A Syrian Children Refugee

Overview

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Figure 1.0: A Syrian children refugee.

A refugee is a person who has been forced to flee from his or her country because of war, persecution, or violence. They have a well-founded fear of persecution for the reason of nationality, religion, race, political opinion or just the membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they are not going to return home or are afraid to do or simply cannot to do so as the endless war happening in their country. Besides war, tribal and religious violence is one of the leading causes of refugees fleeing their country. (The UN Refugee Agency)

According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there is a surge in the number of refugees in year 2015. There are almost 5 million Syrian refugees risking their lives to escape a 5 year long civil war. The biggest concern is it is not going to end of this record. In 2015, there are 1 million refugees have arrived by sea in Europe. (UNHCR) Among them, more than half are from Syria. Some of the asylum seekers are considered as economic migrants and this had prevented them from obtaining refugees status in Europe. Except the conflict in Syria continues to be the biggest source of refugees, people are fleeing other precaution and violence hotspots such as Afghanistan, Eritrea and Iraq. Furthermore, people who suffer from poverty and lack of jobs tend to leave their countries and look for new lives elsewhere. (World Economic Forum)  US secretary said that the flood of desperate migrants has now spread well beyond the Middle East. Beside Syria, 50 percent of them come from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan and so on. The issue is how the government is to determine the economic migrant among the huge amount of asylum seeker. The public and political opinion is deeply divided. Austria has begun to seal its borders by erected a barrier at its main crossing with Slovenia. In Hungary, there is a fence built along its borders with Serbia and Croatia.

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Figure 1.1: Refugees in front of a barrier at the border of Hungary.

Even so, there appears to be no slowdown in the number of refugees who willing to risk their lives to get to Europe. There is a heartbreaking statistic showing that over 4200 people have died or gone missing while attempting the journey. (Rosamond Hutt, 2016)

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Figure 1.2: A Syrian refugee holding his baby in a life tube and swims towards the shore.

There is a considerable solution for the situation which is to lift carrier sanctions on airlines throughout the Europe. The refugees who had make their ways to the airport and able to buy a ticket deserves to travel in comfort. This will act as a stroke to halve business for people smugglers. However, there are some restrictions by government to the airlines company. Government requires documents which the refugees are lack of. Airlines company will faces a fine if they let the refugees on board without such documentation. In fact, Europe has the capacity to take the sting out its tail. What Lebanon faces is there is about a quarter of its population now Syrian refugees and this, is an emergency. (Memphis Barker, 2015)