The crisis is all ours
With winter setting in across Europe, thousands of refugees remain stranded, forced to endure freezing temperatures. Amy Merone reflects on Europe’s political paralysis, as many EU countries continue to turn a blind eye to the suffering of people on their doorsteps.
‘There is no humanity in being here and waiting. We feel humiliated. There we were dying very fast. Here we are dying very slowly.’
Mohammad was a proud, respectable man. He stood with his shoulders back and his head up. ‘I was like a king in Syria, and Syria was the queen of the world,’ he told me. It made his sense of shame at his family’s current predicament all the more palpable.
I met Mohammad, an engineer from Aleppo, in August last year. He and his family had already been in Greece for seven months by then. They were living in a tent in woodland, near a coastal town.
They had done what all desperate people do when life becomes untenable -they left their home in search of safety.
Unfortunately for them, by the time they arrived on the Greek shore in February 2016 a wave of hostile rhetoric towards refugees was sweeping across Europe.
The welcome banners were down and instead countries were pulling up their drawbridges, beating back those seeking sanctuary.
Empty promises
I’m reminded of Mohammad and his family again as I watch images of refugees huddled together around open fires in Greece and Serbia, surviving in temperatures of -30⁰C in some places.
Earlier commitments by European countries to relocate refugee families like Mohammad’s rang hollow. The emotional outpouring following the death of three-year-old Alan Kurdi dissipated as suddenly as it came upon us.
Today fewer than 7,000 refugees have been relocated from Greece, despite promises to afford some 66,000 people protection in other European countries.
There’s little political will across Europe to relocate refugees already on the continent, and anti-refugee rhetoric grows more hostile by the day.
A colleague in Greece tells me that, as funding to respond to the situation dries up, some agencies are already winding down their activities and preparing to leave.
‘Who knows what will happen?’ she says. ‘Maybe Greece will end up like Lebanon and people will spend years displaced here.’
The longer a person is kept away from their home, the more damage is done to their sense of self-worth. Education and livelihoods suffer, relationships break down.
People in camps are shut away from their neighbours, disconnected from their communities. Poverty becomes endemic and, years later, people struggle to see a way out.
The real crisis
Most of the world’s refugees are hosted by, and in, poor countries. Refugees in Europe, like Mohammad, represent only a tiny fraction of those globally displaced. It is therefore neither impossible nor unreasonable for European countries, among the wealthiest in the world, to share the responsibility.
This crisis is our crisis.
Our collective unwillingness to offer sanctuary to those who have risked everything in search of safety should shame us.
Our lack of imagination in responding to those appealing to our common humanity is shocking.
People like Mohammad have ambition and skills. They had homes and lives that were destroyed. They are people who left their homelands not because they wanted to, but because they felt they no longer had any chance of a life if they stayed.
‘We only want to live in peace and make a better future for our children,’ Mohammad told me. ‘We want to go on to live a better life.’
If we choose to support them, people like Mohammad and his family can rebuild their lives. They can offer us their skills and their stories, and we will be richer in spirit for it.
Amy Merone is Media and Communications Advisor at Christian Aid, working on the European refugee response and the Middle East.
Christian Aid works in Greece and Serbia through our partners to provide cash assistance, shelter and legal protection services to refugee communities. In the UK and Europe, we advocate for long-term practical solutions to the humanitarian situation across Europe. This includes the resettlement and relocation of refugees, as well as greater investment in addressing the root causes of displacement worldwide.
