Geneva meeting on refugees hears from Syrian in Ireland
Geneva meeting on refugees hears from Syrian in Ireland
On Wednesday 30th March, UNHCR hosted a high-level conference in Geneva on Syrian refugees. With 4.8million people forced to flee Syria to neighbouring countries, UNHCR brought states together to discuss expanding safe and legal pathways for refugees now living in increasingly difficult circumstances in countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
Investing in supporting these countries must continue, said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. But so too should “finding alternative avenues” such as private sponsorship programmes, student scholarships and work visas.
As well as providing refugees with safe and legal ways to find safety, they would help avoid the lengthy processing times for more traditional pathways, such as family reunification said Razan Ibraheem, a Syrian living in Ireland who attended the conference as one of the invited speakers.
“The vast majority of Syrians tried to follow safe and legal routes to escape. In September 2015, I volunteered with a Dutch organization in Greece to help refugees arriving on the island of Kos. I met a Syrian woman who has just landed off a boat with nine children. I discovered later that only five children were her own whereas the other four were her sister’s who fled to Norway few months before.
There was no reply to her application for family reunification so she asked her sister to bring the children along with her on the boat. Had her application for a mother-child family reunification been processed in a reasonable timeline, those children would have been spared the horrors of crossing the Mediterranean.”
Razan Ibraheem, who works as a journalist with Storyful in Dublin, also drew on her own personal experience of private sponsorship, having applied for her brother to join her in Ireland on the Syrian Humanitarian Admission Programme (SHAP).
“The process was long but, eventually, my application was approved. I can’t say how relieved I was to be reunited with him. We both hit the ground from day one in Ireland. The welcoming and friendly nature of the Irish people helped us fulfil our ambition and start out a new life from scratch.
“Family reunification, student visas, medical evacuation and work permits are all great ideas that we can expand and implement straight away if we are serious. Other ways could be arts, sports and academic scholarships. Syrians would not have risked their lives if the procedures suggested here on paper, traditional and additional, been conducted speedily and fairly on the ground. If we really want to deal with this humanitarian crisis, then we need action. And we need it right now.”
In his closing speech to the conference, Grandi, called on states to do more to assist and thanked Razanfor reminding those gathered of the real faces of the refugee crisis.
“She has highlighted the value that opportunities for pathways can provide for Syrian refugees. And she is an illustration that this 'opportunity' is not a one-way proposition. She has embraced and is embraced by Ireland, her country of mutual adoption. It is a story with a happy ending. Please contribute to making many more such stories happen.”
