The Australian Christian Lobby has renewed calls for the Australian Government to consider a “Kosovo-style response” to the growing refugee crisis in Iraq and Syria, saying that the response to date has been “inadequate”.
Lyle Shelton, the ACL’s managing director, said with the world facing the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II, it was time for the Australian Government to “consider a Kosovo-style response and provide temporary refuge to some of the millions of people who have fled the ISIL conflict”.
“Australia is a peaceful, prosperous, generous and humanitarian country…” he said. “While this problem is too large for any one country to solve, Australia ought to be playing its part in providing assistance to people affected by this conflict.”
In 1999, following the outbreak of war what was once a part of Yugoslavia leading to Western intervention, the then Howard Government provided temporary refuge for 4,000 Kosovo Albanians in response to conflict in Kosovo with the arrangement being made separately to Australia’s regular humanitarian and immigration programs. The majority of the Kosovar refugees later returned home.
Former Howard Government Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock and Labor Whip Chris Hayes have recommended such an approach be take last year following a visit to Jordanian refugee camps.
Antonio Guterres, head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR, said late last month that while almost four million Syrians had fled their country and were considered refugees, the total number of people displaced from their homes by the conflicts in Iraq and Syria was now almost 15 million.
The ACL will be hosting a symposium looking at policy solutions at the upcoming ALP national conference in July.
