Europe Must Deal With the Blowback From Syria
Saved under EASTERN AFRICA, Eritrea, Human Rights, Migration, Opinion
Tags: External Relations, refugee crisis in Europe, refugees
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Over the past month, nothing has captured the global media’s attention so much as the migrant, asylum-seeking and refugee crisis in Europe.
Broadcasts show the desperate trips across the Mediterranean by, primarily, Eritreans seeking to get to Europe. The payments, about $2,000 each. The overcrowding of the rickety boats. The inevitable deaths, by suffocation or drowning. The rescue efforts by the Italian and Greek coastguards as well as, increasingly, commercial ships.
Then there are the broadcasts of the coastal areas of Italy and Greece. Far from the stereotype of balmy beaches, sunny boardwalks.
Nothing but chaos and disorder. Hundreds, thousands, of those who’ve made it to Europe, primarily from Syria. Camped out on the streets or in and around train stations. Some out in the open. A few with tents put up wherever.
Citizens of these countries are, unsurprisingly, reacting just as we would. Some annoyed at the chaos and disorder — feeling their hospitality and social services are overwhelmed.
Fewer finding their humanity and volunteering to increase local authorities’ capacities to absorb the newcomers and handle the mess. Coming in with food, water, equipment and materials for hygiene and sanitation.
Meanwhile, at higher levels of government and within the European Union as a whole, arguments go back and forth inconclusively about what, exactly, to do.
Frontline receiving states like Spain, Italy and Greece — emerging from serious economic crises themselves — are literally begging for the rest of Europe to step in and share the burden.
Transit states like Hungary are being more hardcore. Destination states like Germany have stepped up — raising the number of asylum-seeking and refugee claims they expect to handle this year to 800,000. Sweden, as is its tradition, is quietly taking on what it can. The United Kingdom is being adamant about keeping the Channel closed.
It is nothing short of a disaster.
It is also nothing short of shameful. Especially when the overall numbers of people in need are considered — and considered in relative terms.
By the end of 2014, for example, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimated that no fewer than 11.5 million Syrians had been displaced.
The bulk, about 7.6 million, within the country. The remainder, about 4.2 million, moving to neighbouring countries like Jordan and Lebanon — both of which are also utterly overwhelmed.
Syrians must move — they are between a murderous regime on one hand and an equally murderous jihadist organisation on the other, with other armed groups in opposition in between.
Those figures are from the end of 2014 — the armed conflict, as we all know, has not abated this year. We are still made privy, on a daily basis, to the illegal weapons being used against civilians and the destruction not just of people’s homes and livelihoods, but also of World Heritage Sites.
Since the world has failed to stop the slaughter in Syria, the world must be prepared to accept the consequences of its continuing. Including this outflow of people.
Then there is the outflow from Africa into Europe. True, some could be classified as economic migrants. But given the state of repression in Eritrea, there is not a single Eritrean who’s made it to Europe who could be classified as anything other than an asylum-seeker or refugee.
L. Muthoni Wanyeki is Amnesty International’s regional director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes
