan. Their father, Abdullah, survived. In all, five children from that journey are reported dead.

Aylan Kurdi’s family, Syrian Kurds, had fled Kobani, a city along the border with Turkey that has been contested between ISIS and Kurdish fighters and undergone hundreds of airstrikes. They’d applied for legal migration as refugees to Canada, where Abdullah Kurdi’s sister, Teema, lives and works as a hairdresser. But their application had been denied, says Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. “Their only option was to put their lives in the hands of the smuggler,” Bouckaert says.

Bouckaert acknowledges that “It’s a very disturbing photo, but I think we should be offended that children are washing up dead on our beaches because of the failure of our politicians to provide safe passage… rather than by the photo itself.”

In Britain, where just 216 Syrian refugees have been accepted so far, reaction to the photo put Prime Minister David Cameron on the defensive. “We will do more,” he said Thursday.

The message of Aylan Kurdi’s photo seems clear enough: The world needs to do better in addressing migrants’ needs, safety and dignity.

“We really need a wakeup call that children are dying, washing up dead on the beaches of Europe, because of our collective failure to provide them safe passage,” Bouckaert says. “People fleeing Syria are legitimate refugees and they should be welcomed in Europe and the rest of the world.”

[NPR]

Citizens of Germany and Iceland show the way

While Europe’s politicians flounder in the face of an unprecedented wave of refugees and migrants seeking shelter — many of them from war-torn Syria — some individuals have decided to take matters into their own hands.

In Iceland, author and professor Bryndis Bjorgvinsdottir has set up a Facebook page to call for her country’s government to increase the number of refugees it was planning to accept from a reported 50 — prompting a big response and wide media interest. Bjorgvinsdottir’s inspiration came from a friend who posted a status update on Facebook — addressed to Iceland’s Minister of Welfare Eyglo Hardar — saying he wanted to take five Syrian refugees into his own home, she said.

And in Germany, a website has been running for months which aims to match offers of accommodation in private homes — ideally shared rental apartments — across the country with individual refugees in need of a place to stay. The website, Refugees Welcome (Fluechtlinge Wilkommen,) has already placed dozens of refugees who otherwise might be placed in overcrowded migrant centers or struggle to put a roof over their heads at all.

Bjorgvinsdottir’s page already has 12,000 members, said — no mean feat given the country’s population is only about 300,000. Proportionately, that equates to some 12 million people signing up in the United States.

Such direct action couldn’t be more needed. Migrants are pouring over Europe’s borders in record numbers this year, many of them fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. In July alone, a record 107,500 were detected at EU borders.

Inspired by the Icelandic example, a U.S. group has also been set up on Facebook, called “Americans Supporting Syrian Refugees: Open Homes, Open Hearts.”

[Read full CNN article]  

2,600 refugees have died crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Europe

The United Nations refugee agency announced that more than 300,000 refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

That number does not include the 2,600 who have died on the journey.

This photo published on the cover of The Independent (UK) shows a small boy lying face down in the sand on a Turkish beach as an official stands over him. The child, who is thought to be Syrian, has drowned in an apparent attempt to flee the war ravaging his country.

Such extraordinary images serve as a stark reminder that, as European leaders increasingly try to prevent refugees and migrants from settling in the continent, more and more refugees are dying in their desperation to flee persecution and reach safety.

The Independent took the decision to publish these images because, among the often glib words about the “ongoing migrant crisis”, it is all too easy to forget the reality of the desperate situation facing many refugees.

[PBS/The Independent]

Pay it forward as a humanitarian worker

Some say humanitarian workers are heroes. They dedicate their heart and soul to save lives, may it be in a natural or a manmade disaster.

I say we humanitarian workers, like everybody else, are just human beings, doing the best we can, in the ways we know, to help those in need rebuild their lives.

It was in 2013 when I became a humanitarian worker. I entered the field just a few weeks after surviving typhoon Yolanda. An old friend offered me a job in the organization he works for, and while at first I was clueless on what to do, I knew it was all about responding to the thousands of survivors struggling to stand up after the storm took away everything they had.

There were times when I cried at night in despair, for the trauma brought by Yolanda continued to haunt me. I carried this sort of survivor’s guilt since I could not mourn fully for those who lost more than I did. I could not even talk about my feelings in an honest manner in fear of being called ungrateful.

But while it took me time to realize how blessed I was, it soon dawned upon me that being a humanitarian worker is not a cross to bear, but rather a path to learning life in its crudest, harshest forms, and that it’s up to us on how to make the best of it.

I learned that it’s okay to cry, that I am entitled to my own feelings, just like everybody else who got past Yolanda. After all, those who survived lost their sense of normalcy, no matter how first-world these seemed, mine included.

I also came to see that even if we don’t speak much about the hard times, my colleagues were there for support, not only as co-workers, but as friends, as people who have had their own share of ups and downs for us to share, to overcome, and to celebrate.

[Read more of Fae Cheska Marie Esperas’ story]