Ms Sophie Magennis:

I thank the Chairman. I wish to make a couple of points on that issue. I will deal first with the issue of smugglers. The issue of smugglers has been dealt with by the European Union in some of its documents. We will have to see what comes out from the leaders' meeting today. Our understanding is that they will be looking at that issue. The Chairman mentioned that the smuggler issue is a source of why people are coming to the European Union. Our position on that is that people are going to come because they have no alternative. We have raised the need to tackle smugglers to make sure people are not subject to this terrible exploitation but in reality people's situation is so desperate that they will take any measures to travel. We have made the point that in order to address this humanitarian crisis - it is a humanitarian crisis - we need to look at the real reasons for the movement. We need to tackle smugglers and criminal gangs, as has been highlighted by the High Commissioner, but that is one of a number of measures and focusing on that alone will not get us to an answer.

In terms of why people are moving to Europe, I stress again that a very small proportion of Syrians are moving to Europe. In fact, the vast majority of Syrian refugees are moving to neighbouring states where they have Arab brothers, sisters or relatives or where there are people of a similar culture, so the vast majority of them are in those countries. The Lebanese authorities-----