An Iraqi woman holds a United Nations refugee identity document, Cairo, Aug. 23, 2008. Adam Reynolds/Corbis
April 22, 2013
Throughout
history, the Middle East has been one of the major crossroads of humanity,
where continents, cultures, and ideas intersect. People have always been on the
move in this corner of the world, though not always voluntarily so. Like other
troubled regions, the Middle East has produced, and hosted, millions of
refugees over the past decades. Two years since the beginning of the Arab
Spring, a long and difficult transition period now lies ahead for the region.
Its old and new refugee crises form part of the various challenges it must
grapple with during this process. The Middle East’s strong tradition of
hospitality and generosity towards neighbors in need will continue to be one of
its most powerful assets in this effort. In order to uphold this tradition in
the face of fundamental and delicate political and social change, the region will
require robust support from the international community.
Exodus from Syria
Ravaged
by the most complex and devastating of the world’s current crises, Syria has
itself a long and generous history of providing refuge to people in need of
sanctuary, including Palestinian and Iraqi refugees. This makes the current
suffering the Syrians have to endure all the more heartbreaking. The horrendous
bloodshed that is now entering its third year has displaced over four million Syrians
internally, many of them uprooted again and again as the fighting spreads and
the entire country is engulfed in violence and chaos. Their situation is
extremely precarious, and without unrestricted humanitarian access to those in
need, it is getting worse every day. For more and more people, becoming refugees
is the only way to survive; over 1.3 million people have already fled across
borders to seek safety abroad. Since the beginning of 2013, nearly 50,000
people have been fleeing Syria every week to Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq.
Growing numbers go even farther, to North Africa and Europe. But too many do
not make it to safety, and end up trapped in war zones or dying during the
perilous journey to the border.
Most
refugees who do manage to cross the borders do so during the dead of night,
often with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and tell gruesome stories of
the hell they left behind. Once they cross into safety, they find shelter with
relatives and friends, in public buildings, or rapidly growing camps. In one of
the worst winters in the region in many years, humanitarian agencies race
against the clock to register new arrivals and provide them with shelter,
blankets and mattresses, heaters and cooking sets, food, medicines, and clean
water.
Children
suffer the most, and more than half of Syria’s refugees are under age eighteen.
Many of them have lost parents, siblings, or friends, seen their houses and
communities bombarded, and their schools destroyed. The level of trauma and
psychological distress, especially among the youngest, is appalling, and
despite their best efforts, humanitarian agencies do not have the capacity to
respond adequately to these needs and help heal the wounds the war has left on
these children’s psyches. Hundreds of thousands of young lives have already
been shattered by this conflict, leaving the future generation of an entire
country marked by violence and trauma for many years to come.
This
conflict must stop, and a political solution must be found so as to bring peace
back to Syria and its people, although in the current scenario there is little
reason to hope that day is near. In the meantime, all we can do as
humanitarians is to continue our appeals for civilians to be spared, and for
the help we can provide to be allowed to reach those in need. Humanitarian
access to the displaced, regardless of their location, continues to be the
biggest challenge in the response inside Syria, along with that of finding
adequate financial resources. Delivering assistance in some areas of the
country is highly challenging, and the majority of humanitarian agencies were
for a long time unable to access people displaced in northern Syria and other
contested regions. Only in late January, was the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) able to start delivering emergency winter
relief to areas north of Aleppo. Getting there requires constant close
consultations with all parties to the conflict and strict adherence to
humanitarian principles. The risks involved are high, but the price of not
trying is even higher.
Plight of Iraqi Refugees
But Syria
is far from being the only refugee situation needing attention in the Middle
East. There are still hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees hosted in the
region after a massive displacement wave was sparked by sectarian violence that
started after the first Al-Askari mosque bombing in February 2006. At the
height of the crisis, an estimated 2 million people had become internally
displaced, and nearly as many had fled abroad, most notably to Jordan and
Syria, but also to Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and the Gulf states. Most refugees
were of an urban background and chose the region’s large cities as their place
of exile.
Syria and
Jordan still host the largest Iraqi refugee populations in the region. Nearly
64,000 Iraqi refugees are registered with UNHCR in Syria, and some 30,000 in
Jordan. The governments of both countries estimate that there are hundreds of
thousands more living in Syria and Jordan. Over the years, this added urban
population has increased the pressure on the resources of both countries, with
prices for oil, electricity, and water having risen by as much as 20 percent,
and rents skyrocketing. Iraqi refugees cannot work legally in either country,
and after having lived on their savings for as long as they could, more and more
of them have grown impoverished over the years. Requesting assistance is seen
by many as dishonorable and demeaning to their family’s name, and many only
register with UNHCR when they become so vulnerable that they are no longer able
to fend for themselves. Host countries continue to shoulder much of the burden
of assisting Iraqi refugees, to provide them with access to national health and
education infrastructures.
Iraqis
were, and still remain, one of the largest urban refugee populations in the
world. Urbanization is a dynamic process, and when Middle Eastern capitals
began receiving large numbers of Iraqi refugees, the humanitarian community had
not yet adjusted to this new reality, having worked mainly on the basis of
traditional, camp-based responses to mass displacement. Operating in cities is
challenging, as refugees are intermingled with other urban residents and the
activities of humanitarian agencies must be supportive of—rather than separate
from—those of national authorities.
As a
result of this, humanitarians have had to review and adapt their response
mechanisms. In the case of UNHCR, the Iraqi refugee operation triggered a
number of innovative changes in the way the agency assists urban refugees. More
efficient registration and reception systems helped reduce waiting times;
community outreach mechanisms became more proactive, for example through the
use of SMS messages; and cash assistance using ATM cards replaced earlier
in-kind schemes. Many of these new approaches are now being employed to address
the needs of Syrian refugees, especially in Jordan and Lebanon where the
overwhelming majority of the refugees is once again being accommodated in urban
areas.
Although
there has been some improvement in the security situation inside Iraq over the
past years, the country remains deeply fractured and struggles to gain
stability. Returns have been taking place—UNHCR has recorded some 215,000
returned refugees since 2009—but over one million Iraqis remain internally
displaced. UNHCR has been running a large resettlement operation from the
Middle East to help Iraqi refugees restart their lives in third countries, with
more than 80,000 having been accepted by countries such as the United States,
Canada, and Australia since the operation began in 2007. However, this solution
is only open to a small fraction of the refugee population due to a limited
number of places in receiving countries. There are no real prospects of local
integration for Iraqi refugees within the region, leaving thousands who may never
be able to return facing an uncertain future.
The Case of Yemen
Despite
the fact that it is the poorest country in the Middle East, and deeply riddled
with instability itself, Yemen has for many years had the region’s most
generous refugee policy and provides prima facie refugee status to all Somalis
arriving on its territory. The country currently hosts some 230,000 refugees,
almost all of them Somalis, and almost all of them facing a bleak prospect of
achieving any durable solutions in the near future. In addition, more than
100,000 people arrive every year on Yemen’s shores from the Horn of Africa,
having crossed the Gulf of Aden in crowded and often unseaworthy boats, with
the hope of finding safety in Yemen or economic opportunity in countries further
to the north.
The means
they use to travel, often through human smuggling rings, are highly dangerous,
and hundreds have died during the perilous journey. Many others are beaten and
abused by smugglers during the trip and arrive traumatized and ill on the
Yemeni coast. UNHCR supports several NGOs who run reception centers along the
2,000-kilometer coastline, rescuing people from the sea and providing emergency
care—or burial assistance—after passengers are pushed off boats by smugglers
eager to return to international waters. This mixed flow of refugee,
asylum-seeker, and migrant arrivals is an added challenge for Yemen,
compounding its own fragile economy, very limited public health and education
services, and highly volatile security environment.
Nearly
400,000 Yemenis themselves remain internally displaced as a result of fighting
between government forces and Houthi rebels in the North, and a separate
conflict in the southern Abyan governorate which started in May 2011. Some
100,000 have returned to Abyan since mid-2012, with UNHCR providing transport,
basic relief, and shelter items as well as legal assistance. However, the
displacement situation in the North remains unresolved. This year sees the
country entering a crucial transition phase, with the government expected to
introduce reforms that will facilitate more inclusive political processes and
help stabilize the country. The future of Yemen’s displaced populations will
depend on the government’s ability to ensure lasting success for this process.
With its
own transition in a critical phase, and the added pressure of displacement
challenges, Yemen needs strong support from regional and global actors to allow
the country to move forward toward increased stability. Media attention is
focused elsewhere, and support for economic development is scarce as long as
the country continues to be as fragile as it is. This is a dangerous cycle that
must be broken in order to ensure Yemen can overcome its internal crisis—and
enable it to maintain the enormous contribution to regional stability it has
been making, quietly, for many years by taking in so many refugees.
Libya, Two Years Later
The
Libyan displacement crisis has long disappeared from the media spotlight,
although not all of its components have yet been resolved. The Libya case was
one of the largest mixed migration crises in the history of the region. More
than 800,000 people crossed Libya’s borders, mainly to Tunisia and Egypt, in
the space of a few months in early 2011. At the height of the conflict, daily
arrival rates peaked at around 14,000 at the Tunisian border. Those fleeing
included migrant workers, refugees from other countries, and Libyans
themselves—all in all, more than 120 nationalities were represented. This
tremendous diversity of national origin, profile, and protection needs made the
Libya operation extremely challenging.
The
substantial population outflows from Libya occurred at a time when the two main
receiving countries—Tunisia and Egypt—were themselves experiencing fundamental
political change and fragility. Nonetheless, both of these countries kept their
borders open to the massive number of arrivals, and thousands found shelter
with local communities. Together with the International Organization for
Migration (IOM), UNHCR started a humanitarian evacuation by air and sea that
eventually helped some 300,000 people to return to their home countries. Those
who remained were mainly refugees and asylum-seekers from other countries who
had been living in Libya, and who now had nowhere to go. UNHCR appealed to the
international community for additional resettlement spaces for this group, to
help them find a durable solution to their situation while at the same time
easing the pressure on host countries. Some 3,700 have been accepted for resettlement,
but several hundred still remain with no prospect for durable solutions.
Libya’s
delicate post-conflict transition now offers both opportunities and challenges.
Confrontations between armed militias, increasing instability in the east of
the country, and the escalation of inter-ethnic and tribal conflicts pose
significant challenges for the new government. In addition, of the more than
half a million Libyans who were estimated to be internally displaced during the
most intense period of fighting, nearly 60,000 remain displaced or have been
uprooted again by fresh fighting. Many of the displaced belong to minority
groups who are either unable or unwilling to return—thousands remain barred
from going back by militias who control many of Libya’s rural areas.
The
country’s location on one of the major mixed-migration routes towards Europe
poses another serious challenge. Refugees and asylum-seekers from countries
such as Somalia, Sudan, or Eritrea, are often comprised in these mixed
movements. Travelling by the same means as economic migrants—often using
smugglers—they risk being treated as illegal migrants without regard to their
specific need for protection as people fleeing violence and persecution. Like
most countries in the Middle East, Libya has no functioning national asylum
system, and much of UNHCR’s work in the country is focused on helping the new
Libyan authorities develop protection-sensitive migration policies. This is
just one among many challenges facing the country in the tough period ahead,
and while Libya may not need the same economic support as many of its
neighbors, international political support for its efforts to build a modern
and democratic institutional system are vital.
The Palestinian Tragedy
One must
not forget that by far the largest and most protracted of all refugee problems
today, not only in the Middle East region but in the world, is that of the
Palestinian refugees, whose ordeal dates back nearly 65 years. Today, more than
five million Palestinian refugees are dispersed across the Middle East, with
hundreds of thousands more scattered throughout the world. The vast majority of
them—those residing in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip—fall under the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA). With a broad
humanitarian mandate focusing mainly on education, health, social services, and
microfinance, the overwhelming majority of UNRWA’s more than 30,000 employees
are refugees themselves. UNRWA has been faced with serious funding shortages in
recent years, rendering one of the world’s most vulnerable refugee populations
even more at risk. While the humanitarian aid and assistance UNRWA provides to
the Palestinians can never be enough, it will be required as long as the issues
of statelessness, prolonged military occupation, economic marginalization, and
vulnerability characteristic of the Palestinian refugee crisis are not
addressed.
The
Palestinians’ continued refugee status leaves them fundamentally at risk, and
each of the crises afflicting their host countries in recent years has further
aggravated the difficult situation of Palestinian refugees in the region. After
the fall of Saddam Hussein, many Palestinians in Iraq were subjected to
harassment, torture, and targeted attacks. Thousands who tried to escape were
trapped, many of them in the no-man’s land near the borders with Syria and
Jordan where they lived for years in extremely harsh desert conditions. UNHCR
tried to identify alternative solutions to bring them to safety, and some 3,000
particularly vulnerable persons were eventually resettled to more than a dozen
different countries. However, the situation of many of Iraq’s Palestinians
continues to be fragile.
In Syria,
the more than half a million Palestinians registered with UNRWA had been well
integrated into society; they were allowed to work and were given access to
social services. The Syrian internal conflict has given a new dimension to
their plight, with nearly 80 percent of refugees registered with UNRWA in Syria
now requiring special assistance due to the conflict, and thousands having been
further displaced by the violence. Some 30,000 have fled to Lebanon, where they
have found shelter in existing and overcrowded camps, often in very difficult
conditions. Humanitarians continue to appeal to all parties involved in the
conflict to respect and protect the Palestinians, but these calls far too often
go unheeded and they find themselves trapped again and again in violent
incidents, such as the attacks on Yarmouk Camp outside Damascus. The
international community needs to provide stronger support to UNRWA’s efforts
inside Syria and to help prevent another massive displacement of Palestinian
refugees which would have devastating consequences on regional stability and
efforts to preserve asylum space.
Helping the Hosts
The story
of refugees cannot be told without also telling the story of those who shelter
them, often at enormous cost to themselves. The Middle East is home to both the
world’s oldest and its most recent refugee crisis, and although few states in
the region have signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, providing shelter and
protection to those seeking safety at their borders is a deeply engrained
commitment in most Middle Eastern countries. In fact, Islam’s 1,400-year-old
tradition of generosity toward people fleeing persecution has had more
influence on modern-day international refugee law than any other historical
source.
As a
study published in 2009 by UNHCR in cooperation with Naif Arab University and
the Organization of Islamic Cooperation sets out, hospitality towards the needy
stranger is deeply rooted in one of the key tenets of Islam. The Holy Qur’an
calls for the protection of the asylum-seeker (al-mustamin), whose safety is irrevocably
guaranteed under the institution of aman. This generous treatment is the
same for Muslims and non-Muslims, as set out in the Surat Al-Tawbah: “And if
anyone of the disbelievers seeks your protection then grant him protection so
that he may hear the word of Allah, and then escort him to where he will be
secure. That is because they are a people who do not know.” (Surah 9:6) One
measure of a community’s moral duty and ethical behavior is how it responds to
calls for asylum. The extradition of al-mustamin is explicitly prohibited. This
same principle, known as non-refoulement, is one of the cornerstones of modern
refugee law, banning the forceful return of refugees to a place where their
lives and freedom may be in danger.
But the
traditional generosity of Middle Eastern countries towards refugees from the
region comes at a high cost. The capacities of host countries today are
dangerously overstretched. The acute pressure on water resources in Jordan is
but one example. In Lebanon, the influx of Syrian refugees has increased the
population of this tiny country by nearly 10 percent. At a time when nearly all
of the countries hosting large numbers of refugees in the region are themselves
subject to varying degrees of political instability, social tensions, economic
challenges, and security concerns, they need all the support they can get to
help maintain the delicate balance of attending to their own societies’ needs
while sheltering hundreds of thousands of refugees.
International
donor support to refugees in the Middle East has been stronger than in many
other regions of the world, but direct support to the victims is not enough.
The world’s solidarity must translate into real burden-sharing and
responsibility-sharing, supporting governments and communities in
refugee-hosting countries. Countries that have borne the brunt of the refugee
crisis must be given the means to manage this additional pressure. This is true
both in the emergency response phase and during the collective pursuit of
durable solutions which—as many of the situations described above illustrate
only all too well—can take years. Solidarity can take many forms: during exile,
it means providing development assistance to refugee-hosting areas, or making
additional resettlement opportunities for refugees available. Once conditions
are ready for voluntary return, solidarity programs must focus on the provision
of essential services and job opportunities in the countries of origin to
ensure reintegration is sustainable.
In this
context, the donor support which countries from the region are providing
through their own channels to refugees and their hosts, both in the Middle East
and beyond, is encouraging. Take the example of Syria: a month after the United
Nations launched one of the biggest humanitarian aid appeals in its history,
asking for $1.5 billion over six months to assist those affected by the
conflict in Syria as well as refugees in the surrounding countries, an
international donor conference hosted by Emir Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jabir Al-Sabah
of Kuwait in January brought in promises of $1.5 billion to support
humanitarian assistance. Some two-thirds of the forthcoming funds were
announced by Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. While these
pledges are yet to be realized, the amount indicates strong international
financial support for the people of Syria.
Gulf
donors are also becoming increasingly active in international humanitarian
fora, with the UAE quickly evolving into the industry’s most important
emergency logistics hub. In addition, governments and charities are
contributing actively to current humanitarian debates and to innovation, via
initiatives such as the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid and Development.
As they further expand their role as international donors, the Gulf countries’
efforts could stand to gain in traction and effectiveness if they were better
integrated with multilateral frameworks in the future. Better coordination on
the ground would help improve the efficiency, flexibility, and sustainability
that are needed when trying to stretch generous but on the whole insufficient
funding to meet ever-growing humanitarian needs.
Beyond Humanitarianism
The
Middle East today is not the world’s only trouble spot, but it is by far its
most visible one. While this visibility may to some extent facilitate the
humanitarian response to its crises—thanks to the additional funding and space
for advocacy that often accompanies media attention—it has done nothing so far
to help bring about actual solutions to the region’s current conflicts. These
solutions cannot be humanitarian. They will not be military. They must be
political.
The world
we live in has become more dangerous than it was two decades ago.
Unpredictability has become the name of the game. Crises are multiplying.
Conflicts are becoming more complex and intractable, and are exacerbated by
rapid demographic change, urbanization, and dwindling natural resources
including food, water, and energy. At the same time, the world lacks the
governance capacity to deal with these challenges. There is no effective
multilateral approach to any of them.
Large
refugee populations are the visible result of many of these crises, but they
often stay on long after the conflict in question has ceased to be in the
spotlight of media attention. In the Middle East, this is the case for almost
all of the large displacement situations, which keep millions of people
languishing in exile and with uncertain prospects for the future. At the
moment, all eyes are focused on the plight of Syria, its people, and its
refugees. Given the current gloomy outlook for Syria’s future, there is a real
risk that this newest refugee crisis could be added to the list of protracted
situations of exile that plague the region. The international community must do
whatever it can on the political level to prevent this from happening.
The
Middle East’s refugee crises are symptomatic of many of the region’s political
and security challenges. Large-scale displacement is also a source of concern
for the stability of the region in general, and receiving countries need robust
international support to help stabilize their economies and enable governments
to maintain their generous open-border policies that are at the basis of refugee
protection. In a region that has become the world’s biggest producer of forced
displacement and where peace and stability remain elusive for many, much will
have to change in the coming years to help governments and communities cope
with these challenges. Politically inclusive arrangements are needed, which
extend to displaced populations, to bring sustainable solutions to those who
have been uprooted from their homes. For this to happen, the many emerging
civil society actors in countries across the region have an important part to
play, and should be strongly supported. The international community must go
beyond offering humanitarian assistance to the human fallout of war, it must
provide real political and economic support throughout the long and extremely
difficult transition period that lies ahead.
António Guterres has served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees since
2005. He oversees 7,685 staff members working in 126 countries, and an annual
budget of $3.6 billion. He was prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002,
during which time he was heavily involved in the international effort to
resolve the crisis in East Timor. As president of the European Council in early
2000, he led the adoption of the Lisbon Agenda and co-chaired the first
European Union-Africa summit.