RASHA, Abdul and their two children sold up, quit their lease and left for the airport. After six years in limbo as Syrian refugees in Lebanon, they were finally bound for new, permanent lives in the UK – school, friends and security.
The family had been selected for the UK’s Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (SVPRS). Agreed with the UN under David Cameron, it allowed for 20,000 displaced people to come to live in the UK by May this year.
Those chosen are handpicked due to their higher levels of need – serious medical conditions, major diagnosed trauma, elevated risk of harm due to their sex, sexuality or other factors.
But the final transfers were halted in March when the pandemic hit, and haven’t restarted.
Rasha and builder Abdul didn’t make it on to their flight. The cancellation call came before they even reached the airport. Officials told them to go back home. Now they’re among the scores of families living in a new kind of limbo, people who have full permission to live in the UK and can even tell you the addresses of their UK homes in Edinburgh, Newcastle, Liverpool and elsewhere, but who cannot reach them.
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Their kids can’t go to school, they are short of food, they are scared of Covid-19 and they say discrimination means it’s unsafe for them to go outside.
“We didn’t believe what they were saying,” Rasha says. “We said, ‘there’s no home to go to, [in Lebanon] we gave it up, we sold everything, we have no place’. We were on the streets until we found someone to live with.
“Every day the children ask ‘when will we go to the UK and go to school? Maybe tomorrow or maybe the day after that?’ We tell them, inshallah [God willing].”
The couple say they know of 35 families in the same position as them. UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, says “a few hundred” people are waiting. But as well as the pandemic, the devastating explosion that rocked Beirut has made bringing them here far harder.
However, that hasn’t stopped all transfers from Lebanon to European countries. Some governments have chosen to resume flights for this in-need group, but the UNHCR says those included have been “emergency cases” only.
For electrician Mohamad Al Naasan and his family, the need for resettlement from Beirut is urgent. They’ve been allocated an address in Edinburgh, but Mohammad, whose accommodation was rocked by the recent disaster, is so desperate he’s willing to go anywhere and do anything.
“Egypt, Turkey, they can send us to any country,” he says, and, mindful of coronavirus, he says they would self-isolate for “one month, two months, no matter what it is, so long as they get us to any country where it’s safe”.
While Lebanon is now home to the largest per capita concentration of refugees in the world, including around one million Syrians, it has serious economic problems, there’s been civil unrest over corruption and other issues since late last year and there are serious tensions around the presence of the refugee population.
Mohammad says he’s “heard about a few people who left the country alone because of the delay” in relocations to embark on a dangerous, arduous journey to seek safety elsewhere.
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Accountant Maher Al Shahadat says the scheme promised his wife and two children “a better life”. “The area we live in now is very bad and the government has no control,” he says. “My children can’t go out, they can’t play. It’s like living in a siege. My son has trauma from Syria – he has been especially affected by the explosion.
“Prices go up every day, there are no measures to stop people getting the virus. We are scared.”
After eight years in Lebanon, tiler Iman Hamdan is scared the family’s insecurity will cost her four children aged 11-20 opportunities.
Son Mohamad wants to study astrophysics at university, but all have dreams. “I would like the normal people in the UK to help to put pressure on the government to bring us there. My children are in a prison here, always at home because I had to stop them going out to stop people hitting them and kicking them. They need to carry on their lives."
Laura Padoan of the UNHCR says it is “a really sad and frustrating situation’’ for those refugees waiting to move. Resettlement is “complicated” due to the need for vetting, medicals, Covid-19 tests, and more, with disruption to flights and the suspension of some charter services making it harder for the governments responsible to arrange transfers.
“We are trying to get things moving,” she states, “but there are so many different pieces.”
The Home Office did not respond to Sunday National requests for information and comment.
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