Suffer the little Syrian children: One year after the death of Alan Kurdi

Thursday, September 1, 2016

One year ago, September 2, 2015, the image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body lying face down on a Turkish beach flashed around the world. It smashed our hearts and, for a while, it seemed the world cared just a little more about the millions of refugees, half of them children, who have fled the war in Syria.

Two weeks ago, August 17, we got another bitter taste of that war, when another three-year-old Syrian child, Omran Daqneesh, was dragged out of the bombed ruins of his home in Aleppo. Once again, our hearts ached to see this little one sitting dazed in the back of an ambulance, trying to make sense of the blood he has wiped from his head.

For more than five years this has been going on and many, many more children like Alan Kurdi and Omran Daqneesh have died, or been hurt, or scarred by their experiences. In a war in which 270,000 people have been killed, an estimated 19,000 children have died, while 5.6 million children are in need of humanitarian assistance.

Perhaps it is too many to grapple with, but when we see one child, dead on a beach, or covered in blood and dust, we see it more clearly for the tragic obscenity that it is.

At World Vision, we saw the immediate impact of Alan Kurdi’s death with a 3000 per cent jump in donations for our work in Syria. It spiked for two weeks, before falling back to hardscrabble levels.

Around the world, governments were snapped out of their lethargy.

With hundreds of thousands of refugees flowing into Europe, the United Nations called on the European Union to admit up to 200,000 refugees as part of a "mass relocation program". On September 4, Britain said it would "act with its heart" and take thousands more Syrian refugees.

In Australia, on September 9, the then prime minister, Tony Abbott, announced that Australia would permanently resettle 12,000 refugees from the Syria-Iraq conflict, on top of the 13,750 places available in the humanitarian program for 2015-16.

He described it as a response that “best reflects Australia’s proud history as a country with a generous heart” and said they would be made up of “the most vulnerable of all” - women, children and families from persecuted minorities sheltering in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey”.  He said Australia would move “very quickly”, subject to the usual security, health and character checks.

But one year later, only a tiny fraction of the 12,000 refugees Australia pledged to take have been resettled – a sluggish resettlement process that is in stark contrast with our Commonwealth cousin, Canada.

In November, 2015, two months after Australia, Canada’s newly elected Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, promised to take 25,000 government-sponsored refugees. Although subsequent terror attacks, starting in Paris, caused governments to pause, the 25,000 were settled in four months and as of this week Canada has opened its arms to more than 30,000 Syrian refugees.

The first Syrian refugee family to be settled in Australia under the Federal Government’s special refugee intake, arrived in Perth on 16 November, 2015. But Bashar Kujah, his wife Khawlah al-Ahdab, and their children Mohamad, Maryam, Ahmad, and Abdullah, are among the lucky few. Since then, the pace has been agonisingly slow. At a Senate estimates hearing in May, government officials admitted just 575 Syrians had been resettled. As of June, about 3500 visas had been granted, but far fewer have actually set foot in Australia.

From documents we have seen, state governments appear to have been told it would take 12-18 months from the time of Tony Abbott’s announcement to resettle the 12,000, or the first quarter of 2017. At the present rate, that target will not be met.

With almost 5 million Syrian refugees to choose from, why has it taken Australia so long to resettle the women, children and families Tony Abbott called “the most vulnerable of all”?

The answer, I think, is that our response, unlike Canada’s, has been driven by an obsession with border protection, rather that refugee protection. It is now deeply embedded in the Australian psyche. Asked this week what the Turnbull government has a mandate to do, an overwhelming 76 per cent of voters – and 90 per cent of Coalition voters - answered “maintain border security”.

In Canada, Justin Trudeau said, “You don’t get to suddenly discover compassion … You either have it, or you don’t.” Australia has always taken pride in being a big-hearted nation, but 15 years of a paralysing debate over refugees has done its damage.

An opportunity for Malcolm Turnbull to find his inner Trudeau might come at a Leaders Summit on Refugees on September 20, at which Barack Obama will urge nations to increase their refugee intake and humanitarian funding. Turnbull should seize this opportunity.

Tim Costello is Chief Executive of World Vision Australia

First published in Fairfax Media as "Road to compassion for the refugees of Syria is paved with good intentions"

 

Opinion Pieces, Middle East, Eastern Europe & Central Asia, Refugee Crisis, Syria, Tim Costello

Back to all Results