Refugees: Syria

(asked on 9th July 2018) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the Government is taking to support and resettle (a) Yazidi, (b) Christian and (c) other religious or ethnic minority Syrian refugees.


Answered by
Caroline Nokes Portrait
Caroline Nokes
This question was answered on 12th July 2018

In resettlement, the UK works according to the humanitarian principles of impartiality and neutrality which means that we do not take into consideration the ethno-religious origins of people requiring assistance as we resettle solely on the basis of needs, identified by UNHCR through their established submission categories.

We believe that one way to protect the privacy of those being resettled and ensure their recovery and integration is to limit the amount of information about them that we make publicly available. We therefore do not believe it is appropriate to publish a religious and ethnic breakdown of those who have been resettled.

We are working with UNHCR and other partners to intensify their outreach to groups that might otherwise be reluctant to register for fear of stigma/discrimination and unaware of the safe space and options available to them. This includes all religious minorities.

In all of the countries from which we resettle Syrian refugees, mobile registration teams, outreach teams, and Help Desks for areas where different minority groups are concentrated are used to facilitate registration and access to services. This is all part of an effort to facilitate registration for those refugees who for whatever reason cannot, or choose not, to access the main registration offices.

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