The European Refugee Crisis and Syria Explained

Why is the refugee crisis all over the news? How is this related to Syria? Why should we care at all?

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Sources used for this video:

http://www.unhcr.org.uk/about-us/key-facts-and-figures.html

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/27/uk-mediterranean-migrant-rescue-plan

http://www.vox.com/2015/9/8/9277127/syrian-refugees-photos

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Europe

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/fluechtlinge-aus-syrien-die-golfstaaten-nehmen-keine-fluechtlinge-auf-a-1051885.html

http://www.pewforum.org/2011/01/27/the-future-of-the-global-muslim-population/

https://muslimstatistics.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/pew-fertility-rate-for-muslims-and-non-muslims-in-europe/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/03/us-syria-population-idUSTRE6522FS20100603

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/05/syria-forces-war-crime-barrel-bombs-aleppo-amnesty-report

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/12/understanding-syria-from-pre-civil-war-to-post-assad/281989/

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mythical-connection-between-immigrants-and-crime-1436916798

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/07/immigration-and-crime

http://www.turkeyagenda.com/crime-rate-among-syrian-refugees-remain-way-lower-than-expected-1199.htmlz

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24583286

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria

http://www.vox.com/2015/9/4/9261971/syria-refugee-war

The economist, Time Magazine

The European Refugee Crisis and Syria Explained

In the summer of 2015,

Europe experienced the highest influx
of refugees since the Second World War.

Why?

The main reason is that Syria has become
the world’s top source of refugees.

Syria is located in the Middle East,

an ancient fertile land
settled for at least 10,000 years.

Since the 1960s, it’s been led
by the al-Assad family,

who have ruled it as quasi-dictators
until the Arab Spring happened in 2011,

a revolutionary wave of protests and
conflicts in the Arab world

that toppled many authoritarian regimes.

But the Assads refused to step down
and started a brutal civil war.

Different ethnicities and religious groups
fought each other in changing coalitions.

ISIS, a militaristic jihadist group,
used the opportunity

and entered the chaos with the goal to
build a totalitarian Islamic caliphate.

Very quickly, it became one of the most

violent and successful extremist
organizations on Earth.

All sides committed horrible war crimes,
using chemical weapons, mass executions,

torture on a large scale, and repeated
deadly attacks on civilians.

The Syrian population was trapped

between the regime, rebel groups,
and the religious extremists.

A third of the Syrian people have
been displaced within Syria,

while over four million
have fled the country.

The vast majority of them reside now in
camps in the neighboring countries,

who are taking care of
95% of the refugees,

while the Arab states of
the Persian Gulf together

have accepted zero Syrian refugees,

which has been called especially shameful
by Amnesty International.

The UN and the World Food Program

were not prepared for a
refugee crisis on this scale.

As a result, many refugee camps are
crowded and undersupplied,

subjecting people
to cold, hunger, and disease.

The Syrians lost hope that their situation
will be getting better any time soon,

so many decided to seek asylum in Europe.

Between 2007 and 2014, the Europian Union
had invested about €2 billion

in defenses, high-tech security
technology, and border patrols,

but not a lot in preparation
for an influx of refugees.

So it was badly prepared for
the storm of asylum seekers.

In the EU, a refugee has to stay in
the state they arrived in first,

which put enormous pressure on the border
states that were already in trouble.

Greece, in the midst of an economic crisis
on the scale of the Great Depression,

was not able to take care of
so many people at once,

leading to terrible scenes of
desperate, hungry people on islands

usually reserved for tourists.

The world needed to come together
and act as a united front,

but, instead, it has become more divided.

Many states downright refused
to take in any refugees,

leaving the border states
alone in their struggle.

In 2014, the UK lobbied to stop

a huge search-and-rescue
operation called Mare Nostrum

that was designed to stop asylum seekers
from drowning in the Mediterranean.

The idea seems to have been
that a higher death toll on the sea

would mean fewer asylum seekers
trying to make the journey.

But, of course, in reality,
that’s not what happened.

The perception of the crisis around
the world suddenly changed

when photos circulated of
a dead boy from Syria

found lying face down
on a beach in Turkey.

Germany announced that it will, without
exception, accept all Syrian refugees,

and is now preparing to take
in 800,000 people in 2015,

more than the entire EU took in 2014,

only to impose temporary
border controls a few days later

and demand an EU-wide solution.

All over the West, more and more people
are beginning to take action,

although support for asylum seekers

has mostly come from citizens,
not from politicians.

But there are fears in the Western world:

Islam, high birth rates, crime,
and the collapse of the social systems.

Let’s acknowledge this
and look at the facts.

Even if the EU alone were to accept
all four million Syrian refugees

and 100% of them were Muslims,

the percentage of Muslims
in the European Union

would only rise from about 4% to about 5%.

This is not a drastic change and will
certainly not make it a Muslim continent.

A Muslim minority is neither new
nor reason to be afraid.

Birth rates in many parts of
the Western world are low,

so some fear asylum seekers might
overtake the native population

in a few decades.

Studies have shown that even though

birth rates are higher among Muslims
in Europe, they drop and adjust

as the standard of living
and level of education rises.

Most Syrian refugees already are educated,

the birth rate in Syria before
the civil war was not very high,

and the population was
actually shrinking, not growing.

The fear that refugees lead to higher
crime rates also turns out to be wrong.

Refugees who become immigrants are

less likely to commit crimes
than the native population.

When allowed to work, they
tend to start businesses

and integrate themselves into the
workforce as fast as possible,

paying more into the social systems
than they extract from them.

Syrians coming to the West are
potential professional workers,

desperately needed to sustain
Europe’s aging poulation.

Also, refugees’ traveling with smartphones
has led to the misconception

that they’re not really in need of help.

Social media and the internet

have become a vital part
of being a refugee.

GPS is used to navigate
the long routes to Europe;

Facebook groups give tips and information
about obstacles in real time.

This only proves that
these people are like us:

if you had to make a dangerous journey,
would you leave your phone behind?

The European Union is the wealthiest
bunch of economies on Earth,

well-organized states with
functioning social systems,

infrastructure, democracy,
and huge industries.

It can handle the challenge of the
refugee crisis if it wants to.

The same can be said for
the whole Western world.

But while tiny Jordan has
taken in over 600,000 Syrian refugees,

the UK, which has 78 times
the GDP of Jordan,

has only said it will allow
20,000 Syrians across its borders

over the next five years.

The US has agreed to accept 10,000,
Australia 12,000 people.

Overall, things are slowly getting better,
but not fast enough.

We are writing history right now.

How do we want to be remembered?

As xenophobic rich cowards behind fences?

We have to realize that these people
fleeing death and destruction

are no different from us.

By accepting them into our countries and
integrating them into our societies,

we have much to gain.

There is only something to be
lost if we ignore this crisis.

More dead children are sure to wash ashore
if don’t act with humanity and reason.

Let’s do this right and try to be
the best we possibly can be.