Syrian refugees wait to go on a return trip to their homeland from Lebanon's northern city Tripoli on Dec. 3, 2019. (Photo by Khalid/Xinhua/IANS)
Lebanese Labour Minister Mustafa Bayram said the situation has become unbearable, reports Asian Lite News
Crisis-hit Lebanon no longer has the ability to host Syrian refugees without assistance, Labour Minister Mustafa Bayram said.
“Lebanon can no longer bear this burden on its own, without any assistance,” Bayram was quoted as saying by the National News Agency while urging the UN to shoulder their responsibility.
Following a meeting of the ministerial committee on Syrian refugees, Bayram noted that Syrian refugees can receive cash assistance from the UN, as well as support for education, rent, hospitalisation, and heating, while Lebanese citizens have to pay for these services from their pockets without any form of assistance which is unfair for the locals, reports Xinhua news agency.
“The situation has become unbearable,” Bayram said.
Minister of Social Affairs Hector Hajjar said that he will brief the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on the ministerial committee’s decisions.
Palestinian refugees take part in a protest in Tripoli, northern Lebanon. (Photo by Khalid/Xinhua/IANS)
Nearly 11 years since the revolution in Syria began and violence escalated, around 1.5 million refugees remain displaced in Lebanon accounting for nearly a quarter of Lebanon’s total population, the highest proportion of refugees anywhere in the world.
More than a dozen United Sikhs volunteers from the US, Germany and the UK have set up a relief base camp in Medyka (Poland) close to the Ukrainian border….reports Asian Lite News
United Sikhs, the United Nations affiliated human rights and advocacy organisation, has started relief work and humanitarian aid in Ukraine for more than three weeks, serving the emergency needs of refugees escaping the war.
United Sikhs is the only organisation of the Sikhs that has reached ground zero in the war-torn Ukraine and its neighbouring country Poland serving the Ukrainian refugees, selflessly, ignoring the danger of war when two nations Russia and Ukraine are locked in a severe war, leading to huge loss to men, material and properties.
More than a dozen United Sikhs volunteers from the US, Germany and the UK have set up a relief base camp in Medyka (Poland) close to the Ukrainian border.
At least 1,00,000 refugees have been served by the United Sikhs’ humanitarian mission till date and the relief work is continuing.
Pic credits IANS
Its teams have been serving hot meals, sanitation kits, water, clothing, other goods of daily needs and even toys for the newborn.
A team of volunteers drove for 36 hours with a commercial van full of supplies from the UK to reach the base camp last week, delivering power generators, water pumps, blankets, quilts, sleeping bags, sanitary pads, tents, stoves and utensils, etc.
The organisation is also providing heated shelters at the Ukraine border, serving hot meals and rescuing families from Lviv.
United Sikhs is also collaborating with Polish Red Cross Polski Czerwony Krzy to provide medical assistance to the refugees escaping Ukraine.
5 million people could flee Ukraine to EU nations, warns EU’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, reports Asian Lite News
The number of refugees pouring from Ukraine into Europe is expected to be three times larger than those who fled Syria for the continent in 2015-16, the EU’s foreign affairs chief has warned.
“When it was the Syria crisis in 2015 to 2016, we were talking about one-and-a-half million people. Now it’s going to be much more,” said Josep Borrell, adding that 1.5 million people had already crossed into the EU in the last week alone.
“We must mobilize all the resources of the EU to help those countries receiving people, all the countries bordering Ukraine. We will need more schools, more reception centers, more of everything.”
Borrell said up to 5 million people could flee Ukraine to EU nations, with some 200,000 exiting for Poland and other nearby member states in the first 24 hours of the conflict.
“We very much fear there will be 5 million refugees in Europe. This is a reasonable estimate and unprecedented since the Second World War,” he added.
Brussels has warned that “18 million people will be hit by the conflict in Ukraine,” almost half the country’s population of 41 million, which would create an enormous emergency situation with extensive humanitarian demands.
The UN Refugee Agency said it had recorded 1,735,068 refugees on Monday, with 200,000 more added since Sunday.
Poland is hosting the majority of the refugees, caring for 1 million of them. There are more than 180,000 in Hungary and 128,000 in Slovakia.
In the first several days since the start of the military offensive in Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of people have sought safety in Poland.(photo:Twitter/@Refugees)
Biggest crisis since WW II
Since the war began 12 days ago, the number of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the country to neighbouring Poland has exceeded one million, the Polish Border Guard said.
“The million people after crossing the border, heard from Border Guard functinaries ‘You are safe’,” the Border Guard said in a tweet.
On Sunday, UN High High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said over 1.5 million people had fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries since Russia’s military invasion began on February 24.
The EU has approved a mechanism Temporary Protection Directive to protect Ukrainian refugees without the normally required lengthy asylum procedures.
But Ukraine’s refugee crisis cannot be seen in isolation. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the world’s cumulative number of displaced people was already 82.4 million before the Russia-Ukraine war. That’s roughly Germany’s population. The world never had so many refugees after World War II.
Drying funds means millions are already losing humanitarian assistance. In war-torn Yemen alone, about 8 million people may be deprived of all aid now, the UN has warned.
Africans prevented from leaving Ukraine
5 million may leave
The number of Ukrainian refugees will rise exponentially, UN officials have warned. Those who have managed to flee their country account for only two per cent of the 44 million people in Ukraine, where nobody knows for how long the war will go on. A massive number of people are stranded in homes, bomb shelters, subway stations and business establishments.
The European Union (EU) estimates that up to 4 million Ukrainians may eventually leave their country. The United States ambassador at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has said that the number could be 5 million.
And it’s not just about people fleeing the country. The UN estimates at least 1,60,000 people in Ukraine have been displaced in their own country due to the war. UN officials have said such people may eventually want to leave their country. The EU believes this figure could reach seven million, and that 18 million Ukrainians will finally be affected by the war in one way or the other.
The EU, a political and economic union of 27 member states in Europe, has relaxed rules to welcome Ukrainian refugees with “open arms”. The UK and the US are making similar efforts. Japan’s prime minister has also said his country will accept refugees from Ukraine.
However, the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management has said it’s an emergency of historic proportions. The UNHCR has said the war is making it unsafe for aid workers to travel around Ukraine and help internally displaced people.
The UNHCR has said one per cent of all humanity is now displaced. The number has doubled in just a decade. Some 42 per cent of them are under 18, and nearly 1 million babies were born as refugees between 2018 and 2020 and many of them may remain refugees for years, the UNHCR has said. Another 48 million people were internally displaced in their own countries.
