Tag Archives: Syrian Refugees

EU proposes scheme to share out asylum seekers

Migrants line up to receive personal hygiene goods distributed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), outside the main building of the disused Hellenikon airport

By Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission proposed a system to distribute asylum seekers across the EU on Wednesday that aims to ease the load on states like Greece and Italy but drew immediate condemnation from governments in Eastern Europe.

The European Union executive published legislative proposals to reform the so-called Dublin system of EU asylum rules that includes a “fairness mechanism” under which each of the 28 states would be assigned a percentage quota of all asylum seekers in the bloc that it would be expected to handle.

The quotas would reflect national population and wealth and, if a country found itself handling 50 percent more than its due share, it could relocate people elsewhere in the bloc. States could refuse to take people for a year — but only if they paid another country 250,000 euros per person to accommodate them.

“There is no a la carte solidarity in this Union,” First Vice President Frans Timmermans told reporters. “This is a way to be able to show solidarity in a situation where … you are not able to take the refugees which were allocated to you.”

But at a meeting in Prague, ministers from Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic all repeated their opposition to the idea of relocation: “It makes no sense, it violates EU member states’ rights,” Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told reporters. Hungary’s foreign minister called it “blackmail”.

A two-year emergency relocation scheme was set up last year as Greece struggled to cope with the chaotic arrival of nearly a million people, many of them Syrian refugees, most of whom reached Germany. It was agreed over the furious objections of several central and eastern states, two of whom, Hungary and Slovakia, are contesting the quota system in the EU courts.

In fact, only 1,441 asylum seekers have been relocated out of the 160,000 allowed for under the current temporary scheme.

The proposals, which also include measures to speed up the process of handling asylum claims and tighter controls on the movements of migrants themselves, need backing from governments and the European Parliament — a process that officials expect to be an uphill battle and involve many amendments.

Germany, the bloc’s main paymaster and destination for the bulk of migrants crossing the Mediterranean, has pushed hard for a permanent relocation system and has voiced frustration with the refusal of governments in the east who benefit the most from EU subsidies to take in asylum seekers.

Poland, Hungary and other formerly communist states say immigration, especially from the Muslim cultures of the Middle East, would disrupt their homogeneous societies. Governments also object to paying as an alternative to taking people in.

A similar proposal last year to set a payment of 0.002 percent of GDP was not taken up in the temporary scheme. The Commission did not issue its quota figures. Last year’s tables gave Germany a roughly 18 percent share, France 14 percent, Poland 5.6 percent and Hungary 1.8 percent.

“CONTROVERSIAL”

Any reform of the system, from which Britain, Ireland and Denmark are exempt, will require majority approval by EU governments. But senior officials say EU leaders will try to avoid forcing a deal through over strong minority objections, as happened with the temporary relocation scheme last September.

Even the authors of the proposal admit it is “sensitive” and “controversial” but hope it bridges diverging expectations from member states, EU sources said.

Splits between east and west, north and south over migration have posed one of the biggest challenges the European Union has faced and leaders’ main hope is that a new deal with Turkey to hold down the numbers arriving can take the heat out of a debate that has seen nationalist parties surge in polls across Europe.

Italy has led a push for reform of a Dublin system that gives responsibility for handling asylum claims to the first country migrants arrive in. The Commission last month floated a possibility of scrapping that in favor of a central EU system but has now favored the relocation system.

Chaotic movements of migrants, including many allowed by Italy and Greece to head north without being registered, have thrown the bloc’s cherished Schengen system of open borders into disarray, with governments putting up new barriers to travel.

EU officials hope that the deal with Turkey, from where the bulk of 1.3 million people reached Europe last year, will stem the flow and allow the Union to regain control of its external borders and hence restore order in the Schengen area.

Also on Wednesday, Brussels was expected to confirm a lifting of visa restrictions on Turks as part of the deal with Ankara. The EU is offering to take in refugees directly from Turkey, which hosts 2.7 million Syrians, and such resettlements would be taken into account in countries’ quotas for relocation.

(Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

Turkey’s Erdogan “No Migrant Deal If EU Doesn’t Fulfill Pledges”

Presidential Palace handout photo shows Turkish President Erdogan addresses visiting police officers in Ankara

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey will not go through with an agreement to take back Syrian migrants from Europe if the European Union does not fulfill its pledges, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday.

Under the deal, Ankara will take back all migrants and refugees who cross the Aegean Sea to enter Greece illegally. In return, Europe will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with money, visa-free travel and progress in its EU membership negotiations.

(Reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Syrian war creates child refugees and child soldiers, report shows

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria’s five-year-old conflict has created 2.4 million child refugees, killed many and led to the recruitment of children as fighters, some as young as seven, U.N. children’s fund UNICEF said on Monday.

Its report “No Place for Children” said more than 8 million children in Syria and neighboring countries needed humanitarian assistance, with the international response plan for Syria chronically underfunded.

“Twice as many people now live under siege or in hard-to-reach areas compared with 2013. At least two million of those cut off from assistance are children, including more than 200,000 in areas under siege,” it said.

The U.N. says more than 450,000 people are under siege. Cases of starvation have been reported this year in areas surrounded by government forces and their allies near Damascus, and by Islamic State in eastern Syria.

Violence continues despite a fragile cessation of hostilities reached last month.

UNICEF said 400 children were killed in 2015. A separate report on Friday by a number of aid groups, including Oxfam, said U.N. figures showed at least 50,000 people had been killed since April 2014.

CHILD SOLDIERS, NO SCHOOL

“A trend of particular concern is the increase in child recruitment,” UNICEF said.

“Children report being actively encouraged to join the war by parties to the conflict offering gifts and ‘salaries’ of up to $400 a month.”

Since 2014, warring sides have recruited younger children, it said, some as young as seven. More than half of children recruited in cases UNICEF verified in 2015 were under 15.

Children have been filmed executing prisoners in grisly propaganda videos by the Islamic State group.

Outside Syria, 306,000 Syrian children have been born as refugees, it said. U.N. refugee agency UNHCR says nearly 70,000 Syrian refugee children have been born in Lebanon alone.

UNICEF said 3.7 million children had been born since the conflict began, a third of all Syrian children.

Some 2.8 million Syrian children in Syria or neighboring countries are not attending school. Dozens of schools and hospitals were attacked in 2015, according to aid groups.

“Half of all medical staff have fled Syria and only one third of hospitals are functional. Each doctor used to look after the needs of around 600 people – now it’s up to 4,000,” UNICEF said.

Syria’s neighbors host the vast majority of its 4.8 million refugees. Europe hosts an eighth of the number residing in those countries, it said.

The separate joint aid agency report, “Fuelling the fire”, criticized world powers including Russia, Britain, the United States, France, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which had “intensified their military engagement in Syria”.

“To varying degrees, these states – which should play a key role in ending the suffering in Syria – are actively contributing to that very suffering,” it said.

U.N.-brokered peace talks open on Monday in Geneva to seek an end to a conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people.

(Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Andrew Roche and Toby Chopra)

Dutch find Syrian war crime suspects among thousands of migrants

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Dutch authorities identified about 30 war crimes suspects, a third of them Syrians, among the 59,000 people who applied for asylum last year, the immigration minister said on Monday.

Klaas Dijkhoff released the data in a letter amid an increasingly heated debate over immigration, stoked by an increase in arrivals from war zones across the Middle East.

He was responding to questions from members of parliament, many of whom have been calling on the government to start sending back migrants who are suspected of atrocities, or break Dutch laws.

Ten of the suspects were from Syria and the rest from Eritrea, Sudan, Nigeria, Georgia and other countries, he added, without going into further details.

Dijkhoff said the Syrians could not be sent home because international treaties prohibit forced repatriation to a country where there is ongoing conflict.

A backlash against immigration has boosted the Netherlands’ far-right anti-Islam Freedom party, whose leader Geert Wilders is regularly rated the country’s most popular politician.

(Reporting By Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Canada divided as 25,000 Syrian refugees settle in

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadians remain divided about the resettlement of Syrian refugees, with some saying Canada should accept more despite a series of racist incidents that have marred a mostly smooth arrival of nearly 25,000 migrants, a poll showed on Friday.

Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was elected in October on a promise to accept more Syrian refugees more quickly than the previous Conservative government had allowed, but the original deadline for accepting 25,000 by the end of 2015 proved too ambitious and the timeline was extended by two months.

During his election campaign, Trudeau said a Liberal government would work with private sponsors to accept “even more” than the immediate goal of 25,000, and Immigration Minister John McCallum said in December the government could double the intake to 50,000 by the end of 2016.

A poll by the Angus Reid Institute released on Friday showed 52 percent of Canadians support the plan to resettle 25,000 refugees before the end of February, while 44 percent opposed the program.

The poll also showed that 42 percent of respondents want Canada to stop taking in Syrian refugees, while 29 percent said Canada should stop at 25,000 and 29 percent said the country should accept even more.

Some 21,672 Syrian refugees – sponsored by both private citizens and the government – have arrived in Canada since November, dispersing into more than 200 communities, according to the Immigration Department.

While the arrival has been smooth for privately sponsored refugees supported by families or community groups, hundreds of government-sponsored refugees have struggled to find housing and remain in hotels in Toronto, where the housing market is tight and expensive.

There has also been a scattering of racist incidents, including one last week in which graffiti was sprayed on a school in the western Canadian city of Calgary urging “Syrians go home and die” and “kill the traitor Trudeau.”

The prime minister responded on Twitter: “Canadians have shown the best of our country in welcoming refugees. That spirit won’t be diminished by fear and hate.”

In January, a group of Syrian refugees were pepper-sprayed by a cyclist in Vancouver, an attack Trudeau also condemned on Twitter.

(Reporting by Andrea Hopkins; Editing by Sandra Maler)

U.S. rejects 30 Syrian refugees amid tightened security

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has recently rejected 30 Syrians out of thousands seeking to enter the country, Obama administration officials told a congressional panel on Wednesday, as the United States tightens vetting of immigrants and other visitors following attacks in California and Paris.

In addition, hundreds of applications from Syrian refugees have been put on hold and many might ultimately be rejected, Leon Rodriguez, director of the Citizenship and Immigration Services unit of the Department of Homeland Security, told the committee.

A spokesman for Rodriguez later said that the 30 Syrian refugee applications had been rejected over the last 16 months.

At a time when millions of refugees are arriving in Europe and elsewhere from the Middle East and Africa, Democratic President Barack Obama’s pledge to take in 10,000 people fleeing war-torn Syria has come under fire, especially from Republicans. The United States so far has admitted 2,000 refugees.

Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, said at a hearing that authorities have identified about 40 violent militants who had attempted to enter Europe posing as refugees.

Other committee Republicans at the hearing questioned why the Obama administration wanted to admit any Syrian refugees, given that the Syria-based Islamic State movement has pledged to attack the United States and other western countries.

“Our intelligence community has … told me that individuals with terrorism ties in Syria have already tried to gain access to our country through the refugee program,” McCaul said.

“What’s even more concerning is that top officials have testified before this committee that intelligence gaps prevent us from being able to confidently weed out terrorists,” he said.

Rodriguez and other Homeland Security and State Department officials told the committee that U.S. procedures for vetting Syrian refugees were among the most rigorous in the world.

U.S. agencies have tightened procedures for checking backgrounds of would-be U.S. immigrants and visitors after a recent arrival from the Middle East was one of two shooters who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California.

Francis Taylor, the Homeland Security Department’s intelligence chief, said his department was routinely doing social media checks on would-be immigrants and visitors.

(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Lisa Shumaker)

Canada’s Syrian refugee plan draws U.S. Senate panel scrutiny

WASHINGTON/OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada is proceeding with plans to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees, but the country’s background-vetting program is under scrutiny by a U.S. congressional panel, with a hearing set for Wednesday, amid lawmaker concerns about U.S. security.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee has questions about the Ottawa government’s intake of refugees by the end of February and the possibility that violent militants could mix in and cross the long, largely porous U.S.-Canada border.

At the public hearing, senators will question U.S. and Canadian experts and a U.S. Border Patrol officer on Canada’s “fast track” resettlement program. Canada’s government turned down an invitation to send a spokesperson to the session.

“We have been in frequent touch with members of the U.S. administration who are satisfied with what we are doing … if the U.S. Senate wants to engage in these activities, that is their right, of course,” John McCallum, Canada’s immigration minister, told reporters on Tuesday.

Initial inquiries show Canada’s background checks on refugees are less rigorous than the 18- to 24-month vettings done by U.S. authorities before letting any Syrian refugee set foot on American soil, congressional aides said.

Canada’s new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already delayed his government’s program. It had targeted resettlement of the 25,000 by the end of 2015. Now the target is February.

Still, congressional aides said, U.S. officials remain wary of Canada’s screening, noting it is nearly impossible for foreign governments to verify the backgrounds, and identities of refugees, given Syria’s dysfunctional government.

One way Canada is trying to allay concerns about infiltration of the refugee flow by violent militants is by limiting refugees it admits to women, children and lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender individuals.

Canada can vet would-be refugees in U.S. and Canadian law enforcement and intelligence databases, but congressional aides said these databases may omit critical and derogatory information on would-be immigrants’ previous lives in Syria.

Canada’s public safety minister, Ralph Goodale, told reporters on Tuesday that Canada had been “very strong in putting together the security system” used to vet the refugees, and had made a strong effort to keep U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and President Barack Obama fully informed.

(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Andrew Hay)

Jordan needs international help over refugee crisis, king says

LONDON (Reuters) – Jordan’s King Abdullah says his country needs long-term aid from the international community to cope with a huge influx of Syrian refugees, warning that unless it received support the “dam is going to burst”.

In an interview with the BBC aired on Tuesday, King Abdullah said the refugee crisis was overloading Jordan’s social services and threatening regional stability. Jordan has already accepted more than 600,000 U.N.-registered Syrian refugees.

“Jordanians are suffering from trying to find jobs, the pressure on infrastructure and for the government, it has hurt us when it comes to the educational system, our healthcare. Sooner or later I think the dam is going to burst,” he said.

Last Thursday, officials said the European Union would promise some $2.2 billion at an international donor conference to be held in London this week to aid Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said last month he would press the EU to relax export rules for Jordan, to help spur economic growth.

“This week is going to be very important for Jordanians to see is there going to be help not only for Syrian refugees but for their own future as well,” King Abdullah told the BBC.

Part of the U.S.-led coalition that is bombing Syria, Jordan has long been praised for helping refugees and been a big beneficiary of foreign aid as a result.

However, it has drawn criticism from western allies and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees over the situation near its border with Syria, where thousands of refugees are being kept far from any aid.

The situation has deteriorated since Russia started air strikes last September to support President Bashar al-Assad.

King Abdullah said if Jordan was not helped, the refugee crisis would worsen.

“The international community, we’ve always stood shoulder to shoulder by your side. We’re now asking for your help, you can’t say no this time,” he said.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Katharine Houreld)

U.N. seeks Syrian peace talks this week, opposition threatens boycott

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations said on Monday it would issue invitations for marathon Syrian peace talks to begin this week, but opposition groups signaled they would stay away unless the government and its Russian allies halt air strikes and lift sieges on towns.

The first talks in two years to end the Syrian civil war were meant to begin on Monday but have been held up in part by a dispute over who should represent the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad. U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said he was still working on his list, and expected to issue the invitations on Tuesday for talks to start on Friday.

The aim would be six months of talks, first seeking a ceasefire, later working toward a political settlement to a war that has killed more than 250,000 people, driven more than 10 million from their homes and drawn in global powers.

The ceasefire would cover the whole country except parts held by Islamic State militants and al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, de Mistura told a news conference in Geneva.

De Mistura, whose two predecessors quit in apparent frustration after holding failed peace conferences of their own, acknowledged the going would be difficult. Delegations would meet in separate rooms in “proximity talks”, with diplomats shuttling between them. Threats to pull out should be expected.

“Don’t be surprised: there will be a lot of posturing, a lot of walk-outs or walk-ins because a bomb has fallen or someone has done an attack…. You should neither be depressed nor impressed, but it’s likely to happen,” he said. “The important thing is to keep momentum.”

The spokesman for one of the rebel groups in the opposition High Negotiating Committee (HNC) said it was impossible for the opposition to attend as long as rebel territory is being pounded by air strikes and besieged towns are being starved.

“It is impossible to give up any of our demands. If we attend, it’s as if we are selling our martyrs,” said Abu Ghiath al-Shami, spokesman for Alwiyat Seif al-Sham, one of the groups fighting against Assad’s forces in the southwest.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he expected clarity within a day or two over who would attend, and expressed support for de Mistura’s decision to take time to draw up the list.

“We don’t want to decide and have it crumble on day one. It’s worth taking a day or two, or three, or whatever,” Kerry said during a visit to Laos.

The outcome was up to the Syrian parties, he added: “They have to be serious. If they are not serious, war will continue. Up to them. You can lead a horse to water; you can’t make it drink.”

RUSSIAN INTERVENTION

Years of high-level diplomacy have so far yielded no progress toward ending or even curbing the fighting. Since the last peace conference was held in early 2014, Islamic State fighters have declared a caliphate across much of Syria and Iraq, and the war has drawn in world powers.

The United States has led air strikes against the militants since 2014, and Russia launched a separate air campaign nearly four months ago against enemies of its ally Assad.

Russian firepower has helped the Syrian military and its allies achieve military gains, including a major push in the northwest of the country in recent days, with rebels acknowledging a turn in momentum.

The rise of Islamic State and Russia’s entry into the war have given new impetus to diplomacy, leading to a Dec. 18 U.N. Security Council resolution, backed by Washington and Moscow, that called for peace talks.

But world powers remain at odds over who should be invited. Russia says opposition figures it calls terrorists must be excluded, and wants to include groups like the Kurds who control wide areas of northern Syria. Regional heavyweight Turkey opposes inviting the Kurds.

The main Sunni Arab opposition groups, who are supported by Arab governments and the West, say they will not attend unless they can choose their own delegation. Spokesman Salim al-Muslat said the opposition HNC would discuss its position on Tuesday.

The HNC, formed in Saudi Arabia last month and grouping armed and political opponents of Assad, has repeatedly said talks cannot begin until air strikes are halted, government sieges of rebel-held territory lifted and detainees freed, steps outlined in the U.N. resolution.

“Unfortunately, it is not possible to sit and talk to anyone without the suffering being lifted first,” Muslat said on Arabic news channel Arabiya al-Hadath.

SUICIDE BOMBING

The peace conference, if it takes place, will be the third since the war began and the first convened by de Mistura, a veteran diplomat with dual Swedish and Italian nationality.

All previous diplomatic efforts foundered over the future role of Assad, with the opposition refusing to back off its demand that he leave power and the president refusing to go.

A suicide bomber driving a fuel tank truck blew himself up at a checkpoint run by the Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham in the northern city of Aleppo on Monday, killing at least 23 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

Rebel forces lost the town of Rabiya in Latakia province over the weekend, their second major setback near the Turkish border in northwestern Syria in recent weeks as the government and Russia seek to cut rebel supply lines to Turkey.

“It’s a major pullback for us, but it is not over. We have 17 martyrs and 30 wounded. And none of the injuries are from bullets: it is all due to shrapnel from missiles, proof of how we are struggling to fend off Russian air strikes,” Firas Pasa, a leader of an ethnic Turkmen rebel group told Reuters in Gaziantep, Turkey, near the border.

“If the West wants us to defeat Syrian government forces then we urgently need anti-aircraft capabilities,” he said.

A member of Ahrar al-Sham, Abu Baraa al-Lathkani, said the rebels had abandoned the strategy of trying to hold territory and were shifting to guerrilla tactics.

The Syrian military, its morale running high, is planning the next phase of its offensive in northern Syria. The coming target is Idlib, a rebel stronghold, said a military source.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry in Beirut, Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman, David Brunnstrom in Vientiane, Humeyra Pamuk in Turkey and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Senate blocks bill for tighter Syrian refugee screening

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Democrats narrowly blocked legislation on Wednesday that would slow the entry of refugees from Syria and Iraq into the United States in a contentious vote cloaked in presidential election-year politics.

The vote was 55-43, with “yes” votes falling short of the 60 needed to advance the Republican-backed measure in the 100-member Senate. No Republicans voted against the bill, and only two Democrats backed it.

Among other things, the bill would have required high-level U.S. officials to verify that each refugee from Iraq and Syria posed no security risk before being allowed into the United States.

Republicans said the tighter screening was essential to ensure the safety of Americans and prevent attacks within the country by Islamic State and other militant groups.

Democrats called the legislation an attack on people who are fleeing war. They accused Republicans of holding the vote to allow their 2016 presidential candidates in the Senate to back legislation touted as tough on security.

All three of the Senate Republican 2016 presidential hopefuls, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, backed the bill.

Democrats had also sought to play politics. They tried and failed to reach a deal with Republicans that would have set up a vote on an amendment establishing a religious test for would-be immigrants.

That vote was planned to see if Republicans would side against 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has advocated barring Muslims from entering the United States.

The Syria refugee bill passed the House by a large, bipartisan margin in November days after the Nov. 13 Islamic State attacks in Paris, supported by dozens of Democrats who broke from their party despite Democratic President Barack Obama’s threatened veto.

“We need to talk about efforts to defeat ISIS, not creating more paperwork for cabinet secretaries,” Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, told reporters before the vote.

It currently takes 18-24 months for Syrian refugees to be screened before they can move to the United States.

The United States has offered refuge to far fewer of the millions fleeing war in Syria and Iraq than many of its closest allies in Europe and the Middle East.

Obama announced last year that he would admit 10,000 Syrians, a plan opposed by many Republicans as a potential threat to U.S. security.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Eric Beech and Cynthia Osterman)