Oral evidence: Syrian Refugee Crisis, HC 463Thursday 29 October 2015

Oral evidence, 29 October 2015.

Witnesses

Zoe Smith, Head of Advocacy, Open Doors UK, Haley Bobseine, Lebanon Researcher, Human Rights Watch, Aleema Shivji, Director, Handicap International UK, and George Graham, Head of Conflict and Humanitarian Policy and Advocacy, Save the Children, gave evidence.

Chair

Welcome to the four of you. Thank you very much indeed for coming here today. We again want to cover a lot of ground in the remaining 45 minutes. I apologise that a couple of the members of the Committee will have to leave before the end to attend another committee meeting.

Fiona Bruce

Thank you for coming. We are going to ask each of you briefly—that is for two minutes each, please—to describe the obstacles that are faced by minority groups of refugees and others seeking the support of the UN and other organisations in the region. If you could, please, restrict your comments to two minutes about these obstacles that minority groups face.

Chair

Thanks, Fiona. I will go around the table, starting with Aleema, if you can briefly introduce yourselves and say where you are from. I really beseech you to stay to the two minutes because then we can cover all of the other questions that we have planned.

Aleema Shivji

My name is Aleema Shivji, and I am the UK director for Handicap International. We are an international charity that works with disabled and vulnerable people in 60 countries. Many of you will have heard us giving evidence on the disability inquiry a few years ago. My background is actually as a physiotherapist, and I spent many years working in the frontlines with the organisation. In terms of answering the question on the vulnerabilities and specific barriers, first of all there should be a broad look at what “vulnerability” actually means. In this crisis, as you have just heard from the panellist, it is not a straightforward answer. What we find is that there is quite a lot of intersection between vulnerabilities. People spend a lot of time focusing on women and children, who obviously are very visible because of the percentages, but behind that you have got disabled women and disabled girls who are then doubly and sometimes triply discriminated against, particularly if they have got intellectual impairments. They are hidden, they are not visible and they are not picked up in registration systems. There might be an older person who also has specific needs and has impairments of different kinds. What we find is the people that we work with—disabled people, older people and people with chronic diseases—are often not in centres, camps and so on, and so are out in the communities. The barriers that they face are not knowing what is happening, not having access to the services, and not being able to be mobile to be able to get to places where cash or information is being distributed and where health services are. Those are some of the specific obstacles that we certainly see. What else would I add?

Chair

You have done your two minutes. That is brilliant.

Haley Bobseine

My name is Haley Bobseine. I am the Lebanon researcher with Human Rights Watch and I am based in Beirut. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch I worked at a small legal organisation and we provided legal assistance to refugees seeking resettlements. Many of our clients were lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender refugees, and we also ran protection programmes for those refugees in their countries of first asylum, notably in Beirut. Just to highlight some of the vulnerabilities of the LGBT refugee population, inside Syria there are many different minority groups that are being targeted. Generally, there are some areas where people can seek asylum. There are safe enclaves within the country, or they may flee to neighbouring countries and get some sort of protection. For LGBT refugees that, unfortunately, is not the case and they are being targeted by various different groups inside Syria, and then when they move to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and other places they continue to face persecution, often from members of the refugee community and from their families. On top of that there are laws in Lebanon, Jordan and other countries criminalising, for example, unnatural sexual acts, and they are often used to prosecute refugees in those countries. It is definitely getting better, but there are barriers to accessing services within those countries. When I speak with refugees they talk about discrimination when accessing health services and clinical management of rape. Housing is also a big issue. For these individuals living within refugee camps they are often discriminated against. There are physical attacks, either by their host communities or the refugees as well. It is a very difficult situation, so resettlement is often the only option for these individuals.

Chair

Thank you. We are going to return to some of those issues in further questioning, so thanks, Haley.

Zoe Smith

I am Zoe Smith. I am head of advocacy at Open Doors UK, which is part of an international NGO supporting Christians who face persecution for their faith in over 50 countries around the world. We predominately work, through partner organisations inside Syria, to bring relief to those who are either choosing to stay to serve their communities there, or who cannot flee for various reasons. We have found that Lebanon in particular is a country that Christians often flee to, because there is a large Christian population there. Jordan is much less common. Turkey is geographically closer to some predominantly Christian areas, but Lebanon is the preference. Christian-born individuals generally face similar obstacles to non-Christians, although there is a strong concern about faith-based discrimination. We have heard that people are nervous to register with UNHCR for that particular reason. They are also nervous because they are scared of the reach of the Assad Government, and registering as a refugee in Lebanon could be perceived as being anti-government, which could then have ramifications for their families who are presumed to be pro-Assad, whether they are or not. What we are particularly concerned about is Christians who have converted from a Muslim background. They do face particular obstacles accessing faith-based organisations, because they have to admit that they have converted, so Islamic organisations are out of the question because of the strong emotions around conversion and apostasy. Also, traditional churches sometimes view converts with suspicion. They are not sure if they are trying to create discord. They also are nervous about, again, admitting conversion to UNHCR staff due to the serious ramifications of apostasy in that part of the world.

George Graham

I am George Graham. I am the head of conflict and humanitarian policy at Save the Children. From our perspective, the forms of vulnerability of child refugees include child labour, which has shot up, with more than 50% of working children working six or seven days a week, which has huge implications for their health, education, abuse and exposure to criminality. Early marriage is another phenomenon that has shot up, which exposes girls to violence, sexual abuse, risk of early pregnancy and dangerous births. Other vulnerabilities include prostitution, all forms of abuse, lack of services—in particular, of course, lack of education, which is affecting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of child refugees—recruitment back into fighting forces in Syria and trauma as these children have been through hell and many of them are clearly suffering as a consequence. The causes of these vulnerabilities include poverty in their families, the inability of their parents to work to support their children, the fact that they are under the radar and often are not registered, either because their families are poor or because of the reasons that Zoe has given: fear around registration. One of the consequences of this is that tens of thousands of babies have been born as refugees, but tens of thousands of those babies have not been registered. They are effectively stateless. There is also a particular group, the Palestine refugees from Syria, who are doubly marginalised and in particular are very unlikely to be able to be registered. They and their children are particularly vulnerable.

Chair

George, thank you, and thanks to all four of you for your discipline in staying to the two minutes.

Jeremy Lefroy

Yesterday, in questions to the DFID Ministers, our colleague Caroline Spelman asked, “Are persecuted Christians and other religious minorities able to get into the camps, and will they be able to remain within them and take winter refuge?” The Minister, Mr Swayne, replied that he had visited camps that were specifically for Christians, something most of us were unaware of until then. Could anybody shed some light on that, and are they aware of that and how these camps, specifically for Christians—or indeed for other minorities who may have been outside the system—are being supported?

Zoe Smith

Did the Minister specify which country he was talking about?

Jeremy Lefroy

He did not, no.

Chair

One would imagine Lebanon, I guess.

Jeremy Lefroy

It could be Lebanon or Jordan. I do not know.

Zoe Smith

Our general understanding is that in Lebanon, particularly, there are some official camps, but some of them do spring up spontaneously. People often segregate themselves quite naturally. Syrian society, whilst it was rightly celebrated for its pluralism, was also quite structured and there were quite a lot of conflicts between the different groups in society. People are used to staying with their own. When you have fled everything that you know, when you are nervous about your neighbour because they may have turned on you or you do not know what their political affiliation is, the tendency is to stay together. Also, we are not aware of Christians being within UN registered camps. They often go straight to churches for the lack of registration because, as I previously mentioned, of the fear of the unknown—the other—because camps are relatively homogenous. The UNHCR camps generally have a Sunni majority, so they tend to dictate the culture of the camps, which is not a bad thing per se, but if your culture is different then you stand out and you are more easily a target, which makes you nervous to go there. The dress code is different, for instance. We find they tend to focus more around churches, going to community-based organisations, local NGOs and church organisations. They often camp in their grounds.

Fiona Bruce

I have just a very quick question, Zoe. Are these informal camps that you have described therefore being supported financially through donations rather than UN resources? Is that how you see it?

Zoe Smith

Our understanding is that the majority of Christians do focus on community-based organisations, yes. In Lebanon, those who register with UNHCR have done so for humanitarian aid, but they have referred to the system as being broken. We have already heard that the World Food Programme is drastically under-funded, so the majority of aid comes through either faith-based or non-faith-based organisations such as churches and the like.

Fiona Bruce

What about the big camps in Jordan?

Zoe Smith

Jordan is not a popular destination for Christians. We have, again, not found Christians in camps in Jordan. They tend to focus around areas where there are churches. Again, they go with what they know. They go with where they feel safe, where they are more likely to mingle in with the general population, stand out less and have some form of support.

Wendy Morton

Some of my question actually has been touched upon, but hopefully this gives a chance to explore it a little bit more and be a bit more specific. Can you tell me how much evidence is there to suggest that Christian and LGBT refugees are avoiding the camps? If they are doing so, what impact does this have on their ability to receive support?

Haley Bobseine

I have worked with a number of LGBT refugees who have gone to the camps in the beginning, because that is the only place where they knew to go. However, due to physical attacks and discrimination within the camps they have had to flee. Housing is definitely a really big issue for these individuals within Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and northern Iraq. There are some organisations that provide them with financial assistance for them to do emergency relocations from the camps after certain attacks. However, as the resettlement process can take a while, getting emergency cash assistance for one or two months helps but it is not the solution until they are resettled. The issue is there are no safe shelters. For lesbian women, they can be referred to women’s shelters, and there has been a varying degree of success in how they have been able to integrate those women into the shelters, because there have been attack by other women on these lesbian women in the shelters. Otherwise, it is really difficult because they really have no place to go, and a lot are forced into survival sex and living on the streets. They do not have any places to go.

Chair

Haley, I know that your focus is Lebanon. Are you able to say anything about the situation for LGBT refugees in Jordan or Turkey?

Haley Bobseine

Yes, I can cover that as well. My understanding from colleagues in Jordan, and from my work in Jordan as well, is that maybe some are able to live in the camps, but others prefer to leave the camp. They might be worried about family members, such as distant cousins who have come over, and their own family members in the camps might attack them. They would leave the camps and try to integrate in other areas where they would be less likely to face those problems. There have been some initiatives by organisations or ad hoc groups that help assist these people in finding housing, but that is again a big issue. In Turkey, with the satellite city system, especially for these LGBT refugees who are sent to very rural areas, it is extremely hard for them to access support there. If there are any LGBT‑friendly organisations, those tend to be in the capitals, and not in these small rural towns where they are being sent.

Mr Nigel Evans

I have been to visit camps in Turkey and in Jordan. Jordan was more of a tented community, with thousands living there, and in Turkey, as Wendy and I saw, they were smaller but there were lots of them all over the place. I guess, in those sorts of communities you are going to know everybody very quickly. I am just wondering, whether it is Christians or whether it is LGBT, is there not, can there not be, or do you think the British Government should be doing more to ensure that there is, somebody for them to got to if they feel that they are being discriminated against, being bullied or indeed intimidated and threatened?

Zoe Smith

That would be fascinating. My question would be how to get that message out to people. There is a great nervousness about political authorities in Lebanon. For instance, the political system is a bit of a mess and you would not necessarily go to any authorities there if you wanted help. It would be a fascinating idea to look into, but a lot of consideration would have to go into how the message was spread, so that it was in a way that was clear that it was going to be a non-partisan, really trustworthy person. I am thinking of the issue of confidentiality, for instance.

Mr Nigel Evans

Have you been to any camps where you can see that there is best practice operating, and where you know that everybody is getting fair protection?

Zoe Smith

The camp that I visited in Lebanon I think was majority Sunni. We then went to visit Christians in pockets. My experience is that they do often go to the churches, they go to mosques and they go to local organisations that they know. They look after them locally. I am not sure if there is any higher reporting structure in place. Our recommendation, if you wanted to find particularly vulnerable Christian groups, would be to go through church leaders. I know of one church that has built a specific refugee room on the side of their church just to cope with the vast flux of people coming through, Christian and non-Christian alike, to assess their needs. They will have a very good understanding of their local community and of who would be particularly vulnerable, such as those who have been in areas controlled by Daesh or those who have converted from a Muslim background, whose neighbours may not know that fact, but the church leader may well do.

Mr Nigel Evans

I go to a church in my constituency, and I know a lot of churches do a lot of fundraising for these camps. It would be rather perverse if Christians in these camps were then persecuted.

Haley Bobseine

There already are some mechanisms in place that I have seen within Lebanon, especially the GBV department at UNHCR, which has been working with some local organisations to reach out into these communities, so that they can come forth with their complaints and for discussion group sessions to be arranged. That is really good, but again, as I mentioned before, those tend to happen in Beirut, in Amman and in Istanbul. It is not reaching out beyond the main capital areas, to reach people who are more vulnerable cases, potentially, in the more rural areas.

Pauline Latham

This is probably more directed at George. We are talking about discrimination, but women and girls are discriminated against, persecuted, raped, forced into early marriage and all sorts of things. We know that DFID has funded and put a lot of resources in to helping women and girls in the area, particularly tackling violence. How do you think this expertise can be better deployed to protect the women and girls, both inside the camps and outside the camps within the communities?

George Graham

The first thing to say is actually to give a lot of credit to what DFID has done, and its commitment to tackling the particular issue of violence against women and girls. It is really out in front in doing that. My understanding is that, in terms of the experts that they recruited as part of the sexual violence initiative, those people have been deployed primarily with a focus on supporting actors inside Syria itself, where the very worst abuses are continuing to happen. I do not know the answer to this, but it would be interesting to explore whether that group could also provide a similar role within the neighbouring countries, in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey and so forth. If you think about the underlying drivers for some of the abuses that girls in particular, from my point of view, are facing, it does link very easily and quickly to these bigger issues. Why are girls being married off when they are far too young? It is because their parents are desperate and because they see that as a way to “keep them safe”, or, frankly, to have one less mouth to feed. It is not an easy answer, because it brings us back to all of the big challenges that we have got, which are, “How do you get to a state where families are able to survive, able to feed themselves, where they are not sending their girls out to work where they are hugely at risk, or sending them off to be married off?” I would come to all the points that you would expect me to make about the importance of really identifying those families and those children who are not registered, and quite proactively recognising that registration is a problem, and that those people are hiding and yet they are the most vulnerable. That really needs to be a core part of what the British effort and the collective effort looks like. You talked, in the earlier session, about the issue of the right to work. It is obviously a hugely sensitive issue, but this crisis has grown and grown and grown, and people are now talking in terms of a new deal for refugees. We should look at that seriously. There is a world humanitarian summit in May next year. I know that it is a relatively long way off, but there is a moment to say, “Hang on, let’s not have a situation where children’s lives and their families’ lives are turned upside down, and girls are exposed to these sorts of risk, for years on end, simply because we cannot make the political/technocratic decisions needed to ensure that people can work, can access services and are not at the extreme edge of vulnerability”.

Pauline Latham

If you have got a lot of boys who are teenagers, or in their early 20s who have never worked, because they have been in camps for a very long time, and are testosterone fuelled, there is going to be a problem with girls. It is inevitable. There has to be a solution to try to help these boys and girls get work, so that they are occupied and their energies are not channelled into violence but into something much more constructive.

George Graham

For the younger ones, for the children, there is the need for education.

Pauline Latham

And for role models.

George Graham

Exactly. To my mind, and to everybody’s mind, it is madness that this crisis has been going on for nearly five years, so there are children who have not been in school for nearly five years, and that has just destroyed a generation. Five years is too long. If any of us had lost five years of education we would not be sat round this table today having an intelligent conversation. We would be struggling. It is pretty critical, and I agree also with your point about working for older youths.

Pauline Latham

One of the problems must be because people feel that refugee status is temporary, and of course all the people in Syria thought they were going back to Syria, but there is nowhere for them to go back to very often. We have to look more maturely about a long-term situation and not just a temporary situation.

George Graham

Exactly.

Dr Lisa Cameron

This is a question for Aleema. In terms of ensuring that no one is left behind, and particularly really vulnerable refugees with disability, what should DFID be doing in terms of programmes and support for a disability sensitive approach?

Aleema Shivji

There are a few things. First of all, DFID has already been doing some things. DFID now has a disability framework. It is one of the only donors in the world, and definitely the only large donor in the world, that has such forward‑thinking policies on disability that are really being put into action. There is a lot more that can always be done. The framework is less than a year old, but that is something that is happening. Aligned with that, and one of the outcomes of that, is that we have worked together with DFID and with HelpAge to develop guidance for DFID’s humanitarian teams on how to practically include older and disabled people in humanitarian responses. What is really important now is that that gets disseminated and used by the teams, and used particularly for the Syrian crisis. DFID is also funding a project where we have just launched a pilot version of minimum standards of inclusion with older and disabled people in disasters. It is co-funded by DFID and the American Government, and that is going to be launched officially in December, but we have pre-launch work happening already, including in the Syrian crisis. In terms of what more DFID can do within its own work, it can connect the different agendas. There is a really strong agenda, led by the Secretary of State, on women and girls. What we need to encourage DFID to do is really look at the intersectionality amongst vulnerabilities. Every context is going to be different, and the different vulnerabilities are going to be different, and they are going to be influenced by a number of different factors. The stronger that DFID can make its disability criteria, particularly because it is such an influential donor, the stronger the global criteria will become. DFID is one of the major donors of the UN system, and one of the weaknesses we see, for example in this crisis, is though UNHCR has a system for reporting, what we find is disability is grossly under‑reported. Very visible things, such as somebody in a wheelchair or somebody who has an amputation, are picked up because you can see those and you do not need a lot of training. However, somebody who has intellectual impairments, mental health problems or a hearing impairment might not get picked up, and that is what is often happening. DFID can use its clout and weight, really, in the global system to influence the actors that it funds, particularly the multilaterals, to do a lot more. Those are a couple of things that I would say.

Fabian Hamilton

In its evidence to us, DFID said that their primary objective was to deal with the refugee crisis by providing aid directly and immediately to people in the region. They also went on to say that they recognised that for some vulnerable people, the best solution to their protection needs was to bring them to countries like the UK. We saw this for ourselves when we visited the region last year. Perhaps George could start off on this, but if anybody wants to add anything that would be helpful. My question is about what you think the balance should be between assisting refugees in the region and resettling them in other countries such as the UK?

George Graham

I should confess I feared this question would be raised, because I do not have the perfect answer. There clearly is a balance to be struck. I do not want to go into a numbers game. Broadly, everybody seems to be welcoming the 20,000 commitment. I know there are a few people hoping for more. I do not really want to get into that. Clearly, as UNHCR has made very clear, there are a group of refugees whose vulnerability is such that resettlement has to be the durable solution that works for them. It is to the Government’s credit here that the focus has been very much on vulnerability. That shows that this is very much a humanitarian effort on the part of the UK. That is quite important. I do not like this phrase, but there is also a burden-sharing element that is important. It is very difficult to say to the Jordanian Government, for example, “You should let refugees work” if we are not at least trying—even if it is relatively at the level of a gesture, given the numbers, as I have said earlier—to share the burden, which is an unfortunate phrase. All of that said, clearly it is in the interests of the majority of refugees to stay relatively close to where they come from because they would ideally like to go back to where they came from. Nobody should be in the business of organising mass transfers of everybody around the world. There are 4 million refugees and millions more displaced inside Syria. Clearly, a large weight of the effort needs to be in the region, and inside Syria, again as Sanj pointed out. That is quite a woolly answer to your question. There is not a perfect figure. I have one final thought, however. I understand that UNHCR has said—and I do not think I heard this in the earlier testimony—that 10% of the current caseload is eligible or should be considered for vulnerability. That would be 400,000 worldwide, which is many more than currently. That is the sort of figure that people need to consider.

Fabian Hamilton

Thank you, George. I wonder if I just may, Chair, ask Aleema. When we were in Zaatari last year we certainly met Handicap International and we met a lot of the victims of the violence. There were some very traumatised people, not just physically but also mentally. I wonder if you felt that those were the people we should be concentrating upon bringing to the UK, in the hope that we might be able to assist them more easily here, before they are able to go back to their own country one day in the future?

Aleema Shivji

Again, I do not have a straightforward answer. It really depends. Some people will definitely flourish coming to a country that has more facilities and more services. If you take somebody who has a spinal injury and is now in a wheelchair, just simple things like going to the doctor or going to school, if it is a child, are obviously much easier here where there is infrastructure. If that happens, what is important is that caregivers and family members are also brought across, which today is a huge problem. To give a concrete example, we work with Syrians that have fled because of their injuries; their entire families have been left behind in Syria because they are not allowed to cross the border. The family separation piece is really important. There are others that would flourish better in their own communities. It is similar to something that Zoe said earlier, in that people need support networks and a support network might be better in the region than it is were they to resettle in another country. There is not a right answer; it depends on the needs of the individual. From our perspective, we also welcome, obviously, the announcements by the UK Government, but we really call on the UK and all Governments around the world to resettle more refugees, and to really uphold our obligations under international law, which is to protect people fleeing from violence and conflict, and give them safe places to live. There is not a straight answer. It really does depend on the individual, their community dynamics and their needs.

Chair

Can I ask a follow-up question to that? Probably we ought to bring all of you in on this, and we will draw towards a close, unless colleagues have further questions. Zoe earlier made the point that a lot of Christians are reluctant to register, and there is an issue about under-registration that I think particularly affects the vulnerable groups that we have been hearing about during this session. Also, there is an issue, I discovered in Jordan this week, of under-registration simply because of a lack of resources to get everyone registered. What do you see as the interface between that issue and then the resettlement challenge? My understanding is that if people are not registered they are not going to even be considered for resettlement. Perhaps I will go to Zoe first and then work around the panel.

Zoe Smith

I really like the discussions about getting a robust understanding of what vulnerability is, taking into account all different reasons for people’s vulnerability. In some cases, people will not be vulnerable because of their particular religion; in other cases it will be the real cause of their vulnerability. There may be room for a creative approach, and I am aware that there are constraints with budgets. If you accept that not all of the most vulnerable people will be in the camps, then there is some work to do to dig them out, and then perhaps walk them through the registration process. I do not know if that is feasible, but some creativity needs to be brought to this because, from what we have been hearing today, it does not seem an adequate response to just go with currently registered UNHCR refugees, although there are a lot of those already and a lot of them are incredibly vulnerable.

Chair

That is a really helpful answer, thank you.

George Graham

We would encourage the UK to look into whether it might be possible, as part of the UK scheme—which is slightly separate to the UNHCR scheme—to resettle refugees who have not been registered by UNHCR. That may pose huge practical challenges, but, as we have all articulated, the most vulnerable are not registered, so we are missing the target if we are not aiming for those people. I wonder if the idea of having unofficial targets for embassies in Beirut and Amman could at least be looked into, in order to address that problem directly.

Chair

Have you said that to the British Government?

George Graham

No.

Chair

Has the Home Office been in touch with you around the criteria for the 20,000?

George Graham

We have been talking to the Home Office, but we have not made that point, partly because we have been developing it as a team only in the work up to this meeting. We will do. I will have that dialogue and see what is possible.

Mr Nigel Evans

Can George just indicate what does he think an unintended consequence of doing that might be?

George Graham

That is definitely one of the issues. You do not want in any way to dis-incentivise the registration process. However, it is already massively dis-incentivised for all sorts of political reasons, with the cost being one of them.

Chair

My understanding is that the 1,000 by Christmas will be based solely on UNHCR criteria, but that there is then potential for there to be different criteria for the subsequent 19,000. I have not seen the full set of categories, but my understanding is there is very big focus on disability within those categories, which in a sense is obviously very welcome. Aleema, do you want to respond on this question, including on whether the Home Office have been in touch with your organisation?

Aleema Shivji

No, they have not. Just to pick up on your last point, though it is great that they have a focus on disability I just want to give you a statistic. It is a little bit old and I know UNHCR is doing a lot to improve it, but I highly doubt it has changed significantly. In 2013, when we did a survey on vulnerable Syrian refugees, we found that in the UNHCR database only 1.4% of their registered refugees were disabled, against our study which showed 22%.

Chair

Is that partly because they would use a definition that would be quite narrowly focused on physical disability?

Aleema Shivji

It is not so much the definition. It is a number of factors. One is people not being trained, so the staff members not been trained. Again, it is like what I said: you do not need to really be trained to pick up somebody who can see visibly. However, you do need to be trained for something that you cannot see visibly and that you actually have to ask a few questions about. That is a challenge. There are also challenges depending on the influx of refugees you get. If you have too many coming in at one time, which we have seen many times at the Jordanian border, for example, then you just do not have the capacity to ask all of the questions, so they do basic registration and they do not always go back. People at that point might leave the camp. Some of you have seen our work in Zaatari. Zaatari is probably one of the most accessible camps in the world, but it is one of the only accessible camps in the region. There is a lot more that can be done. People leave the camps before they even get fully registered. A woman who is disabled in her shelter in a camp will leave because she cannot even get to the water point, which is 100 metres or 200 metres away. There are lots of problems in the registration system. The other thing that we are actually seeing from our work inside Syria is that people are fleeing Syria directly. They are bypassing the registration system. The most vulnerable are not necessarily being registered, some of them by choice, because they do not see a solution. They know that Jordan and Lebanon are bursting. The countries cannot host any more people, and so what they are doing is they are trying to get straight to Turkey and straight to Europe. They are not going through the system, so focusing just on registered refugees is going to pose challenges. Is it actually going to resolve the problem of people who are fleeing directly? You could look at it one way and say yes, but in another way it is not really going to the heart of where the problem is.

Chair

Do you think, therefore, the Government are wrong not to take anyone from Europe and only to take from the region?

Aleema Shivji

It is important that they look at all the different factors, absolutely.

Haley Bobseine

I just wanted to mention that last spring UNHCR ceased registering Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and that was because the Lebanese Government basically told them that that is what they needed to do. There are a number of refugees that I have come across who are extremely vulnerable, have protection issues, but they are not registered with UNHCR because they came after that cut-off date, or something changed within Syria or within Lebanon, and now they have urgent protection concerns because they are not registered. That is something that is really important to keep in mind about the Lebanon situation: that there are a lot of vulnerable refugees who have not been registered because they are not doing registration right now.

Wendy Morton

Obviously the focus of our inquiry is very much on Syrian refugees, but just while we have Aleema here, we have had a discussion around disability, and we know that there are many people displaced within Syria. Is there any indication of numbers of people who, through vulnerability or disability, have not been able to flee for that reason? Is there any indication of how easy, difficult or challenging it is to get aid and assistance to those people?

Aleema Shivji

I cannot give you a number but I can give you an indication of the context. We did a study last year on the impact of explosive weapons inside Syria, so that is anything that explodes, basically, including banned weapons like landmines and cluster munitions, but also lots of weapons that today are not banned. 80% of the incidents affecting civilians by weapons are by explosive weapons, and 75% of explosive weapon incidents are in densely populated areas. Just to give you a sense, most of these weapons are exploding where there are a lot of people. From our estimates—and we have taken data sets from Human Rights Watch, UNHCR and a number of partners, as well as our own data—you are looking at 5 million people inside Syria that are living in highly contaminated areas, of whom 2 million are children. In Kobani today, we are doing clearance operations, where we are clearing the weapons. Our experts have never seen, in any crisis since we have existed, so 30‑odd years, a city as damaged by weapons, as dangerous, as Kobani. It does not give you specific numbers, but it gives you a sense of the impact of this conflict on normal civilians, the number of children we see who are just trying to cross the road to buy some bread, trying to go to school, if it is functioning. You pick up something; you step on something; a bomb lands on you. It happens day in and day out, and the services are limited because it is hard for people to move around. We work in different parts of Syria, but it is very hard, if you are in one area, to move to another area, depending on who is running that part of the country and where the frontlines are, which are always shifting as well.

Dr Lisa Cameron

Some of the information we have been given is also about children who have been travelling by themselves, and high proportions of those children appear to have disappeared from registration or from countries they have managed to get to. I am wondering about what more could be done in that regard, in order to protect vulnerable children who are travelling by themselves.

George Graham

That is a good question. I realised, as I went through my list of reasons why children are vulnerable, that I had missed out that quite big one, which is that they have lost their parents; they have lost their older brothers and sisters, a sadly very common phenomenon and not an easy thing to address. One of the things that we and others do is to run child‑protection programmes, which look like a rough and ready version of what you would have here if there are orphans or unaccompanied children in the UK. As part of that, we would be looking to trace family members of those children, to try to reunite them with their families. The guiding principles of this are, first, that you always do what is in the best interests of the child, and then, beneath that, normally what is in their best interests is that they are reunited with a family member, to the extent that is possible, but there are some, in fact very many, for whom that will not be possible. It is very hard to say what the answers are. I would hope and expect—and we are calling—for them to be considered as part of the resettlement, but we are not saying there should be a target number of unaccompanied children brought to the UK, because it might be that for none of them is it appropriate for them to be taken to a completely different context. What we are saying, which may be related to what you are thinking, is in the context of the very many children who have made it to Europe, among whom there are very many unaccompanied solo children who are exposed to another set of pretty serious risks of being trafficked, put in the drugs trade, sex trade, etc. I know in Parliament yesterday there was some discussion about the proposal that we have made for the UK to offer to relocate up to 3,000 of those children. That is a very important call for us. It is not specifically about Syrians in Lebanon and Jordan; it is about vulnerable children in Europe, but it is important to see the connection between those two.

Jeremy Lefroy

Some of the countries that are seeing refugees come into them in Europe, particularly in the Balkans, have income levels not very different from the income levels that exist or existed in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere. Particularly with winter coming on, I wondered what your views were on how many refugees are at risk within those countries, particularly in the Balkans and particularly those who are in higher‑altitude areas.

Chair

Who would like to take that?

George Graham

I can have a stab at it. We have teams working in many of those countries in eastern Europe. In fact, just this morning I got an alert from that team talking about—I may get these countries wrong—two new countries for us. I want to say Bulgaria, but I would probably need to check before this goes on the record. Those working in the western Balkans, in Greece, in Serbia, in Croatia and so forth are really expressing concern about this. What everybody had hoped, I guess, if that is the right word, is that the numbers would drop off, because the seas would be too choppy, basically, which is what in the past has happened. Of course, the numbers fleeing Syria has gone up in recent months, for reasons that we know about: bombing in northern Syria. People are coming. People are still getting on those boats from Turkey to Greece in large numbers, and the conditions, as you mention, are getting worse and worse. It is only October now, but it is getting colder. There is a big job to do, to manage that situation from a humanitarian point of view, leaving aside all the other issues.

Jeremy Lefroy

Are those countries, which are perhaps struggling and, as I said, are middle-income countries, getting the support they need from elsewhere? We have seen a lot of UK support go directly into the countries surrounding Syria, and indeed into Syria itself, but presumably they rely on the European Union for support when it comes within the European Union area. I am wondering if that support is sufficient and if it is holding, because what you have said to me just then worries me. It would worry all of us.

George Graham

Others may know more, but my understanding is that people now get the problem. For the first few months of this refugee crisis period, in the last few months, when we talked to the UK Government and DFID about this, they were understandably not jumping up and down to be spending aid money in eastern Europe. My understanding also was that UNHCR did not want to be throwing its resources too heavily at these very much developed countries. Then the EU, at the western Balkans conference last week, pledged a few hundreds of millions for Syrian refugees, but my understanding is that they are including within that support for two countries in the western Balkans. I do not know if this is Save the Children’s view or my personal view. I am in two minds about that. First, there is clearly humanitarian need, and our humanitarian teams are in those places now doing what, in this ghastly phrase, is called winterisation, which is making people safe for winter. I do not know who invented that word, but they did. It is a straightforward humanitarian imperative to do that, but, if an aid budget is finite, then there is a judgment to be made about where you spend it.

Jeremy Lefroy

This inquiry is into the Syrian refugee crisis; it is refugees wherever they are. Therefore, this is definitely something for the UK to take up with European partners in terms of the support that is going through the EU. After all, we make a very substantial contribution to the EU budget. We should be insisting that that gets spent in that area. Just very finally—no, I have had my final question.

Chair

I have to confess, I have a “finally” as well. Can I thank you all? I just have one last question to George. I have been in Jordan and Zaatari this week, visiting families living in urban settings. It struck me in both that the one quite optimistic thing was the children getting the chance to go to school, but, as Pauline said earlier, the schools are bursting. Do you have a view, as Save the Children, as to what we could do to really get an expansion in the places in education—I have been Jordan, so I am thinking about Jordan, but I am sure it applies in Lebanon and Turkey as well—so that the Syrians get that education, but also so it is not to the detriment of the local children? You have 30 seconds.

George Graham

First, let us not forget it is possible to provide schooling in basements inside Syria. Secondly, the G20 are meeting in Turkey in three weeks’ time. There is an opportunity for people to say, “Let us fix this refugee crisis and, as part of that, let us make sure that no children continue to be out of school.” Finally, you have your World Humanitarian Summit in May. That is the moment to say that no child should be out of school for more than a month as a consequence of the crisis, because it is just a technical problem; it is fixable.

Chair

Thank you so much. You have been brilliant witnesses in keeping to time and covering an enormous amount of ground in a very short space of time, so thank you very much indeed for coming to give us evidence today. Oral evidence: Syrian Refugee Crisis, HC 463 11