New Zealand and other wealthy countries have shown a complete lack of leadership and responsibility, leaving the world’s low and middle income countries to shoulder the vast majority of the world’s refugees, said Amnesty International in a comprehensive assessment of the refugee crisis published today.
The report ‘Tackling the global refugee crisis: From shirking to sharing responsibility’, highlights that just 10 countries, which account for less than 2.5% of world GDP, currently host 56% of the world’s refugees. New Zealand, Ireland and Jordan all have populations of approximately 4.5 million people. The report shows that New Zealand, a much larger and richer country than Lebanon, hosts just 250 Syrian refugees.
Meanwhile Ireland, with a similar economy but smaller land mass than New Zealand, hosts 758 Syrian refugees.
In stark contrast, Lebanon, a far smaller and poorer country than New Zealand, hosts around 1.1 million Syrian refugees.
“The numbers speak for themselves. In too many cases, the few countries surrounding conflict zones are forced to do far too much, simply because of their location,” said Grant Bayldon, Amnesty International New Zealand’s Executive Director. “Fairness is a Kiwi value, we pride ourselves on it. But when it comes to refugees, we’re simply not doing our fair share.”
Of the world’s 21 million refugees, the UN Refugee agency (UNHCR) has identified 1.2 million of them who are highly vulnerable and in urgent need of resettlement. Amnesty International has used three relevant, objective criteria – national wealth, population size and unemployment rate – to determine what a fair share of responsibility for resettling these most vulnerable refugees would be.
“For New Zealand’s to do our fair share, we should resettle approximately 3400 refugees as an immediate, one-off emergency intake, to be processed over the next two years. This should be in addition to our annual refugee quota,” said Bayldon. “There are 1.2 million people right now – human beings just like you and me – who are suffering and dying to try to find a place where they can raise their families, work and contribute to society. It is patently unfair to expect a small handful of poor countries to provide for them.”
The report underlines the urgent need for governments to increase significantly the number of refugees they take in by highlighting some of the issues that people face after being forced to flee their homes, including the danger of being sent back to conflict zones,living in appalling conditions such as Australia’s offshore detention centres, and taking incredibly dangerous journeys that too often end in tragedy.
“If we don’t act people will die, from drowning, from preventable diseases in wretched camps or detention centres, or from being forced back into the conflict zones they are fleeing, said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International Secretary General. “If every one of the wealthiest countries in the world were to take in refugees in proportion to their size, wealth and unemployment rate, finding a home for more of the world’s refugees would be an eminently solvable challenge. All that is missing is cooperation and political will,” said Shetty.
The situation faced by the world’s 21 million refugees is precarious. While many in Greece, Iraq, on the island of Nauru, or at the border of Syria and Jordan are in dire need of a home, others in Kenya and Pakistan are facing growing harassment from governments. These 21 million refugees make up just 0.3% of the world’s population.
“Last month at the UN, world leaders failed to protect the world’s refugees. But we can welcome them, and we can do it fairly. The challenge is there for the New Zealand Government to live up to,” said Bayldon.
The fear machine is alive and well unfortunately. The same people who do not want refugees to come here, are possibly supporting politicians who advocate for the very military action that is making them leave in the first place.
If a politicians house was hit by bombs or rockets in an airstrike just imagine the howls of rage, of pain that THEIR house should be hit. But when a civilian’s house gets hit, they like most other people simply say “Oh, that’s horrible” and go back to whatever their were doing.
Since the prospect of holding anyone accountable for war crimes is nil, the injustices, the horrors and the hell continue. And the refugees who just want to be safe in a bed with a roof over their heads at night will just continue to flow in steady numbers in every direction.
https://willnewzealandberight.com/2016/10/05/new-zealand-needs-to-lift-its-refugee-game/
and the arab countries quite happy for the refugees to be taken in by ‘westerners’ it seems, saudi arabia not taking any in…but willing to pay hundreds of millions to build new mosques! can one assume amnesty international only means western countries to increase quotas in this instance? pffft, tis why left governments are toppling as the populations of the countries have had enough of immigration, brexit being another example….and good on the people, governments/mp’s never have to live with the mass refugees in the areas where they live.
I’m afraid you may be right. The picture in Europe is not encouraging. Mrs Merkel now wishes she could “turn the clock back”. The families of the 80 killed by the truck driver in Nice, or the bombers at Brussels airport, would probably have a view on the matter. Assault figures in Sweden are telling. And it is such an obvious question: why does not Amnesty push Saudi Arabia — close to the action, a Muslim country — to take refugees? Why is their focus on the West?
I see Australia is favouring Christian migrants/refugees from Syria, and that may be prudent, given events over the Tas.
NZ should be wary of clutching a viper to her bosom; or, as has quite often been the case, the next generation thereof, who often become more extreme than their parents
This may have been true once, “Fairness is a Kiwi value, we pride ourselves on it…” I am too young to know.
It is not true now.
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