page 7
opinions
Collateral damage: the Syrian refugee crisis
BRITT GUNN
Contributor
Since the August 21 sarin gas attack outside
Damascus, international headlines on the civil
war that has been raging in Syria for two and
a half years have been dominated by the deal
brokered by the United States and Russia to
dismantle the Syrian regime’s stock of chemical weapons. President Bashar al-Assad has
recently fulfilled the first requirement under
the draft agreement by turning over a list
detailing the types and quantities of chemical
agents that his regime possesses to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The importance of taking chemical
weapons off the table shouldn’t be underplayed, since the strike killed an estimated 1,429 people and constituted the
world’s most devastating chemical weapons attack in the last 25 years. However,
the discourse over chemical weapons and
the stalemate between the United States
and Russia on military intervention has
also served to shift the focus towards
the diplomatic wrangling taking place at
the Security Council, and away from any
long-term plan to respond to the most
serious refugee crisis since that created
by the seven-year conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
World Bank report estimates that Lebanon has
lost $7.5 billion as a result of the strain on its
resources, which is a staggering amount for a
country already deeply in debt. The economic
pressure on these countries has sparked existing political and sectarian tensions, a dangerous
combination for nations long-plagued by social
unrest.
The only thing the international community
seems to be able to agree on is that there is no
end in sight. Even if the war were to end today
and the refugees were to return, the majority
of them would have no home to go back to, as
an estimated two-thirds of residences have been
granted asylum in Canada. During the Kosovo
War, Canada resettled some 5,000 Kosovar
refugees. Given the gravity of the situation in
Syria, Canada should be committing to resettle
at least 30,000 refugees, or 3.3 percent of the
total.
Given the increasingly hostile attitude towards
refugee claimants adopted by policy-makers
at Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the
chances of coming anywhere near this number
is remote. This attitude is exemplified by documents prepared by staff at Citizenship and
Immigration Canada in response to then Minister Jason Kenney’s request for suggestions on
how to cut down the number of “high
need” refugees and reduce strain on the
health care system. One of the options
suggested was a limit to the number of
refugees granted protection who have
health problems, such as “developmental
delay, blindness, victims of trauma and
torture.” It’s difficult to conceive of how
any refugees could pass such a test, since
trauma tends to be part of the experience
of any person forced to flee their home
country. While these proposals haven’t
been implemented, the federal government has made recent cuts to health
services provided to refugees and refugee claimants, a move that doctors have
called short-sighted and certain to put
the most vulnerable at risk.
The numbers coming out of Syria are
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