Syria: Refugees

Lord Bishop of Exeter Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2013 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Exeter]

My Lords, I have just three points to make. The first concerns the humanitarian dimension of this crisis. The figures are horrendous. I shall not repeat what the noble Baroness has already said but simply note an acceleration in the number of refugees fleeing. There have been more than 40,000 a week since January, and in four host countries—Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon—the number of Syrian refugees has to date already exceeded the UNHCR estimate for January to June this year in total.

We have already had our attention directed to Lebanon. It alone has received an influx equivalent to 10% of the host population, placing a huge strain on the country: communally, as most of the refugees are Sunni Muslim, which threatens Lebanon’s delicate communal balance; economically, as there are now food and power shortages; and socially, with a big increase in the crime rate. This inflow, bringing 32,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria into a country which already has around 450,000 Palestinian refugees, brings the potential for further destabilisation in a country where volatility is already great.

There are similar problems in Iraq, which not so long ago saw an exodus of its own refugees, particularly Christians, into Syria. It is now in receipt of at least 130,000 refugees, mainly in the Kurdistan region, with all its own uncertainty. Then there are other large concentrations of refugees inside Jordan with over 430,000, Turkey with nearly 300,000, and, increasingly, Egypt—a country which has also had to host a large Sudanese refugee population in the recent past.

Secondly, I turn to the geopolitical dimension. This very large movement of population not only is disruptive and damaging to individual lives, and a cause of deep concern for the receiving countries, with all the social, economic, demographic and political consequences that it brings, but is further undermining the stability of the region as a whole, as well as the sustainability of many of the existing states and political entities within it.

Just last week, António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, who had led the UNHCR through the worst of the refugee crises in Afghanistan and Iraq, said that in his view the Syrian civil war was more brutal than both and was already the worst humanitarian crisis since the end of the Cold War. With regard to refugees, he said:

“The system is at breaking point. There is limited capacity to take many more. Where are the people going to flee? Into the sea?”.

However, he then went on to speak about the potentially even more serious geopolitical implications, with the political geography of the post-Ottoman Middle East, which has been in place since the end of the First World War, perhaps for the first time beginning to be put into serious question. Should the substantial possibility of partition in Syria be realised, this would inevitably have grave ramifications in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and beyond.

In that context, I come to my third concern—the religious dimension—and especially the future of Christians across this part of the Middle East. For centuries, Christianity flourished in Syria, as it did in Iraq, and, it has to be said, since the Baathist coup in 1970 it has been a particularly safe haven for Christians fleeing from conflicts elsewhere. Indeed, one reason that Russia has refused to abandon President Assad is its sense of responsibility for Syria’s Orthodox Christian community, which is now under a sense of threat. Already, the Christian element of the Syrian population has fallen dramatically to around 10%, and Christians are continuing to haemorrhage from the area under the perceived threat of militant Islam. The spread of jihadist groups within the Syrian opposition and the growth of the mantra that “Islam is the solution” are only exacerbating this flight. Therefore, Christian refugees are fleeing into northern Lebanon as fast as Iraq’s 3 million refugees are beginning to pour back whence they came.

One estimate suggests that of the Christian community of Homs, until recently 150,000 strong, some 90% have now gone to Jordan, leaving only a tiny minority hanging on. Where Christians do remain, once cohesive communities marked by peaceful co-existence and co-operation are beginning to fragment, as those of different religious traditions increasingly draw apart. The disintegration, including the religious fragmentation, that has marked post-intervention Iraq, with all the desperate fallout and its consequences which that country continues to suffer, now looks to be replicated in Syria, and the exodus of refugees into neighbouring countries could exacerbate such a trend in this place as well.

On humanitarian assistance the UK has already done a great deal, but with so many western economies facing huge budget difficulties, what work have Her Majesty’s Government undertaken to meet their £50 million commitment at the Kuwait donor conference, and how will this money be spent? What diplomatic steps are Her Majesty’s Government taking, particularly with the Security Council, to seek ways of addressing the wider geopolitical concerns to which UNHCR has referred? What message, if any, does the Minister have for those Christians fleeing the area, and contemplating a Middle East in which they may no longer be secure or welcome?