Syrian refugee crisis

In September 2015, the UK Government announced that it would accept up to 20,000 Syrian refugees to be taken directly from the Middle East for resettlement in the UK over the course of this Parliament with 1,000 received by the end of 2015. The announcement signified a substantial scaling up of the pre-existing programme, the Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme (VPRS), which was established in March 2014.

This inquiry follows on from the previous Committee’s inquiry into “UK Support for Humanitarian Relief in the Middle East” in 2014, with the key difference being the focus on resettlement of the most vulnerable. The authors invited written evidence on the following issues:

• Are UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) processes effective enough to ensure that the most vulnerable are identified and relocated to the UK?
• Whether the focus is and should be entirely on children, or whether others, e.g. women who have been subject to sexual violence or minority groups, should be included
• Whether the camps from which refugees will be relocated are a true representation of the most vulnerable Syrians
• How “camp” is defined for the purposes of selecting refugees
• Clarification that no changes are proposed in what funding for refugees is categorised as ODA (Official development assistance) and counts towards the 0.7% ODA target
• What can be done to ensure that donors provide more funding for refugees in Jordan and Lebanon?

The International Development Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for International Development and its associated public bodies.