Q: Why don’t the Syrian refugees go to other Muslim countries, like Saudi Arabia?
—Al Cooper, Atlanta
A: Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries on the Persian Gulf — Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain — haven't offered resettlement opportunities to the refugees, according to Amnesty International and Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, the Washington Post reported.
However, a United Nations representative told Bloomberg News that there are 500,000 displaced Syrians in Saudi Arabia, but they aren’t called refugees by the Saudi government.
Saudi Arabia and the other countries haven’t signed the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, which means they’re not legally mandated to help the refugees, the Washington Post reported.
Kuwait has given $304 million to the United Nations Syria response fund, third behind the United States ($1.1 billion) and United Kingdom ($474 million).
“Burden sharing has no meaning in the Gulf, and the Saudi, Emirati and Qatari approach has been to sign a check and let everyone else deal with it,” Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch for its Middle East and North Africa division, told the New York Times.
A refugee resettlement map of the Middle East by the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization, shows 1.8 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, 1.2 million in Lebanon, 628,000 in Jordan, 248,000 in Iraq and 133,000 in Egypt.
Andy Johnston with Fast Copy News Service wrote this column. Do you have a question about the news? We’ll try to get the answer. Call 404-222-2002 or email q&a@ajc.com (include name, phone and city).
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