UN seeks greater refugee support from Canada amid ‘enormous’ global needs – National – English SiapTV.com

The United Nations is bracing for a further increase in the number of refugees this year as last month’s earthquake in Turkey and Syria adds to a series of crises that have the world turning to Canada for more help.

“The need around the world is huge,” said Kelly Clements, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees, during a visit to Canada this week.

“This is the start of what we expect will be another very difficult year.”

Clements was traveling in the Middle East last month when a powerful earthquake struck, and immediately after that she headed to the large Syrian city of Aleppo.

She said the shaking woke UNHCR staff early on 6 February and they ran outside in their bed linen, standing in the wet snow.

“Despite the fact that some of our colleagues lost their homes, damaged property, worried about loved ones, and so on, that day everyone returned to the office,” she said.

“You can see apartment buildings where you could cut yourself with a knife, see household items, people’s clothes, mirrors on the wall, chests of drawers, etc.”

The Syrian civil war has been going on since 2011, and Clements said parts of Aleppo have been in ruins for half of that time as a “frozen conflict” has restored relative peace to that part of the country.

Many areas of Syria are held by the warring factions, so the country’s response is much slower than the instant mobilization of support from Turkey. It took the Syrian government a week to relax its policy of strict border crossing restrictions, further delaying the arrival of humanitarian aid.

However, UNHCR managed to abandon programs in the Middle East and now focus on housing construction. Clements said the agency needed funding to run programs for orphans and separated children, and to protect women from gender-based violence.

“Our biggest concern is that when the focus is no longer on earthquake response, even if the aftershocks are gone, there will still be needs,” Clements said.

“These are people who will need long-term support from the international community to rebuild their lives. It’s not just about restoring structures.”

When the civil war broke out 12 years ago, 21 million people lived in Syria. Now 6.8 million Syrians are internally displaced and 5 million are refugees in other countries.

“Some of our most underfunded programs in the world have been part of the situation in Syria,” Clements said.

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“Views of the world were easily transferred to other contexts, more relevant, fresher, more understandable, but in a serious situation it is no less necessary.”

Across the border in Lebanon, 1.5 million Syrians languish in a country where a fifth of the population are refugees from other states, the highest proportion on the planet.

Clements, a former US diplomat in Beirut, recalls packing her medicines on a recent visit because they were out of stock.

Lebanon was in political stalemate for years when much of its main port exploded in 2020. Inflation has made almost all the refugees in the country poor, as well as many Lebanese citizens, Clements said.

“This is crisis after crisis in Lebanon, in part it created the situation in terms of governance,” she said.

She noted that Lebanese are increasingly moving from accepting refugees from neighboring states to fleeing their country on wobbly boats, and the number of deaths at sea has tripled from 2021 to 2022.

“It speaks to the desperation that people have fallen into,” she said.

Meanwhile, another frozen conflict in Yemen has led to a humanitarian catastrophe, as the global appeal for help reached only a third of its target this week.

The UN has asked for $4.3 billion to restore proper food, water and health services, but received only $1.2 billion at a pledging conference on Monday.

The country is beset by a brutal civil war, economic blockade and increasingly serious natural disasters. Save the Children said the lack of funding “will have a negative impact on the lives of millions of children in Yemen and on the country’s long-term stability.”

On Monday, International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan announced $46 million to Yemen’s call for this year that Canada is following the global trend of cutting funding over the past three years.

“He has practically fallen out of the international community’s radar and is still in dire need of humanitarian assistance,” Clements said.

Her agency recorded 65 million displaced people worldwide in 2015, topping 100 million and “conservative estimates” to reach 120 million by the end of 2023, nearly doubling in eight years.

She praised Canada for being one of UNHCR’s largest donors and for resettling some of the world’s most vulnerable refugees whose needs cannot be met in many developing countries.

But she also hopes that Ottawa will increase funding for these needs in the next federal budget.

“We need Canada to be with us in 2023 even more than in 2022.”

She argues that UNHCR programs have restored the dignity of people around the world by meeting their basic needs and giving them the opportunity to get a job.

Closer to home, the flood of asylum seekers entering Canada at Wroxham Road has led Quebec to urge Ottawa to somehow close the unofficial border crossing.

The federal government is already sending hundreds of asylum seekers to Ontario, and the Quebec media has highlighted Montreal’s lack of safe housing for new arrivals.

Although Clements does not follow Canadian politics, she is confident that the country will remain open to helping those in need.

“Canada has traditionally been an incredibly generous country that welcomed refugees, asylum seekers and others with open arms,” she said.

“I am very confident that Canada will be able to find ways to continue to accept those who need its international protection.”