ON average 1,000 refugees are now arriving on the Greek islands every day creating an unprecedented emergency for Greece and other countries, the UN refugee agency reported last Friday.
UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) said that since the beginning of the year, a staggering 77,100 people had arrived in Greece by sea, many on flimsy and unsafe vessels. Almost 60 per cent of the new arrivals are from Syria while others come from Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea and Somalia.
A boat leaving Turkey last Tuesday (July 7) loaded with up to 40 refugees capsized between the Greek islands of Agathonisi and Farmakonisi. Authorities say 19 people were rescued: eight by the Greek Coast Guard, 11 by the Turkish Coast Guard. Five bodies were retrieved and up to 16 people are still missing and feared to have drowned.
‘Greece’s volatile economic situation, combined with the increasing numbers of new arrivals, is putting severe strain on small island communities, which lack the basic infrastructure and services to adequately respond to the growing humanitarian needs,’ UNHCR spokesperson William Spindler told a press briefing in Geneva.
UNHCR said that the number of people arriving is now so high that, despite all efforts, the authorities and local communities can no longer cope. A majority of the refugees arriving in Greece are moving onward, trying to reach countries in western and northern Europe through the western Balkans region. Countries in this region such as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (fYROM) and Serbia, have witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of refugees.
In the first half of this year, some 45,000 people sought asylum in the region. This represents almost a ninefold increase of asylum applications compared with the same period in 2014. However, these are only some of the refugees entering the two countries, with most continuing directly on their way to Hungary and further north.
It is estimated that half of all refugees who are actually passing through the region do so without being registered by the authorities, and are exposed to violence and abuse by smugglers and criminal gangs. An urgent response from Europe is needed before the situation deteriorates further,’ Spindler added.
He said that in the course of June, the number of people crossing every day from Greece into fYROM and Serbia surged from 200 to 1,000. Over 90 per cent of those travelling this route are from refugee-producing countries, mainly Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea and Somalia. As with Greece, the capacity of these countries to effectively respond to the emergency situation is severely overstretched.
While the authorities are trying to alleviate the situation by establishing facilities to receive and process them, UNHCR is concerned about reports of border police preventing refugees from entering.
In some instances, refugees have alleged that some police officers are using violence and pushing them back into the hands of smugglers. The tightening of borders is not the solution, including the plans of the Hungarian government to build a fence along the Serbian border. Reports of push-backs at the borders between Serbia and fYROM and between fYROM and Greece are worrying, as such practices place refugees at further risk and are contrary to states’ legal obligations,’ Spindler said.
On the northern Aegean island of Lesvos, the number of new arrivals far outstrips the capacity of the police-run identification centre in Moria. More than 3,000 refugees are currently living in difficult conditions at the makeshift accommodation site of Cara Tepe, and 1,000 are camping outside the Moria facility.
‘UNHCR has previously expressed concern for the well-being of refugees, including pregnant women and children, who are having to walk up to 60 kilometres through the mountains to reach the island’s main town of Mytiline,’ Spindler emphasised. UNHCR stressed however that despite the precarious situation facing the livelihoods of many Greek people, their response towards refugees has for the most part been welcoming and generous. More UNHCR staffers have already been deployed to five locations in the eastern Aegean, to provide advice and assistance to new arrivals and care for unaccompanied children and people with specific needs.
• More than four million Syrians have now fled war and persecution and become refugees in neighbouring countries, making the Syrian conflict the UN refugee agency’s worst crisis for almost a quarter of a century. The latest figures from UNHCR released last Thursday, July 9, put the total number of refugees from Syria to just over 4,013,000 people.
‘This is the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation. It is a population that deserves the support of the world but is instead living in dire conditions and sinking deeper into abject poverty,’ said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. UNHCR said in a statement that the new figures were based on new arrivals in Turkey and updated data from the authorities on refugees already in that country.
At least an additional 7.6 million people are displaced inside Syria – many of them in difficult circumstances and in locations that are difficult to reach. ”Worsening conditions are driving growing numbers towards Europe and further afield, but the overwhelming majority remain in the region,’ Guterres added. ‘We cannot afford to let them and the communities hosting them slide further into desperation.’
The exodus from Syria is the highest recorded since 1992 when the number of refugees from Afghanistan hit a staggering 4.6 million. In reality, the figure is even higher as it does not include more than 270,000 asylum applications by Syrians in Europe, and thousands of others not resettled in regional neighbours.
With no end in sight to Syria’s war, now in its fifth year, the crisis is intensifying and the number of refugees is rising. The four million milestone comes barely 10 months since the total of three million was reached. At current rates, UNHCR expects the figure to reach around 4.27 million by the end of 2015. In June 2015, more than 24,000 Syrians, mainly women and children, fled to Turkey from Tel Abyad and other parts of northern Syria. Turkey is now home to around 45 per cent of all Syrian refugees in the region.
The four million figure is made up of 1,805,255 Syrian refugees in Turkey, 249,726 in Iraq, 629,128 in Jordan, 132,375 in Egypt, 1,172,753 in Lebanon, and 24,055 elsewhere in North Africa. Meanwhile, funding of the Syria refugee situation has become an equally pressing problem. For 2015 as a whole UNHCR and partners appealed for $5.5 billion.
However, as of late June, only around a quarter of the humanitarian funds requested had been received. This means refugees face tough new cuts in food aid, and struggle to afford lifesaving health services or send their children to school. A substantial proportion of the funding was also intended to prevent the region’s main hosting countries from becoming overwhelmed and unstable themselves.
Life for Syrians in exile is increasingly tough. Some 86 per cent of refugees outside camps in Jordan live below the poverty line of $3.2 per day. In Lebanon, 55 per cent of refugees live in sub-standard shelters. Throughout the region, hope of returning home is dwindling as the crisis drags on. Refugees become more impoverished, and negative coping practices such as child labour, begging and child marriages are on the rise.
Competition for employment, land, housing water and energy in already vulnerable host communities is straining the ability of these communities to cope with the overwhelming numbers and sustain their support to them.