But thanks to pressure from social media, the press, celebrities, and aid agencies, that situation has begun to change. The European Commission is proposing to accept 120,000 Syrian refugees over the coming two years, with most going to places like Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Truthfully, Europe will probably need to quietly take far more refugees than that in the coming months and years.
It will be critical for the EU and other refugee-accepting countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia …show more content…
The United Nations, in partnership with refugee-accepting nations, should step in to ensure that refugee families headed by women with large numbers of young children which also may be unable to make it to Europe are also enabled to reach more prosperous host countries.
Of course all of this attention to refugees in Europe must not distract from a more basic fact: that nearly all Syrian refugees are not in Hungary or Germany but, instead, are in countries that neighbor Syria. Many aid workers and refugees are concerned that the renewed focus on Europe will pull attention and resources away from countries like Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, which together host more than 4 million displaced Syrians.
If this were to happen, it would only exacerbate mounting funding problems for the refugee response. The United Nations has only received 37 percent of the funds needed to support Syrian refugees in 2015. This has real, tangible effects. The value of food vouchers the World Food Program provides to each Syrian refugee in Lebanon each month, for instance, has fallen from $30 to only $13.50, despite the fact that each refugee needs roughly $50 worth of food per month to get by. The aid cuts are also evident in Jordan and across the