UK to open doors to more Iraqi and Kurdish refugees

The UK will expand its Syrian refugee resettlement program, where other nationalities, including Kurds, will now also have their request for asylum be considered.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, announced on Monday that the UK will expand its Syrian refugee resettlement program, where other nationalities, including Kurds, will now also have their request for asylum be considered.

The change to the program, under which 20,000 vulnerable individuals are to be relocated to Britain by 2020, will mean that Iraqi, Palestinian, and Kurdish minorities who sought refuge in Syria before the 2011 start of the civil war but had to flee anew due to the escalating conflict can now apply for refugee status.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had advised ministers in the UK that the scheme would benefit from being extended to encompass the most vulnerable refugees from across the region, not just Syrians.

In a written statement to parliament, Ms Rudd said: “In light of this, with immediate effect, I am amending the scope of the Syrian vulnerable person’s resettlement scheme to enable UNHCR to refer the most vulnerable refugees in the Middle East and North Africa region who have fled the Syrian conflict and cannot safely return to their country of origin, whatever their nationality.”

The decision also means that family groups of mixed nationalities will be eligible for resettlement under the vulnerable people scheme.

Some 7,307 Syrian nationals, half of them children, have come to the UK under the program since it launched in January 2014.

 

Editing by Ava Homa