Revamping the international refugee law in light of syrian crisis & legal reactions in european union

Abstract

The Syrian Crisis has been defined as the “Worst humanitarian disaster since end of the cold war”1. As a result of the civil war which broke out in Syria in the year 2011 as a result of the Arab Spring protests against the president Bashar-al-Assad’s government, millions of people have left Syria in order to protect their life and the lives of their family from the bloodbath which is continuing in Syria. The neighboring nations like Lebanon, Turkey etc. have accommodated thousands of asylum seekers and provide them assistance in every way possible. These host nations have spent billions in order to provide livelihood to the victims of Syrian crisis and provided them with employment opportunities, shelter, food supplies, education for children etc. which has not been easy for them. These host countries seek financial assistance from other countries of the world with the help of United Nations (UN) coming into picture. Several steps have been taken up by these host countries and agencies of UN like United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in order to seek aid from other countries, but all the prayers have gone vague as most of the countries in the world are reluctant enough not to provide any type of assistance neither to these host nations nor to the refugees. The European Union (EU) under its ambit has legal frameworks like the EU Directive of 2001, which talks about how asylum and assistance needs to be provided to those in immediate need by the European countries, but still the EU has not lend hand in order to tackle the problem of Syrian refugee crisis. It can be easily seen that there exists no proper legal framework in respect of the International Refugee Law and the current domestic/ international legal policies are not competent enough to deal with the prevailing problems. The conventions being entered into by states have proved to be a failure as no assistance has been provided to the asylum seekers of any kind. There is a need to update the existing laws and remove the outdated ones so as to provide assistance to all the asylum seekers without any hurdle in its way. The whole concept of humanity depends on how one helps those in need, and as seen in the current scenario the existence of humanity is fading day by day.