BY BEN KERRIGAN
The UK is to provide resettlement to “thousands” more Syrian refugees in response to the worsening humanitarian crisis, David Cameron has announced.
David Cameron has announced his intention to provide resettlement to thousands more Syrian refugees in attempt to address the humanitarian crisis facing Europe. He said Britain will act with ”head and heart” by infusing an extra 100 million pounds in humanitarian aid for those in Syrian,Turkish and Jordanian camps, as well as the Lebanon, but will excludes camps on the boarder of Europe.
His speech in Lisbon, Portugal was in response to growing pressure following the publication of the body of a drowned 3 year old Syrian boy washed up in a Turkish beach last week.The boy’s aunt told the BBC the death of the boy and his brother should be a wake up call to the world. Now, children and women are set to be prioritized over men in a phenomenal expansion scheme to airlift victims of the horrifying civil war. The Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon has said Scotland would accept 1,000 refugees as a starting point and wrote to Cameron to accept more refugees.
However, Cameron does not need advice from Scotland regarding this issue, as Britain had already pledged to help in one of the worst humanitarian crisis since the second world war. Cameron has notably not put a figure on the numbers he will take in, and may be under more pressure to be specific, especially as French President today declared his country’s readiness to take in 24,000, as German leader, Angela Markel proposed for the 28 members of the EU to share out a total of the 120,000 migrants between the 28 member States. This means over 4,000 each. Cameron has not committed to that, despite that figure being 6 times less than what France is committing to. One other thing as pointed out by Hungarian’s Prime Minister at a meeting to Hungarian diplomats is that once thousands of Syrians are allowed into these member states, they will be free to travel to other member states without restraint because of the EU law that allows freedom of movement between states. However, that can be tackled by respective member states putting restrictive limits on movements- meaning not allowing Syrian refugees to become EU citizens, but remain refugees. The question is whether educated Syrians will find this dignifying and if this is what will actually happen.
