19 August 2016
Every year on World Humanitarian Day we make a call to remember those who work tirelessly on the front lines of emergency situations to provide rescue services, medical treatment and support in hazardous conditions. Through our work in Palestine and Lebanon we come into contact with incredible people whose humanitarian efforts save lives and alleviate suffering on a daily basis.
But what does it mean for us in the UK to be humanitarian? As the third highest donor to UNRWA and through current or historic partnerships with many other humanitarian organisations in Lebanon and Palestine, the UK can claim a clear role in the provision of humanitarian support to Palestinians. However, when it comes to providing safe routes to humanitarian protection for some of the most vulnerable who are fleeing war, persecution and destitution in Syria, Lebanon or elsewhere, the UK has been shamefully absent.
The principle of humanitarian protection, enshrined in UK law, has the purpose of providing safety to people at “real risk of serious harm” in situations of medical need, violence or severe humanitarian conditions, torture and others. Similarly, in our asylum legislation, the UK has provisions to provide safety to people with a “well-founded fear of persecution.” Under both of these frameworks Palestinian refugees from Syria would be and, at times, have been given protection in the UK once arriving, but in order to reach our shores they must first go through a hell that many do not survive and those that do survive are left traumatised.
While the UK’s promise to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees before 2020 is pitifully small, it does open up a safe route away from war for the most vulnerable. However, discrimination in our resettlement laws means that two people who may have been neighbours in Syria, and who may have suffered through the same trauma, will have different access to protection because one may be a Syrian national and the other a Palestinian refugee from Syria. This issue is outlined in more detail in MAP and LPHR’s recently published briefing on this issue.
In the midst of many stories of terrible news coming from the war in Syria and the situations facing refugees, we are happy to say that Ibrahim, featured in our Refugee Week story, was granted asylum at appeal recently. This was after an initial Home Office decision refused his claim and told him to return to Palestine despite him never having been there, his family being in Syria and the well documented political barriers to this option.
This is amazing news for Ibrahim and we all share his happiness, but for him this is just the beginning of a process to bring his wife and children to the UK and away from the front lines of war in Southern Damascus, Syria.
On World Humanitarian Day we are called to remember that humanitarian action is not something we do when it is convenient or easy to do so. It is our collective drive to ensure that wherever people are and whichever nationality they may hold, we are doing the most we can to ensure they are safe and are able to lead full lives with their families.
Please sign our petition today calling on the UK government to ensure that Palestinians are not left out of their humanitarian response to the Syria crisis.
Featured image: Every year on World Humanitarian Day we make a call to remember those who work tirelessly on the front lines of emergency situations to provide rescue services, medical treatment and support in hazardous conditions. Through our work in Palestine and Lebanon we come into contact with incredible people whose humanitarian efforts save lives and alleviate suffering on a daily basis.