The body, a Syrian toddler dead on a Turkish beach after the boat in
which his family was attempting to flee to Europe capsized at sea, drew
international sympathy on a massive scale. It forced many European leaders to
begin to rethink their approach to the current wave of refugees seeking a safe
haven from armed conflicts in the Middle East.
There is currently an overlapping web of conflicts occurring in the
Middle East sub-Saharan Africa and Croatia that is creating a humanitarian
crisis. A recent UN report estimates that 19 million persons have been
displaced as a result of these armed conflicts and every day an expected 42,500
are expected to make the risky journey via Eastern Europe in search of a safe
haven in Western European countries. The scale of the crisis is most evident in
Syria, currently embroiled in a three way civil war. We know for example that Syria had a
population of 22 million people back in 2011;
there’s a very different picture emerging now. After four years, half of
the population has fled and the mass departure continues in a frantic scamper
to Western Europe: “Europe is now witnessing the worst refugee crisis since the
Second World War”, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is leading
at the forefront of this moral crisis, despite domestic criticism.
David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, has promised to take in
20,000 Syrian refugees over the coming five years, with priority given to
orphans. This is a welcome gesture and a marked shift of tone, given his
initial demonization of the six thousand refugees who turned up at the port of
Calais in late August. Moved by the Syrian boy whose body was washed up on a
Turkish beach, together with domestic pressure to act, Mr Cameron promised to
fulfil British moral obligation under international humanitarian law towards
the refugees.
The German chancellor Angela
Merkel has demanded a Europe-wide solution to the distribution of refugees:
Germany alone expects to process 800,000 asylum applications in total during
2015 and the European Commission has unveiled plans to redistribute 160,000
refugees from Italy, Greece and Hungary − where many first arrive − because
they are struggling to cope.
But how many refugees are countries promising to take in the world
over and what are President Obama, the US and China's contribution to the
crisis? The statistics compiled by the UK Guardian tell a compelling story that
calls for an international response beyond the borders of Europe. In the first
quarter of 2015 (the most current data obtainable at the time of issuing)
185,000 first-time asylum applications were made in the EU. Half were in
Germany (73,100 or 40% of the total) and Hungary (32,800 or 18%). Then,
according to the EU statistics, came Italy (15,200, or 8%), France (14,800, or
8%), Sweden (11,400, or 6%), Austria (9,700, or 5%) and the UK (7,300 or 4%).
With Western Europe bursting its seams from what is emerging as one
of the largest refugee crises of our generation, it is a moral duty for the
rest of the world to join in and show the milk of human kindness by shouldering
the burden of this urgent refugee predicament. Framing a common European asylum
policy is urgent but not sufficient, given the scale of the resources needed to
back it up and the urgency of the crisis.
Europe is slowly rising from an economic depression. The US cannot afford
to be silent on this matter, given the fact that the Washington and Russia’s
meddling foreign policy has in part contributed to this crisis. China is
steeped in its global resource grabbing so much that the cry from the refugees
has fallen on deaf ears and its lowest instinct on the matter must be
confronted. The sight of hungry women, young men and children been tear-gassed
and doused with water cannon by border guards in Croatia and Hungary is indeed
a stain on the world's conscience.
Donovan Reynolds is a British Based Social Worker and Human Rights Activist.Readers may provide feedback at dannygerm63@hotmail.co.uk.
