How many more? Syria's refugees top two million

Charlotte Philips is our researcher on refugee and migrants' rights and recently returned from the Za'atri camp in Jordan. 

It’s difficult not to feel overwhelmed by the scale and brutality of the conflict in Syria. This week the UN has announced that the number of refugees from Syria officially reached two million, a tragic milestone. At least one million are children, many under the age of 11. But as with all statistics, this only tells us part of the story because behind every number is the human story of someone who has experienced extraordinary loss.

António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has described the situation as “the great tragedy of this century – a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history”.

At our research headquarters, we receive almost daily phone calls and emails from these individuals and families, many of them now in the neighbouring countries of Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt, and increasingly further afield. People are reaching out – asking for help, for advice, for material assistance, for their rights to be protected. They want to be able to start their lives again – and more and more believe they can only do this in another safe country.

My colleagues and I recently returned from Za’atri refugee camp in Jordan. It’s now the second-largest refugee camp in the world and has unofficially become Jordan’s fourth-largest city. Almost 130,000 refugees from Syria now call it home, with significant numbers of children and vulnerable individuals. Some have survived torture, are seriously injured or sick, and support for them is severely stretched.

The UN and organisations working on the ground have made a number of appeals to the international community for funding – because, despite some significant donations, essential services such as food assistance, education, a more reliable water supply system and shelter continue to be seriously underfunded. And it is not just Za’atri or indeed Jordan where there is a shortfall in funding to protect and assist refugees.

The same is true across the region where refugees are struggling to access services, and host countries are buckling under the strain. All these host countries are facing significant economic and political challenges due to the influx – the increased pressure on local services, meanwhile, is exacerbating tensions between refugees and local communities.

So, as many people have asked in recent days and months, what can be done?

With no political solution in sight for Syria, the very least that can be done is to allow those who have escaped with their lives to live in safety and dignity. The UN estimates that almost US$3 billion is currently needed for it to meet the needs of refugees in the region and, in June, launched the largest humanitarian appeal in its history. To date, the United States, Kuwait and the European Commission have been amongst the largest donors. But despite this, the appeal is currently only 40 per cent funded. Countries with the means to do so – European countries, North America, the Gulf states and elsewhere, must continue to scale up their funding to the refugee crisis and should plan to provide sustained, long-term support to Syria’s neighbours.

But this alone will not alleviate the refugee crisis. Donor governments should be prepared to take the most vulnerable refugees out of the region and allow them to settle safely in their countries, via resettlement and humanitarian admission programmes. As well as providing a very real lifeline for the most vulnerable, this will help to alleviate some of the burden being borne by Syria’s neighbours.

Germany has agreed to take 5,000 Syrian refugees via a humanitarian admission programme, but so far the response from other countries has been more limited .

In Greece, we’ve heard shocking accounts of Syrians and others being beaten, stranded at sea, and ‘pushed back’ to Turkey without even having their asylum claims heard. We are calling on the Greek government to put an end to such blatant human rights abuse against men, women and children seeking sanctuary in the EU.

There has been a lot of talk in recent weeks about what the international community should or shouldn’t do in relation to the Syria conflict. Supporting the refugees is unquestionably something they can do, and must do to a far greater extent.