Question to the Department for International Development:

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

The Department for International Development work alongside the Home Office on the resettlement of refugees. The UK works in accordance 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.

To protect the privacy of those being resettled and to support their recovery and integration, we limit the amount of information made publicly available and therefore do not publish a religious and ethnic breakdown of those who have been resettled.

The Home Office 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 those who may be unaware of the safe space and options available to them. This includes all religious minorities.