Syria Crisis Fair Share Analysis 2016

SPERRFRIST BEACHTEN: 01. Februar 2016, 01:01 MEZ

The number of people in need as a result of the conflict in Syria continues to rise, but the international aid response has failed to keep up. The donor conference in London on 4 February 2016 is another opportunity to reverse that trend and put Syrian civilians first. Oxfam is calling for rich states to commit to fully funding this year’s Syria crisis response appeal and to resettle 10 percent of all registered Syrian refugees by the end of 2016.

Oxfam has developed indicators to determine the fair level of commitment that each wealthy country should make to the appeals in 2016 to alleviate the suffering of those affected by the Syria crisis:

• The level of funding each country makes available for the aid response, relative to the size of their economy (based on gross national income);
• The number of Syrian refugees each country has pledged help find safety through offers of resettlement or other forms of humanitarian admission, again based on the size of the economy. This does not include people who have claimed and been granted asylum, as states have specific international legal obligations related to individuals who arrive on their territory seeking asylum.

Oxfam periodically tracks funding commitments to the Syria crisis response, as well as pledges to resettle Syrian refugees.[i] This paper is part of a series of papers that document this analysis.

Figure 1: Funding fair share analysis for 2015

This chart details funding committed to the Syria crisis response appeals for 2015.[ii] Based on an estimated total need of $8.9bn, the analysis shows that rich countries have only given 56.5 percent of the funding requested by the appeals. The estimated total need was calculated by adding together the combined United Nations (UN) and country appeal funding requests for the Syria crisis for 2015 with those made by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

Note: The analysis includes members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and high-income non-DAC countries. Each country's fair share is calculated as a percentage of total need based on each country's share of total, combined gross national income (GNI). Each country's contributions to the appeals include both bilateral and imputed multilateral funding. Information is drawn from publicly available sources including the Financial Tracking Service and checked with government representatives where possible.

Figure 2: Funding fair share estimates for 2016

This chart details the amount that rich countries should be committing to the Syria crisis response in 2016, based on an estimated total need of $9.3bn. The estimated total need was calculated by adding together the combined UN appeal funding requests for the Syria crisis for 2016, as well as those made by the ICRC and IFRC.

Figure 3: Resettlement and humanitarian admissions pledges through 2016

Oxfam is calling for 10 percent of the total number of refugees registered in countries neighbouring Syria, equivalent to about 460,000 people, to be resettled or offered humanitarian admission in rich countries that have signed the UN Refugee Convention by the end of 2016. This chart looks at admissions and pledges from these countries since 2013 against a fair share calculated on the basis of the size of their economy. To date, only 128,612 places have been pledged by the world's richest governments, some in an unclear timeframe. For countries that have not specified a timeframe, Oxfam has assumed that they will carry out their pledge by the end of 2016.

Note: Information is drawn from publicly available sources including the UNHCR and checked with government representatives where possible. Data is correct as of 24 January 2016.

*Australia: Oxfam has had to make a number of assumptions in determining the number of refugees that Australia will accept by the end of 2016. One specific assumption is that the government’s pledge in September 2015 to resettle 12,000 Iraqi and Syrian refugees will be split equally between both nationalities.

**Ireland: In addition to the 721, Ireland has also resettled 35 refugees not of Syrian origin displaced by the conflict. Additional refugees will be received in Ireland but a final decision has not been taken on whether this will be resettlement or relocation.

^†United Kingdom: This number is based on the monthly average for resettled refugees required to fulfil the UK commitment to resettle 20,000 Syrians by May 2020. It also includes 216 Syrians who have been resettled via the Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme.

^‡United States: The US has pledged to accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees from October 2015 to September 2016 within an overall admission ceiling of 85,000 refugees. The US arrival numbers are accurate as of December 2015 and are based on the total pledge of 10,000 plus the 1,812 Syrians who have been resettled to the US between January 2013 and September 2015.