The problems of syrian refugees and european union

Editor's Notes

• #2 Today, more than 19 million people have been forced to flee their home countries because of war, persecution, and oppression, and every day an estimated 42,000 more join them.
• #3 19 million people— a disastrously high number — and they all need to find somewhere they can live in safety. But when we talk about the global refugee crisis, we're not just talking about numbers. We're really talking about the ways in which nations fail refugees. That happens at four distinct stage: The first step of the refugee crisis is the persecution that forces refugees to flee their homes in the first place. Some are fleeing war, some political persecution, and some other kinds of violence. The second step is what happens to those refugees once they are forced out of their homes: Often, though not always, they end up in camps. Life in the camps is often difficult, cramped, and unsafe, with few prospects for work or education. This is a crisis for the refugees as well for as the countries that house them. The third step is what happens when refugee families, The journey is often horrifyingly dangerous: Many families drown crossing the Mediterranean in rickety boats. The families understand the risk, and may pay thousands of dollars per person for the trip, but often feel it is their only option. The fourth step is the one that many Western countries are experiencing now: what happens when large numbers of refugees show up. Often, they face systems that are badly broken — the squalid overcrowded camps to refugees in an effort to keep them out. This is changing a little bit, but most European countries are still trying to keep refugees out and refusing to accept even a remotely sufficient number of them for resettlement, which means the families who make it to Europe end up in camps sleeping in train stations, or living in fear of deportation. This last step of the crisis is about much more than just funding: It's forcing some really sensitive political issues to the surface in Europe, over migration and identity and the future of the European Union. Until Europeans can figure out those issues, hundreds of thousands of refugees will continue to suffer.
• #4 There's no single reason, because a number of the crises driving people from their homes are not connected. But there is one thing that jump-started the crisis, and that has helped to make it so especially bad: the Arab Spring. It began in 2011 as a series of peaceful, pro-democracy movements across the Middle East, but it led to terrible wars in Libya and Syria. Those wars are now helping to fuel the refugee crisis. Bashar al-Assad's regime has targeted civilians ruthlessly, including with chemical weapons and barrel bombs; ISIS has subjected Syrians to murder, torture, crucifixion, sexual slavery, and other appalling atrocities; and other groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra have tortured and killed civilians as well. The civil war has killed a shocking 250,000 people, displaced half of the population, and caused one in five Syrians (4 million people) to flee the country.
• #5 Syria is a relatively new country: Its borders were constructed by European powers in the 1920s, mashing together several ethnic and religious groups. This regime appeared stable, but when Arab Spring protests began in 2011, it turned out not to be. Syrians were clearly sick of the country's corruption, brutality, and inequity.
• #6 There are a few reasons that refugees have become more willing to brave the journey to Europe. The first is that the crises in their home countries have simply become too dangerous to tolerate. Another is that while many initially fled into camps, those camps have become dangerous as well, and offer little future for families who may spend years there. They all need to find somewhere they can live in safety.
• #7 Europe, like a lot of places, has pretty robust anti-immigration politics. And anti-immigration sentiment tends to rise when people feel economically insecure. There is also a fear, rarely articulated, of changing demographics and civic identity. Taking in large numbers of refugees requires accepting that those refugees might bring changes to your nation's identity or culture. And while that change is often economically and culturally enriching, it can still feel scary. For years, the world's wealthiest countries have, for the most part, steadfastly refused to accept more than the barest possible minimum of the world's refugees. As a result, now that the crisis is growing out of control, there is no plan in place to handle it, and no agreement on how the burdens should be shared.
• #8 European Union rule called the Dublin Regulation which requires refugees to stay in the first European country they arrive in until their asylum claims are Processed. But in practice, it’s a rule that has trapped thousands of refugees in Greece and Italy, simply because those countries are the easiest ones to reach by boat across the Mediterranean. The results have been disastrous: lack sufficient food and health care, and are so severely unsanitary and chronically overcrowded that the conditions in them may amount to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law.
• #9 There are a number of ways refugees are suffering, and thus a number of ways to help alleviate those specific traumas and injustices. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, is a few billion dollars short on funding just to administer aid to the millions of displaced Syrians. There are a number of excellent charities operating in conflict zones. There are also charities that help care for resettled refugees, or that provide them with legal council to seek asylum once they arrive in Europe or the US or elsewhere. For those of us who live in those countries, that means accepting that our communities will look and feel different from how they have in the past. It requires adjusting, at least slightly, our vision of what our communities look like, and widening the definition of our culture to accommodate new arrivals, even if their customs and values might seem alien to us. That's not something that has ever come easily to people, but it is the only real solution there is.