GENEVA, 1 November 2013 (ICMC) – Madeline Garlick<, head of the policy and legal support unit at the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) European bureau, in a lecture called for solidarity amongst European Union Member States in addressing the Syrian refugee crisis.

Invited to present a Oxford Refugee Policy Centre seminar on 24 October 2014, Garlick said legal instruments should be developed to enable EU Governments to “share the burden”, by accepting more Syrian refugees for resettlement.

“We in Europe must not only keep our hearts and wallets open but also our borders,” she quoted Kristalina Georgieva, the EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs and Crisis Response, as recently saying<.

Some 2.2 million Syrians have so far fled to neighboring countries of Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt since the start of the conflict, with the number more than doubling over the course of the summer. Lebanon, the biggest recipient, hosts around 800,000 Syrian refugees – or almost a quarter of its population – according to the World Bank<. Jordan comes second on the list, with 550,000, followed by Turkey and Iraq, reports UNHCR<.

By contrast, only 50,000 Syrian refugees – the majority already living in Europe before the outbreak of the conflict – have sought asylum in Europe since the start of the conflict in March 2011, Garlick noted. Over 60 per cent of them are now residents of Germany or Sweden, with the UK being the next biggest receiver of Syrian arrivals.

Resettlement is a vital protection tool for thousands of refugees. In 2012 alone, 172,000 refugees were in need of resettlement. Yet EU Member States offered only 5,500 resettlement places, compared to the United States’ 60,000, Canada’s 8,000 and Australia’s 6,000.

Besides waning political will to welcome refugees, another reason explaining the discrepancy is that the EU lacks a common system for processing Syrians claiming asylum. The lack of a coherent agreement among EU Member States on whether or not Syrians should be granted refugee status makes it difficult to process their claims consistently, slowing the decision process and Syrians’ arrival in Europe. Rather, each case needs to be individually assessed to determine whether or not the claimant deserves protection.

Another obstacle to their prompt welcoming into Europe is the massive influx of Syrian refugees. Bulgaria, which normally receives around 1,000 asylum applications per year, had by 17 Septembe<r< this year received 4,000 applications, half of which from Syrian.

Overcrowding leads to inhumane conditions for refugees

Overcrowding in Bulgarian reception centres for potential refugees has meant that many Syrian asylum claimants lack food, running water, and a space to sleep, leaving them in “sickening, disgusting and inhumane” conditions, according to Boris Cheshirkov<, spokesperson for the UNHCR in Bulgaria.

Garlick thus urged EU Member States to accept 30,000 refugees for resettlement by the end of 2014, and, in the meantime, implement the Temporary Protection Directive<, created in 2001. The directive grants protection to all refugees arriving from one particular country or region.

Adopting the Temporary Protection Directive would ensure that particular States under pressure could get help from better-resourced European Member States. Every Syrian arriving on European shores could be granted a residence permit immediately, therefore expediting the EU’s paperwork and reducing expenses of Syrian refugee processing. Nonetheless, EU Member States have never implemented the directive and worry that it could generate even more refugee claims.

Working closely with its partners – including the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UNHCR - ICMC, through its regional office in Brussels, actively promotes resettlement across Europe.

Building on the success of the ‘Save Me’ Campaign in Germany, ICMC Europe in June 2012 launched the Europe-wide ‘Resettlement Saves Lives – the 2020 Campaign<’. ICMC Europe and the Dutch city of Utrecht hosted an event celebrating the role of European cities and regions in protecting refugees and upholding human rights.

The 2020 Campaign has as objective to increase the number of resettlement places offered annually by the EU, from the current 5,500 to 20,000 each year by 2020.

 --by Caitlin Hannahan in Geneva/lb

 Photocredit: © UNHCR/ Charlotte Hermans / European Resettlement Network
Madeline Garlick, Head of Unit Legal Policy and Support Unit for UNHCR Europe, speaks next to Johan Ketelers, Head Secretariat of the ICMC, at a meeting entitled ‘A City Says Yes!’ Welcoming resettled refugees in Europe on 8 May 2013.