UKIP’s Nigel Farage calls on UK to accept Syrian refugees

Syrian refugees at Domiz camp, Iraqi Kurdistan. Photograph by Jodi Hilton/IRIN

UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage has called on Western countries, including the UK, to be more accepting of refugees from Syria’s ongoing civil war.

Farage has been a leading voice in opposing open immigration from Romania and Bulgaria, but told BBC News that refugees from a bloody civil war were “very different” to economic migrants, saying:

“I think refugees are a very different thing to economic migration and I think this country should honour the 1951 declaration on refugee status that was agreed.

It was agreed with the UN and even through the European Court, which sadly has changed its role.

But the original ideas of defining what a refugee is were good ones and I think, actually, there is a responsibility on all of us in the free West to try and help some of those people fleeing Syria, literally in fear of their lives.”

Farage did not put a figure on the number of Syrian refugees the UK should accept from the estimated nine million currently displaced.

The UK government currently has no plans to accept Syrian refugees, claiming that it is better to offer financial aid.

Britain’s leaders have instead said that they would add to the £523 million it had already committed to helping Syrians in need, and urged other nations around the world to do the same. The money goes towards food, medical care, and relief items for those in need within Syria as well as those in refugee camps in neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq.

Amnesty International has accused European Union leaders of “failing miserably” to play their part and offer a safe haven to those escaping the bloody conflict in Syria. In September Sweden offered 8,000 Syrian refugees already in the country permanent residency, and the US, Germany, and France have pledged to accept a very limited number of refugees, but the UK continues to refuse to accept any at all.