Nations hosting most refugees say rich countries have let them down
NEW YORK - The plight of refugees was centre stage at the United Nations in 2016, as dozens of countries attending a U.s.-led summit pledged to admit many more people.
Two years later, the optimism born of that summit has been replaced by bitterness and uncertainty as the number of refugees worldwide has soared and far fewer are being resettled in other countries. Nations hosting millions of refugees from their neighbours said they had been let down by the world’s richest countries and were facing serious problems as a result.
“Unfortunately, the heavy burden of humanitarian consequences of the Syrian crisis has been left on Turkey’s shoulders,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Mehmet Cavusoglu, estimating that his country has spent $32 billion feeding, sheltering and educating refugees. “Commitments have not been fulfilled. Our calls for more burden and responsibility sharing fell on deaf ears.”
The Trump administration has slashed the maximum number of refugees it will let in next year to less than a third of what it was during the Obama administration. This year, the United States will admit about 21,000 refugees, fewer than the ceiling of 45,000. Next year’s cap of 30,000 may not be reached, either, as the administration says it will focus on processing a backlog of 800,000 asylum seekers already in the country provisionally.
The U.N. General Assembly will vote on the Global Compact on Refugees this week during its annual gathering. The agreement is rooted in the premise that refugees are the world’s responsibility and eventually should be resettled.
While the compact mentions increasing refugee access to other countries, it focuses largely on encouraging countries, corporations and institutions like the World Bank to provide more humanitarian aid to host nations struggling with the influxes.
The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, said Monday that the United States would donate an additional $185 million to help Rohingya Muslims displaced by a military crackdown in Myanmar, with $156 million earmarked for refugees and host communities in Bangladesh. The donation brings U.S. aid in the crisis to $389 million this year, but Haley cautioned that U.S. generosity was not bottomless.
“While the U.S. is generous, we’re going to be generous to those that share our values, generous to those that want to work with us and not those that try and stop the U.S. or say they hate America and are counterproductive,” she said.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said her country has taken care of more than 1 million traumatized Rohingya, a crushing burden.
“The magnitude of the problem has caused serious challenges for us,” she said at the U.N. meeting on the global compact. “The diversion of resources for the Rohingya has taken a toll on society, the environment and the economy.”
Among the diplomats and leaders attending, there was a sense of exhaustion over the continuing waves of migrants who, as Cavusoglu put it, have turned the Mediterranean Sea into a “graveyard of desperate people.”
Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said some refugee crises have been forgotten, subsumed in newer situations like the flow of people from Venezuela and Nicaragua.