Canada looms in dreams of Syrian refugees
How to import 25,000 people is one thing but who to choose will be just as daunting
OTTAWA — Somewhere right now, in a refugee camp in Amman or a rental apartment in Beirut or on a street in Istanbul, sits a Syrian hoping to be among the 25,000 people resettled to Canada, possibly by the end of the year.
United Nations staff working with the Canadian government to figure out who will be on the planes or ships dispatched to the region in the coming weeks say they are trying to keep expectations realistic.
“Rumours are already going in the refugee populations that there’s a large program, that Canadians are coming,” said Furio De Angelis, the Canadian representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
“We have to explain, present it as it is, an extraordinary effort but not everyone is eligible.”
The UN refugee agency, tasked with overseeing what’s been called the greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War — is very specific when it comes to selecting people for resettlement.
Their cases are assessed against a number of categories, including whether they’re in immediate physical danger, are survivors of violence or torture, have medical needs or are a woman, child or adolescent at risk.
Those categories are applied against a person’s current situation, not the one they left. So, for example, a female refugee from Syria being detained in Lebanon and who is therefore at risk of being deported, could be a case that lands on a Canadian visa officer’s desk.
But unlike usual procedures, where the cases are processed individually, this program will likely involving the batching together of groups and the simplification of paperwork. For example, the Canadian government could accept that no one younger than 18 is likely a major security risk and lessen the requirement to conduct detailed reviews of those files.
The focus is on choosing refugees from Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.
In Jordan, there are 629,152 registered Syrians, the majority of whom do not live in refugee camps. The population is roughly split 50-50 between male and female and more than half are under the age of 18. About 30 per cent of the population is identified as having a specific need that would make them eligible for resettlement.
In Lebanon, there are around 1.1 million registered Syrians and though the government has no official camps for them, some have crowded into camps originally set up for Palestinians. There are at least 1,500 children, nearly three-quarters of them Syrian, begging or working as street vendors, according to the UN.
In Turkey, there are 2.1 million registered Syrians, again split roughly 50-50 between male and female and about a third are children. Two-thirds of the youngsters aren’t in school, according to one recent study by Human Rights Watch. Alan Kurdi, the child whose family had considered trying to reach Canada as they fled from Syria, died instead in an effort to reach Turkey.
Altogether, there are 4.2 million people registered as refugees from the Syrian conflict, and the United Nations wants to reset- tle about a third.
While the Liberal’s plan is focused on the logistics of how to get some of them here now, they are also thinking about the future.
Immigration Minister John McCallum highlighted this week that one member of the committee pulling together the plan is Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef.
“She is a minister who is actually a refugee herself,” McCallum said. “We talked about the fact that 20 years from now we may have one of the Syrian refugees sitting around the cabinet table.
“That speaks to the kind of vision we have in this plan.”
VALLETTA, Malta — The European Union pressed African leaders on Wednesday to take back thousands of people who do not qualify for asylum, as overwhelmed Slovenia began building a razorwire border fence to keep migrants at bay, raising tensions with neighbouring Croatia.
Sweden, struggling to manage the influx, too, became the latest EU nation to announce the introduction of temporary border controls, as of Thursday.
According to the International Organization for Migration, almost 800,000 people have entered Europe by sea this year. The EU predicts that three million more could arrive by 2017.
The Europeans say most Africans are coming in search of work and should be sent home, but many deliberately arrive without documents and must wait months before they are taken back.
At an EU-run summit in Malta, African leaders are set to commit “to co-operate with the EU on return and admission, notably on travel documentation,” according to the latest draft of an “Action Plan” being drawn up.
The president of Niger — a major transit route for Africans heading to lawless Libya in the hopes of crossing the Mediterranean to Europe — was cautious about opening the floodgates for people to return.
“We are open to talk about it. Everything will depend on the conditions that will be put in place for when they arrive,” President Mahamadou Issoufou told reporters in the Maltese capital Valletta, adding that the best method of solving Europe’s migration crisis is to attack the root causes forcing people to leave in the first place.
“We can put security measures in place, but the flow will remain difficult to stop as long as we don’t take measures to reduce poverty,” he said.
The EU is working closely with Niger to stem the flow of migrants toward Libya, and ultimately to Europe. It is also trying to seal deals with Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. One was signed with Ethiopia as the two-day summit began.
The move gives Ethiopia — a major hub for people trying to reach Europe — access to money from a $1.9 billion US trust fund.
But the head of the African Union expressed concern that moving on returns too quickly might result in the building of reception centres where people are held until they can be granted asylum or be sent home.
Such centres, “whatever we call them, will become de-facto detention centres,” AU chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said. She warned that women and children would be in danger if held there, and she also hit out at some European countries that “have taken a fortress approach” to migration.
In Slovenia, meanwhile, tensions mounted after troops began erecting razor-wire along the Sutla River that divides the country from Croatia, and further southwest near the town of Gibina.
Tensions mounted when Croatian authorities said parts of the fence were in disputed territory. AP journalists saw Croatian police demand that Slovenia take down a section of the fence.
Croatian special forces arrived at the Harmica border crossing, while armed Slovenian special police watched from the Slovenian side. A helicopter flew above illuminating the area with a spotlight before the Croatian forces pulled back. Slovenia denies that any part of the planned 80-kilometre fence is on Croatian soil. Both countries are already locked in an old territorial dispute dating from the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
The tiny Alpine state expects 30,000 new migrants to arrive and fears that if neighbouring Austria restricts their entry, the thousands would be too much for it to handle. “If we don’t act on time,” Prime Minister Miro Cerar said, “this could cause a humanitarian catastrophe on the territory of Slovenia.”
Nearly 170,000 migrants have crossed into Slovenia since mid-October, when Hungary closed its border with Croatia and the flow of desperate people heading to Western Europe was redirected to Slovenia.
In Sweden, Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said border controls were being introduced today and last until Nov. 21. He said the move was a way to “bring order” to the Swedish asylum system while sending a signal to the EU.
Sweden says migration authorities are overstretched and nearly 200,000 asylum-seekers are expected this year. Relative to population size — Sweden has 9.7 million people — no other EU country comes close.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the move would allow Sweden to turn people away at the border. But it would prevent them from staying in the country illegally, or transiting through to reach neighbouring Finland and Norway.