Red: Liam Astle
At this moment we are living in an increasingly global world – something we all prosper from. We can travel across continents with relative ease and study in other nations than our own; we can spread ideas with the press of an upload button; we can get a job in almost any location, and become informed on global happenings by turning on the TV.
Yet we can’t just reap the benefits of being British citizens in a global community without accepting the duties that come with it all. Refugees are people in the most vulnerable position we can imagine: without homes, without nations and in total desperation. If we accept that a community has a duty to help those in need, why do we refuse to directly help the most desperate on a global scale?
By only accepting 20,000 refugees into Britain per year, the government has done the bare minimum. Canada is letting in 25,000 per year; Germany has already received 800,000; and Turkey has received 2,500,000. Britain, meanwhile, has dodged its duty to the international community by only allowing a small amount into our nation.
The natural rebuttal to such an argument would be that by funding refugee camps we’re doing our international duty by supporting refugees in vulnerable positions, ensuring there are institutions open to them so that they have immediate relief available. What this disregards is the value of a stable environment where people can move past the trauma of war, outside the limbo of a camp and to a new life. The opportunity to have a fresh start is one which cannot be understated. The opportunity to raise a family in peace, to get an education and the safety that can often be found are a stark contrast to the war-torn zones refugees escape from.
Take Ahmed Hussen. He arrived in Canada as a refugee from Somalia in 1996 at the age of 16. He finished his secondary school studies and attended York University in Toronto, graduating in 2002, followed by a degree in law at the University of Ottawa. He began practising law in 2013 – and in 2015, he became the first Somali-Canadian to be elected to the Canadian House of Commons.
Such a story shows the transformative opportunities presented by the chance to settle in a new nation, to have clear opportunities to develop one’s education and to have a clean break. What we can offer is opportunity along with stability, something which cannot always be ensured by funding distant refugee camps.
We have a duty to the global community and to the most vulnerable to share the burden which we face more evenly across our nations; a duty to offer people a direct chance to better their condition and give them a fresh chance at life. We owe it to the world and we owe it to the refugees themselves.
Blue: Matt Burwood
The government can scarcely be accused of holding back when it comes to their response to the Syrian crisis. By now, over £3.2 billion of public funds have been committed to the UK’s response. We can be proud of this tremendous donation which goes to support some of the most vulnerable people trapped in Syria and displaced in the region, and goes a long way to fund regional and international organisations as they go about their extraordinary relief work. It’s worth finding some perspective on just how significant the UK contribution has been, and I refer you to Oxfam’s “Fair Share Analysis” for 2015, which compares national GDP to relief contributions. The UK was deemed to have provided 237% of their theoretical “fair share”, eclipsing Germany, France and Russia at a decent 152%, meagre 45%, and abysmal 1% respectively.
In terms of cash, then, we are not one of those countries flagrantly shirking their responsibilities to some of the most beleaguered and desperate people in the world. But there is the question of how British generosity should be directed – whether the government should continue to focus on regional support rather than the acceptance of refugees. Fundamentally, both approaches have the potential to achieve great things for those touched by the conflict, but we must make sensible choices which lead to the best results given our limited resources.
Accepting refugees is a costly business; the charity War Child UK estimates that while providing basic food, water, education and opportunity to a refugee in Jordan would cost circa $3,000, the equivalent cost in Europe is more like $30,000. Advocates of large scale acceptance of refugees into Europe have to explain why the benefits of moving one refugee to Europe outweigh the opportunity cost of ten refugees in the Middle East who might otherwise have benefitted from our support. I am not arguing that refugee camps are a comfortable or in any way satisfactory compromise – as four million refugees in camps remain without access to work or education, their lives indefinitely on pause, it is essential that we work hard to uphold our commitments to help these people meaningfully and quickly. We could certainly pour resources into helping tens of thousands of additional refugees relocate Britain, or we could choose to stretch those funds ten times further by bringing some basic human dignity to the vast camps in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey.
Besides this general argument in favour of supporting refugees in the region over large scale resettlement, I feel it is right to note a few more details about our government’s approach. Firstly, 87% of Syrians claiming asylum in the twelve months up to March this year were accepted into the UK. Secondly, the Syrian Vulnerable Person Resettlement Programme provides a route for refugees to enter the UK who have suffered torture and sexual violence, or who are elderly or disabled. Thirdly, there is the intention to resettle 20,000 in the next five years, and a more recent commitment to accept 3,000 vulnerable child refugees. These policies are abundantly sensible and compassionate when considering the significant but not limitless resources of the British public. Amid a tragedy on the scale of the Syrian Civil War, it is nearly impossible to reach satisfactory resolutions. Ultimately, hard decisions must be made, and the ones being made by the government are for the right reasons.
