refugees.amnestyusa.orgRefugees - Amnesty International USA

Executive Summary international Standards ‘WE NEED SOMEONE TO GIVE US HUMAN RIGHTS’ A Vanishing Lifeline ‘Just give us hope’ Case studies Recommendations TAKE ACTION Executive Summary Every day, people around the world make one of the most difficult decisions in their lives: to leave their homes in search of safety. These people are refugees – men, women, and children who cannot return to their own country because they are at risk of serious human rights violations there. Under the administration of US President Donald Trump, the USA’s discriminatory and restrictive policies, starting with the Muslim ban signed in January 2017, have had a devastating impact on the lives of refugees everywhere. This impact is felt acutely in Lebanon, which hosts the largest number of refugees in the world relative to its size, and Jordan, which hosts the second largest refugee population in proportion to its national population. One in six people in Lebanon is a refugee registered with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), while in Jordan, one in 14 people is a refugee. Since 2017, the current US administration’s policies targeting refugees from Muslim-majority countries have decimated refugee resettlement from Jordan and Lebanon. Starting with the Muslim ban, and followed by successive refugee bans, cuts to refugee admissions, and extreme vetting, resettlement from both Jordan and Lebanon to the USA has plummeted and not recovered. UNHCR attributes a four-fold decrease in the resettlement of refugees from Jordan alone to the change in US policies. Syrian refugee resettlement to the USA from Jordan and Lebanon has plummeted 94 percent in just over three years because of US policies targeting refugees from Muslim-majority countries. Ninety-nine percent of refugees in Lebanon are Syrian, while 87 percent of refugees in Jordan are. Yet, at the end of April 2019, only 219 Syrian refugees had arrived to the United States from Jordan and Lebanon this calendar year, putting the USA on pace to resettle just over 650 by the end of 2019. In contrast, in calendar year 2016, 11,204 Syrian refugees were resettled to the USA from Jordan and Lebanon. But not only Syrians are impacted – resettlement to the USA from Jordan and Lebanon of Iraqis, Sudanese, and other nationalities from Muslim-majority countries has precipitously dropped due to the Muslim ban and the successive refugee bans and other policies hindering resettlement to the USA. When someone has to leave his country, he would feel heartbroken . . . We were obliged, we either die or save our lives and leave our country, so we chose to leave our country to protect our families. – Salman, Syrian refugee in Jordan Read More × Over the course of two weeks, Amnesty International interviewed 48 refugee families and individuals in Jordan and Lebanon to document the experiences of the women, men, and children who fled war and persecution. As the current US administration has rationalized drastic cuts in refugee resettlement on purported security concerns, it has discounted the very real human cost on the ground – people whose lives are on hold, unable to return home or move on to a third country like the USA. Instead they are forced to remain in countries where they have limited access to work, education, and health care A generation of refugee families bears the weight of the USA’s discriminatory policies and struggles to survive. The majority of Syrian refugees in both countries live below the poverty line, with their assets depleted and dwindling humanitarian assistance. Already an option available to only a very small percentage of refugees, resettlement has become even more of a chimera of refugee protection. Even as the need for action has never been greater, fewer and fewer refugees are referred for resettlement to a third country due to countries like the USA closing its doors. The US is leading this race to the bottom. Lost in the US national security debate is one simple fact: refugees are not numbers. Refugees are women, men, and children with unique stories to tell. Amnesty International interviewed teachers, artists, engineers, laborers, and homemakers living out the abrupt shift in US policies. Many of them once owned property, but they now live in refugee camps in trailer-like structures or makeshift accommodations in dense urban environments. All they want is what any person in their situation would want: safety, a place to call home, work to support themselves, and education for their children. They want to live with dignity. Amara, a Syrian refugee in Lebanon, told Amnesty International, "We don’t want to just think about food, and our basic needs . . . we want to live lives." For these refugees and untold others as well as the countries hosting them, the US government is abandoning its duty to share responsibility for refugee protection. A fundamental principle of refugee protection is responsibility-sharing and international cooperation. These are required to reduce the impact of large-scale refugee populations on host countries, and each state should contribute to the maximum of its capacity Instead of upholding its responsibilities, the USA is abdicating responsibility for refugee protection. It is repeatedly and drastically cutting the number of refugees considered for resettlement to the USA. Resettlement is a key component of responsibility-sharing and allows States to support each other by agreeing to settle refugees from host countries It is also imposing discriminatory and restrictive policies that undercut refugee admissions. Nondiscrimination on grounds including nationality, ethnicity, sex, gender, race, and religion is a core provision in all international human rights instruments. Executive orders and policies intended to discriminate against Muslims, and that have the effect of disadvantaging Muslims, are unjustifiable under international human rights law. The causes of the so-called global refugee crisis are amplified and sustained by bad policies such as these – a failure of wealthier countries such as the USA to share responsibility for refugee protection. As the USA seeks to keep out refugees, it and other wealthy countries are asking lower- and middle-income countries to do more than their fair share: 85 percent of the world’s refugees live in developing countries. Amnesty International calls on the USA to reaffirm its commitment to sharing responsibility for refugee protection by admitting more refugees, abandoning policies that undermine resettlement, and adhering to the principle of nondiscrimination in refugee protection. The USA should admit all 30,000 refugees set in the Presidential Determination for Fiscal Year (FY) 2019, and commit to resettling 95,000 refugees in the Presidential Determination for FY 2020. US authorities should reverse policies that hinder resettlement to the USA, and ensure processing of resettlement cases is timely and all refugees are considered fairly and fully and without discrimination for resettlement to the USA. The USA should robustly fund the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) and ensure critical humanitarian aid reaches refugees and displaced populations, including for Palestinian refugees. The US government has the power to change the lives of the refugees with whom Amnesty International met, and the many more whose story goes untold. Amnesty International urges the US government to reaffirm its commitment to resettling the world’s most vulnerable refugees and ensuring critical humanitarian aid reaches all refugees. We want to thank the US people, and we still have the hope that they will make a decision to help the refugees. We know that America sacrificed too many [people] during wars, and that is happening now with us [in Syria]. – Manar, Syrian refugee in Jordan Methodology This briefing draws on 48 interviews Amnesty International conducted in November 2018 with refugee families and individuals registered with UNHCR and with the UN Relief and Works...