UNHCR: Admission Pathways for Syrian Refugees

Mark Field Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I am glad that the hon. Lady has given the UK Government some credit. Our aid contribution and our leadership should be admired to a great degree. The one thing she has not touched on—maybe she will do so later in her speech—is where she sees the medium term for Syria. Does she see it as being a united state—which I know is still the position of Her Majesty’s Government—or does she see it as being divided? In other words, does she see the displacement of huge numbers of Syrians as a medium to long-term phenomenon, or can it be solved more quickly, if the international community has the will and can provide safe havens within the country that we currently call Syria?

[Caroline Lucas]

Well, if anybody knew the answer to that question, they would be a very much wiser person than many of us here, and certainly very much wiser than I am. I would love to think that there is a solution in the shorter term. All countries need to redouble their efforts on the peace process. In reality, a solution is more likely in the medium term. I do not know whether that will be through splitting the country or keeping it coherent. I would certainly favour the latter, if it could be done in a safe way. Essentially, that decision needs to be made by the Syrian people. They need to make that decision in a democratic way, and we need to ensure that they are able to come to that kind of decision-making process in a safe and legal way.

[Mark Field]

It is important that we give some consideration to that. I accept that it is not our decision to make here in the UK: it will be a decision of the international community. To be brutally honest, if large numbers of Syrians are relocated—maybe hundreds of thousands, or millions—the danger is that they will tend to be the more educated people. It will be the very people who could make a real difference to Syria’s future who will essentially have no stake in it if they end up living in the United States, Canada or western Europe, yet they are the very people who would be needed to provide the backbone for a future sustainable Syria into the decades ahead.

[Caroline Lucas]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but the priority right now—the overwhelming priority for all of us—must be ensuring that those people are kept safe so that they can go back, and I think the vast majority will want to go back: it is their home, where they have their roots, histories and cultures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Spelman]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I think a number of us have challenged a number of Ministers about this issue, asking, first, what is the cause of the under-registration of religious minorities in the camps and, secondly, how do we go out and find the people who are not in the camps? That is the exam question.

I am not in any way knocking what I think was an inspired decision by the Prime Minister to focus on the safe retrieval of people from refugee camps to deter people from making the very dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. That was a very good initiative, but it is not sufficient to deal with some of the most vulnerable refugees.

I call on the Government to work with their partners in the region to promote a strategy whereby we are not content to allow groups fleeing from persecution to slip through the net of the humanitarian effort. Aid must reach all groups, and we must not, even inadvertently, let one religious group be privileged over another.

[Mark Field]

I am not for one moment suggesting that we should go down the route that is prevalent in places such as Hungary or Poland, whereby we would look to give preferential treatment to Christians. However, my right hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point about religion and the fact that religious minorities and Christian minorities in the region are perhaps being under-reported.

To be absolutely candid, I also think that a policy of helping refugees would get broader support—beyond central London, Brighton and Hove, and Sheffield—if the case were being made that there are significant numbers of fellow religionists, as well as others, who are being brought here. As I say, that is not to give preferential treatment to any group. None the less, it would be good if the British public were made well aware of the depth of this problem for Christian communities, some of whom have been in the region since the very birth of Christianity.

[Mrs Spelman]

My right hon. Friend makes a very important point. My very last remark before his intervention was to say that we must be careful that one religious group is not privileged over another.

Religious literacy is incredibly important in this discussion. In a moment, I will speak about another minority—a non-Christian minority, the Yazidis—as the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) did before me.

In addition, it is crucial that we refrain from considering the refugee crisis just in terms of the immediate political response. Alongside considering the humanitarian action and the most effective way that it can be delivered, the Government must consider the long-term stability and prosperity of the middle east, and work hard to find the short to medium-term solution for Syria itself.

Freedom of religion or belief is enshrined in article 18 of the universal declaration of human rights. It is a fundamental right and one that is integral to the good functioning of any society. Evidence suggests that there is a correlation between freedom of religion or belief and security and economic prosperity. The freedom to practice one’s belief or religion in openness and safety is the hallmark of a society where there is understanding and tolerance between individuals and communities, and with that comes stability, community cohesion and an environment in which civil society, business and all other facets of a free society can flourish.

In conjunction with a number of other parliamentarians, I, too, met with the young Yazidi lady who came to Parliament yesterday. Her first-hand account was harrowing. As a female and a mother, I was concerned about the mental cost to this young woman of having to retell her story to us and other MPs over and over again. It is a disturbing story. She explained how she had been studying peacefully alongside other Arab groups in the city where she lived when suddenly her whole community was forced to flee into the mountains. She did not make it, however, and together with hundreds of women, she was turned back, kidnapped and taken by Daesh to Mosul, where she was sold into slavery and horrifically abused. She escaped only through chance. One member of the group had a mobile phone. In a brief moment of opportunity, she was able to give her father a call. He essentially paid the ransom to the people who smuggled her out of the country.

It is an appalling tale, and another 2,000 Yazidi women are still stuck in that position. They are the most vulnerable of the vulnerable in the region, and they are not on any pathway out of it. Sadly, they are not on the pathway that we have already commended the Government for creating, and the exam question for the Government is: how do we reach the most vulnerable women? That is a most urgent question. As we stand here, those young women are being beaten, raped and abused. Some are taking their own lives because of the misery that they are having to endure.

That is a difficult question, and I do not underestimate that, but one suggestion has been made on finding a way to get them out. The German Government made a commitment to do that and saved 1,000 of those young women. We have to try to think collectively of a way to achieve that together with UNHCR. It has a number of recommendations, and I urge the Minister to take them back to the Government. We need to gain recognition at the UN level for the genocide that the Yazidis have suffered, so that the criminals eventually can be brought to the International Criminal Court for their war crimes. As a civilised nation, we should be willing to support that perfectly reasonable request. Finding ways to repatriate these families—ultimately, it is what remains of their families, as so many have died—is going to be crucial in the recovery of the victims of the terrible genocide of their community. There is no doubt that this is a crisis of extreme complexity—no one would wish to oversimplify it—but as a lack of freedom of religion or belief is part of the problem, it must also be seen and considered as part of the solution.