Ms Louise Finan:

I am delighted to have the opportunity to be here today before the committee breaks for summer. To start with the positive, it is wonderful to hear informed and engaged questions and statements from the committee. I thank it for them. Further, despite the concerns and misgivings civil society may have, on a personal level I think it is really good that states are talking to each other about refugees and migration. Frankly, they have been ignoring this problem for a long time. I should not use the word "problem" because I am feeding into that rhetoric. It is a problem because we have made it a problem, but it should not be. The movement of people has happened for centuries and this should not be seen as a problem. We should be there to facilitate the protection of people. I hope that the preparations for the high level meeting in New York bear fruit and we get some kind of realistic solution for the millions of people stuck in limbo.

I have been working on the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts for the past two years with Christian Aid. The Syrians I have met, who are in Lebanon and Iraq, are tired of hearing western governments say that potentially they will do something about it and that they will give more money to various aid programmes. They want to have dignified lives. They want to be able to work. They are not so concerned about where they were living or about coming to Europe. They were quite happy to stay in the first safe place they reached. However, after a year of being there, it would be nice to try to earn a living in a dignified way. It would be good to be able to send one's child to school. It would be good to be able to access health care. Every one of us would want the same.

Bringing it down to the very humanity of the situation, we hope these discussions in New York will achieve some traction and some change in the daily lives of refugees. We also hope western countries will actually bear some responsibility and that we are not just seen as donors or paying off other nations to deal with the problem but rather as countries that are willing to shoulder some of the responsibility.

I will not say much more because I would be repeating the contributions of others. However, on the Palestinian-Syrian question, Christian Aid has partners in Lebanon which have been working to support Palestinian Syrians for the past number of years. They are, frankly speaking, at the bottom of the pile of refugees in Lebanon and in host countries. As a result of their specific status, they are not entitled to claim asylum once they reach Europe, so they are in a limbo. They are also not entitled to work in any of the host countries or to access basic services. In fact, most of them are not legally allowed to be in the countries in which they are currently living in the region surrounding Syria. I am, therefore, very glad that question was posed. I would like the issue to be raised continually.