Rome/Bern (gro) Ghost ships full of refugees and daring rescue operations by Italian naval commandos off the cliffs of the southern Adriatic: this new development is being followed with great attention in neighboring Switzerland. In view of the increased onslaught on Italy, however, with all the concern in the country between Lake Constance and the Po Valley, there is also some understanding for the fact that many refugees are simply waved through by the Italians to the north. What was particularly spectacular, however, was the statement by Swiss Refugee Aid that in view of the continuing turmoil of war in the Middle East, it would be appropriate for Switzerland to take in 100,000 refugees from Syria on a permanent basis. At present, up to 5,000 children are dying every day in the overcrowded refugee camps in Syria’s neighboring countries and in Syria itself.
There is a lack of common conviction.
Stefan Frey, the head of the Swiss Refugee Agency, does concede that the 100,000 demand is more of a provocative proposal. Proportionally speaking, this would mean that Germany would have to take in more than one million refugees within a relatively short period of time. This would indeed be possible without an unreasonable effort. Both countries, Switzerland and Germany, are among the wealthiest in the world and, thanks to their good infrastructure, have the technical and organizational resources to provide refuge to so many people. But there is a lack of broad, shared conviction among the population that this is the right response to the plight of refugees. This is what Stefan Frey said in an interview conducted by Bern-based media personality Rafaela Roth for the Swiss online service “watson.” The politicians, Frey further let it be known, are in his opinion not in a position to bring about the actually necessary “common sense”.
10 million on the run>
That greatest efforts would be quite meaningful, bare numbers show. Because of the civil war that broke out in Syria in 2010 alone, some 10 million people (about half of the Syrian population) are now fleeing death and destruction, including hundreds of thousands of children. The majority of Syrian refugees are trying to survive in their own country, but more than three million are seeking refuge in neighboring countries: mainly Jordan, tiny Lebanon, and Turkey. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 716,000 Syrian refugees were registered in Lebanon at the end of August last year. There were 515,000 in Jordan, 460,000 in Turkey, 168,000 in Iraq and 110,000 in Egypt.
Swiss coordination center in Shatila camp.
In the refugee camp called Shatila in Lebanon’s capital Beirut alone, some 20,000 people are crowded into one square kilometer of space. This is reported by the Hilfswerk der Evangelischen Kirchen der Schweiz (HEKS), which cooperates with Swiss refugee aid and maintains a coordination office in the camp. According to the aid agency, 80 percent of the refugees in Shatila are Palestinian families who had lived in Syria. Fourteen percent are Syrian families, it said. There are much larger refugee camps in Jordan and Turkey. The UN estimates that up to 5,000 children die every day in the camps and other temporary shelters, mainly from malnutrition and infectious diseases. The number is likely to rise sharply soon because of the imminent onset of winter. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)