Migrant crisis: Wealthy Gulf countries have accepted zero Syrian refugees so far

Those refugees has left their counties escaping the scourge of war that lasts for four years.

El Sadat highlighted that Such Fund shall be responsible for helping and supporting the Syrian refugees who are facing each and every day death.

Officials in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the UAE defend themselves by noting that each has given millions of dollars to the United Nations to help the refugees.

“Tragically, the cash-rich Gulf countries have not yet issued a statement on the crisis – much less come up with a strategy to help the migrants, who are overwhelmingly Muslim”, Qatar’s Gulf Times newspaper wrote in a recent editorial. He added that LAS must play a pivotal and tangible role in sorting a way out and remedy for the calamity the Syrians are suffering.

The richest Arab nations in the Gulf region aren’t taking in Syrian refugees, the largest population of migrants overwhelming neighboring Middle Eastern countries and flooding into Europe.

“The six Gulf countries-Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain-have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees”, Amnesty worldwide recently pointed out. Following the nuclear agreement’s signing, some Gulf Arab authorities have continued to accuse Tehran of arming and training Shi’ite militants to destabilize the GCC states, which will naturally limit the extent to which such monarchs are likely to accept Iran as a trusted partner on security fronts. Nevertheless, he said the Middle East needed to do more. Saudi Arabia, like several other Gulf States, is not a signatory to the United Nations refugee convention, so these displaced people are not officially designated as refugees.

Lebanon has accepted more than 1.1 million Syrians, the most of any Arab state (Turkey has accepted approximately two million).

The Gulf states are the most stable nations in the region, he explained, and getting too involved could risk that.

Most are marching toward Germany, exhausted, where they’re being welcomed with open arms.

“There is no law guaranteeing her a visa even if her family lives there”, Abu Omar said. There are now visa restrictions in place for new arrivals and renewing residency has been made more hard for those already in Lebanon. How can such objections, many of which are wholly legitimate, be taken seriously when it appears humanitarianism is only a priority when politicized? For a Syrian to enter these countries, they would have to apply for a visa, which, in the current circumstances, is rarely granted, according to the Washington Post.

The Syrian civil war began in 2011 at the fever pitch of the Arab Spring revolutions that deposed dictators in Egypt and Libya, amid optimism that the people could, if they mobilized, win previously unheard-of freedoms. Even India and Indonesia, though far from the Middle East and Mediterranean, could pitch in on the principle of already boasting some of the largest Muslim populations in the world. It is better and cheaper for the Syrians to go to the Gulf, and that would change their status from refugees to expatriates, and we will solve this problem.

“The Gulf must realize that now is the time to change their policy regarding accepting refugees from the Syria crisis”, writes the columnist Qassemi.

Others felt Gulf states should go further.

In a very twisted way, refugees in the Gulf states may have more rights than its citizens. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, women are not allowed to drive cars. He said, “Everyone should be doing more”, including the UAE and the Gulf states. With the exception of Turkey, these are poor countries, and their economies and social welfare systems can not stand the strain. Inextricable from this Gulfanization is the support, tacit or explicit, given by these Gulf regimes for radical groups who are contributing to destabilising the region, promoting radicalism, and fuelling conflict.