Middle East and North Africa

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Baglan. I also welcome this debate. Much of what I was going to say has already been said so I will not repeat it, but I want to touch on a few points.

The Minister outlined the catastrophic level of suffering: 12 million people have been forced from their homes. That is more than half the population of Syria. This is a country with one of the most ancient civilisations, and we have been watching it being hollowed out before our very eyes for the past four years. As a result of the conflict there is also widespread unrest in neighbouring countries that for the past four years have absorbed the vast majority of the refugees.

Turkey, as the noble Lord, Lord Williams, just mentioned, has close to 3 million refugees now. As a result of the widespread absorption of so many people in such a short time, Turkey has been destabilised, as had been predicted and warned about in previous years. I do not have time to go into the conflicts and challenges faced by people in Turkey, which I know something about and I have been following very closely, but there has been a negative impact. The positive steps to the peace process with the Kurdish community, which we welcomed, now lie in tatters. The landscape there has been irreparably damaged and affected.

Turkey has welcomed those 3 million refugees regardless of their religion. It is a predominantly Muslim country but it has not looked at people’s faith; it has taken in people who have come to their borders. The Turks have opened their borders and been criticised for doing so, but nevertheless they have taken people in.

So neighbouring countries have been absorbing this. For four years it was not a European problem but a regional one, and Europe was quite happy to allow neighbouring countries to bear the brunt of it. However, this has now reached saturation point, and the camps are full and grim. Now that this has come to the shores of Europe, the debate, as the noble Lord has just said, has become quite toxic and at times quite inhumane. I have seen various reports talking about migrants coming here to seek a better life. Can we please be clear? When we talk about Syrians in particular, they are fleeing not only the terrifying barbarity of Daesh; they are also fleeing Assad’s barrel bombs and chemical weapons. These are not economic migrants but refugees. The use of the word “migrants” to describe people fleeing Daesh is absurd, inhumane and misleading.

As we have heard, it took a photograph of a little boy on a beach in Turkey to start to change public opinion. I welcome that change—I think that we were all shocked—and it was clear that the outpouring from the British public was different from what we had been hearing from our Government. Many others have drowned, but that one event was a turning point. Far more people are beginning to realise that this is not an immigration problem but a humanitarian disaster.

We have seen that the Germans have welcomed the majority so far and have shown incredible leadership and humanity. However, as my noble friend who is not in her seat mentioned, we are now seeing incredible, chaotic and shocking scenes in Hungary and in some of the Balkan states, where people are fleeing and moving across central Europe to seek sanctuary. It is particularly shocking that Hungary, for example, has said that it will take only Christians as asylum seekers. As an EU nation, Hungary appears to share very little of the values and spirit, of the tolerance and generosity shown to Hungarians fleeing Soviet aggression by other countries including the UK. Today’s reports of tear gas and water cannons being used against people including women and children who are fleeing aggression, war and poverty is absolutely shameful. In behaving in that fashion, Hungary is not fit to be a member of the EU.

This is the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation. It is a global issue, and the population needs the support of the world. Instead, they are living in appalling conditions, sinking deeper into trauma and poverty or drowning in their thousands. Many of those in the terrible conditions in the camps have understandably had enough of the hand-to-mouth existence, lack of education, poor medical care and lack of a future for their children. Had any of us been in those camps for years with little hope, I wonder whether we would also have taken to the seas and looked for a better life. I know that as parents we probably would have—I certainly would have.

I do welcome the extra support and help that the Government have announced. That is important and we need to carry on with it. However, the Government’s pledge to take 20,000 people over the next five years, although welcome, is not enough, as others have mentioned. Today I have read reports that in Jordan cuts to aid are forcing more refugees to leave the camps and come to Europe. It is ironic that the Government have been warning us often and repeatedly that we are under threat from Daesh and that we must do more to stop some Muslim people from going to Syria to join it, yet when it comes to allowing sanctuary to Syrians fleeing the murderous Daesh we close our doors, pull up the drawbridge and refer to them as migrants. This makes no sense.

The UN, the EU and the West have failed in any positive engagement to secure a diplomatic resolution. We on these Benches believe that the UK should work with the UN to resettle its fair share of refugees already in Europe. The UK’s fair share would be established by considering a wide range of criteria including population, GDP and asylum-seeking cases. I was pleased to hear that the UK is doing more, but the UNHCR today said:

“Individual measures by individual countries will not solve the problem but will make an already chaotic situation worse”.

We must show more leadership, more collegiate working and work with other nations to bring about a diplomatic resolution.