06 February 2015
On 4 February, Amnesty International published a new report featuring the testimonies of eight refugees from Syria, and their families, currently living in Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Amongst them is Yara, 23 years old, struggling to provide for her four children and who faces continuous sexual harassment in Lebanon. Yara learnt through a video on YouTube that her husband had been killed following his arrest in Syria.
Amnesty calls on wealthy states to take in 380,000 refugees from Syria through resettlement or other humanitarian admission programmes. The figure corresponds to the overall number of vulnerable refugees, as estimated by UNHCR, in need of resettlement.
95% of the almost 4 million people who fled Syria are now living in five countries in the region: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. With a response that Amnesty International calls ‘pitiful’, states have offered globally only 79,180 places to refugees from Syria. Amnesty requests that resettlement should be prioritised for the most vulnerable refugees such us unaccompanied children, women and girls at risk, torture survivors, LGBTI people, and those with serious medical needs.
The report marks the launch of the #OpenToSyria campaign.
For further information:
- Amnesty International, Press Release, Untold stories of Syria’s most vulnerable refugees, 4 February 2015
- Al-Jazeera, Opening our hearts to Syria’s refugee crisis, 4 February 2015
This article originally appeared in the ECRE Weekly Bulletin of 6 February 2015. You can subscribe to the Weekly Bulletin here.