International Rescue Committee-UK

Submission to the International Development Committee’s inquiry into the UK Government’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis

October 2015

Section I: The International Rescue Committee

1. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) works in conflict-affected and fragile countries around the world to deliver life-saving assistance to people affected by war and disaster, and remains working with communities to assist with rebuilding through the post-crisis phase. We work to empower communities to lead their own recovery and development, and to restore safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and dispossessed. Our presence in over 40 countries in education, health, protection, women’s protection and empowerment, and economic recovery programming provides us with a unique understanding of humanitarian and development challenges in contexts of conflict and fragility.

2. The IRC welcomes the decision of the International Development Committee to hold an inquiry into the UK’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis, and has provided answers to several of its questions based on the most up to date information available to us. We would also be very happy to provide oral evidence to the inquiry. We take this opportunity to commend the UK Government for its significant financial contribution to the Syria crisis response, and to convey our appreciation to the UK Department for International Development (DfID) for its support for our work and its advocacy for stronger responses from UN agencies and others to underserved issues.

Section II: the Syrian Refugee Crisis

3. Syria’s civil war has, since 2011, forced almost 4.2 million people to flee the country and seek shelter in the region. The impact of this massive influx upon Syria’s neighbours has been enormous. In September 2015, Turkey – now the largest refugee-hosting country in the world – put the cost of sheltering some two million Syrians at $7.6 billion.[1] Jordan’s Economic and Social Council predicts that its provision of protection to nearly 630,000 refugees will cost the kingdom $4.2 million by 2016.[2] The World Bank estimates that Lebanon’s basic infrastructure will require investment of up to $2.5 billion just to be restored to pre-crisis levels, according to a September 2013 report.[3] Yet donors outside the region have not stepped up: as of 12 October 2015, the U.N.’s 2015 appeal for Syrian refugees and their hosts is just 49% funded.[4] The appeal was just 64% funded in 2014, down from 73% in 2013.

4. The impact of such a shortfall has been severe, and significantly limited refugees’ ability to access basic services. Refugee-hosting countries’ public services, economies and resources are creaking under the strain of such huge numbers and their social fabrics are fraying. Conditions for refugees, the vast majority of whom live not in camps but in urban settings, decrepit dwellings or tented settlements, have worsened significantly. In Jordan, tens of thousands of families live below the absolute poverty line. Rent accounts for more than half of refugees’ monthly expenses, forcing parents to send their children to work long hours for meagre pay. Poverty rates are rising.[5] With limited access to legal employment, more and more refugees are running out of cash and sinking deeper into debt. Parents are struggling to feed, clothe and shelter their children. The most desperate women are forced into survival sex and early marriage.

Section III: The IRC and the Syrian Refugee Crisis

5. The IRC has a unique vantage point from which to offer perspective on the Syrian refugee crisis, and its European dimension. The IRC is working inside Syria; in the four major refugee receiving countries that surround it – Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey; on the island of Lesbos, which is the arrival point of over half of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians and people of other nationalities seeking asylum in Europe through Greece; and finally, IRC resettles refugees in 26 cities across the United States, including Syrians. We witness the full arc of this crisis, and this autumn the IRC has played a crucial role in focusing international attention on the European refugee crisis through robust advocacy and a multi-media communications strategy.

6. Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, the IRC has delivered lifesaving programmes in the Middle East that aid refugees and displaced people and provide support to local “host” communities in the region. More than three thousand IRC aid workers and local volunteers operating inside Syria and in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq have reached more than 3.3 million Syrians fleeing violence, providing support including health care, the protection of vulnerable women and children, education, and economic recovery.

7. The IRC also delivers long-term health, education, women’s protection and empowerment, economic and other programmes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Ethiopia and other countries, from which smaller, but significant, numbers of refugees have fled to Europe.

Section IV: Issues Raised by the Inquiry

Question: Are UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) processes effective enough to ensure that the most vulnerable are identified and relocated to the UK?

8. The IRC has more than 80 years of experience working in refugee resettlement in the United States of America. Over the past four decades we have resettled more than 160,000 refugees from 50 countries, including almost a fifth of all Syrian refugees resettled to the United States since the beginning of the Syria crisis. Based on our experience in receiving Syrian refugees there with a range of compelling vulnerabilities identified by UNHCR, we believe that the agency’s processes are generally effective in ensuring that the most vulnerable are identified and relocated to third countries. However, given the early stage that UNHCR resettlement operations are at, and the backdrop of continuing conflict in Syria, we encourage the International Development Committee to seek clarity from the UK Government as to whether:

- UNHCR has sufficient resources to conduct quality registration processes, as well as case management systems that identify and channel the most vulnerable for resettlement. (If not, the UK should provide more resources to UNHCR and monitor improvements.)

- whether UNHCR has adequate specialist expertise among its protection, registration, refugee status determination and resettlement staff, and whether the agency is partnering with INGOs with expertise in the protection of different groups. (If not, the UK should ensure that UNHCR has adequate levels of specialist staff including, at a minimum, gender-based violence (GBV) and child protection specialists, and where appropriate, cooperates with agencies with relevant expertise.)

- there any host government restrictions that impede UNHCR from conducting quality registration and identification of cases for resettlement. (If so, the UK should use bilateral diplomatic channels to help UNHCR address these impediments.)

- whether UNHCR is working closely enough with Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) that are able and willing to refer vulnerable cases for resettlement, and, in particular, whether a structured coordination mechanism for such NGO referrals to UNHCR exists. (If not, the UK should encourage UNHCR to cooperate with interested NGOs and establish an identifying structure and clear referral pathway.)

Question: Whether the focus is and should be entirely on children, or whether others, e.g. women who have been subject to sexual violence or minority groups, should be included.

9. The Syrian conflict has taken a heavy toll on women and girls. Within the context of the crisis in Syria and the region, the IRC has identified instances of women and girls being subjected to sexual violence, intimate partner violence, sexual exploitation and harassment, and early and forced marriage. Their especial vulnerability means that the focus of this process should be widened to include women and girls.

10. The Stabilisation Unit of the UK Government, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and DFID have invested substantial resources into investigating sexual violence in the region, most recently Iraq, and will be able to provide evidence on this phenomenon. In addition, we refer the International Development Committee to the IRC’s 2014 report ‘Are We Listening: Acting on our Commitments to Women and Girls Affected by the Syrian Conflict[6]’, which outlines how Syrian women and girls in the region are facing increasing sexual exploitation and harassment, domestic violence and early and forced marriage. With regard to the latter, in the context of displacement and dwindling resources, the research revealed that adolescent girls are being forced to marry at younger ages, are exposed to more violence in and out of the home, and find it increasingly difficult to access services such as health care and education.

11. Furthermore, evidence shows that women and girls in the Syria region are being targeted by armed groups with particularly gruesome sexual violence. In Iraq GBV, and particularly sexual violence, spiked when the country slipped into heightened conflict in 2014. In August of that year, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict and the UN Special Representative for Iraq confirmed reports of violence, including sexual violence, against women and children belonging to Iraqi minorities, and urged for their immediate protection. They also reported that some 1,500 Yazidis and Christians may have been forced into sexual slavery.[7] These concerns have been corroborated by human rights organisations.[8]

12. Facing multiple challenges, women and girls face a humanitarian response that is falling short in meeting their specific needs and humanitarian minimum standards aimed at preventing and reducing the risks of GBV. Despite such high levels of violence and abuse, the humanitarian response does not provide sufficient services for women and girls: according to the Protection Cluster, GBV survivors in Iraq do not have sufficient access to quality, comprehensive multi-sectoral services.[9] By September 2015, only 40,748 out of 3.2 million IDPs had received information about GBV prevention and response services since the beginning of the year.[10] A recent evaluation of the Implementation of Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Guidelines for the Prevention of and Response to GBV in Emergencies (GBV Guidelines) in the Syria Crisis Response found, inter alia, that:

-                      The IASC GBV Guidelines are not well known and are not being used in programming practice.

-                      The GBV Guidelines are not incorporated consistently in organizational or sector-specific strategic documents and standards

-                      Sectors rarely include, engage with or hold themselves accountable to women and girls in a meaningful, consistent and routine manner.

Question: Clarification that no changes are proposed in what funding for refugees is categorised as ODA (Official development assistance) and counts towards the 0.7% ODA target.

13. The IRC welcomes the committee’s attention to this area. The passage of the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015 is very important but of course meeting the 0.7% target is only meaningful if the spending categorised as ODA is genuinely likely to contribute to a reduction in poverty, in line with both the definition and the spirit of the International Development Act 2002 and the OECD-DAC designations[11]. The government should clarify that it intends to adhere to these, and not reclassify other costs related to refugee resettlement as ODA, thus reducing the overall amount of funding available for this vital area of lifesaving work.

Question: What can be done to ensure that donors provide more funding for refugees in Jordan and Lebanon?

14. As noted in paragraph two above, the UK is the second-largest bilateral donor to the humanitarian relief effort in Syrian and the region. Other states have been less generous, and we strongly encourage the UK to use the appropriate diplomatic channels and influence, including at Prime Ministerial level, to ensure that other countries properly support the humanitarian response. The G20 leaders’ summit in Turkey from 15-16 November 2015 offers a good opportunity for the UK to explore prospects in this regard, as will the next pledging conference for Syria and the region.

15. An essential counterpart to international calls on Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq to keep their borders open to Syrians fleeing the conflict is the resettlement of vulnerable Syrian refugees to third countries, including the UK. The UK’s recent pledge to take in 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five years, while welcome, falls significantly short of what a crisis of this magniture demands. Given the scale of this crisis and the intense pressure that hosting more than four million refugees is placing on Syria’s neighbours we strongly encourage the Government to revise this commitment upwards.

  12 October 2015

For further information, please contact:

Luke Browne

Senior Policy & Advocacy Officer

Email: luke.browne@rescue-uk.org

Tel: +44 (0) 207 692 2759

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