What's up, doc? Sandra Joireman on the Syrian Refugee Crisis

What's up, Doc? is a Q&A series where The Collegian asks a University of Richmond professor five questions on a prominent current events topic that aligns with their expertise.

Syrian refugees have become the subject of international attention, as they have fled their war-torn country. A host of problems has emerged since then, from supplying limited aid to the refugees to squabbles between European countries to accommodate the mass migrants. Sandra Joireman, Weinstein chair of international studies and professor of political science, answered five questions about Syrian refugee crisis including its origin, major issues, and the reaction from the White House.

Ashlee Korlach: How did the stream of refugees leaving Syria begin?

Sandra Joireman: It first began when the civil war began, but most of those refugees were going to neighboring countries. There’s some debate about the triggers of the most recent wave of refugees to Europe. I think the clearest link is reduced food rations to the World Food Programme. The World Food Programme cut food rations for Syrian refugees in the refugee camps in the surrounding countries of Syria. You have people in Jordan, Lebanon, really all around the outside of Syria, and that gave people a very stark choice: stay and starve in refugee camps or go for another option. And the other option is not going to be returning to Syria, because Syria is still so unstable. There’s not been any progress in resolving the conflict, in fact there has been a multiplication of rebel groups. I was reading a statistic recently, I believe it’s from the Carter Center, that says there are now 7,000 anti-government rebel groups in Syria. That does not bode well for conflict resolution or for the ending of the civil war any time soon. It was a combination of things, but I think that the reduction of food rations was quite instrumental in causing the huge influx that we saw this past spring and summer.

AK: The United Nations has called the Syrian conflict one of the worst humanitarian crises of the modern era. What makes this conflict and refugee crisis so disastrous?

SJ: The number of people moving. When you look at the number of people crossing borders and when I talk about people of coming into Europe, it’s not just Syrians, but other people have joined in that refugee flow. So when you’re looking at that number of people on the move it is greater than at any time since World War II. That is something that no one is prepared to deal with, none of these countries, not the U.N., not the U.N.H.C.R., not the World Food Programme. Our standard line of defense or standard line of response, if you will, to refugee crises is not able to cope with this sort of number. And it’s not just the number, it’s where they are moving and how they are moving. Moving illegally, across multiple borders, all at once in large groups.

AK: What is the most prominent issue with the refugee crisis right now?

SJ: From the perspective of the European Union, it is how to respond to refugee needs in an appropriate way that distributes the burden across European countries. From the perspective of the refugees themselves, it’s safety. The dominant concern is safety. They are people who are moving across countries with their families. They are incredibly vulnerable. I think the big humanitarian issue and the issue from the perspective of those refugees is safety, security. That is their primary concern. From there, there’s also the issue of individual countries within Europe, because they are different. We’re seeing much different responses from European countries based on the status of their economy, the level of sophistication of their immigration systems, their resilience level. Maybe one of the problems in this case is there are so many different interests at play that are not aligning well. European countries are not set up for what is happening. They are set up to process limited numbers of refugees coming in, those that have been screened by the U.N.H.C.R. who are traveling with the International Organization for Migration. That is not what is happening here. Instead we’ve got something completely different and that has created a disparate set of interests from those of those of the refugees right up the system to the U.N.

AK: President Obama has increased the amount of Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. in the next year and also initiated a crowd-funding campaign to provide aid to refugees. What else might we expect from the White House in relation to the crisis?

SJ: I don’t think a whole lot more because I don’t think that this is really viewed by the government as a U.S. problem. I think we view this as predominantly a European problem. I think that the interests of the U.S. in terms of Syrian refugees really comes from public opinion, people being concerned about the needs that we see, the obvious cases of children dying. We see those things in the international media and we are collectively moved and want to respond. I think that that is very different from what the government sees as the government’s interests in this case. Should Americans start to lobby the government for increased numbers of Syrian refugees in the United States, or increased response to Syrian refugees, that could change. However, we are caught up in a whole host of other issues right at the moment and we do not have Syrian refugees at our doorstep. I think it’s very different in the U.S. than it is in Europe and I think that the U.S. government sees that as well and is not taking radical moves to respond to this crisis.

AK: What reason is there for college students to care about the crisis?

SJ: Because it is one of the biggest humanitarian crises since the second World War. Because to the extent that we care about other human beings in this world, we should care about what’s happening with Syrian refugees. It is appalling to see people starving in camps, to see people so afraid for their lives and the lives of their children that they need to leave everything, leave their homes, leave their jobs, leave their families, and flee to countries they’ve never been to before. We should care about that.

Contact news assistant Ashlee Korlach at ashlee.korlach@richmond.edu