Refugees in the region
More than 4.5 million refugees from Syria are in just five countries Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt:
- Turkey hosts 2.5 million refugees from Syria, more than any other country worldwide
- Lebanon hosts approximately 1.1 million refugees from Syria which amounts to around one in five people in the country
- Jordan hosts approximately 635,324 refugees from Syria, which amounts to about 10% of the population
- Iraq where 3.9 million people are already internally displaced hosts 245,022 refugees from Syria
- Egypt hosts 117,658 refugees from Syria
The UN’s 2015 humanitarian appeal for Syrian refugees was just 61% funded by the end of the year.
Funding shortages mean that the most vulnerable Syrian refugees in Lebanon receive just $21.60 per person month or around US$0.70 cent a day for food assistance, well below the UN’s poverty line of US$1.90
86% of Syrian refugees in urban areas in Jordan are living below the local poverty line.
Conflict in Syria
According to the UN around 250,000 people have been killed and 13.5 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria
More than 50% of Syria’s population is currently displaced
One-in-every-two of those crossing the Mediterranean this year – half a million people – were Syrians escaping the conflict in their country
International Resettlement
In total, 162,151 resettlement places have been offered globally since the start of the Syria crisis, which equates to a mere 3.6% of the total population of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and Turkey.
At least 450,000 people in the five main host countries – or 10% – are in need of resettlement according to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR.
Amnesty International is calling for at least 10% of Syria’s most vulnerable refugees to be offered resettlement or other forms of admission by the end of 2016
Key facts:
- Gulf countries including Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.
- Other high income countries including Russia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea have also offered zero resettlement places.
- Germany has pledged 39,987 places for Syrian refugees through its humanitarian admission programme and individual sponsorship; about 54% of the EU total.
- Germany and Serbia together have received 57% Syrian asylum applications in Europe between April 2011 and July 2015
- Excluding Germany and Sweden, the remaining 26 EU countries have pledged around 30,903 resettlement places, or around 0.7% of the Syrian refugee population in the main host countries
Sources: UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), International Organization of Migration (IOM)
For more information and to take action, visit The Syrian Refugee Crisis
