Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
United Nations says the Syrian crisis is a humanitarian tragedy which has killed more than 100,000 people and driven about 6.5 million others from their home
The Federal Government last October announced it would resettle 500 Syrian refugees as part of its humanitarian refugee program. The places were to be quarantined for Syrians within the existing annual refugee intake, which is capped at 13,750.
The United Nations says the Syrian crisis is a humanitarian tragedy which has killed more than 100,000 people and driven about 6.5 million others from their home. More than 2 million refugees have fled Syria, many crossing the borders into Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, and the international refugee agency UNHCR has called for the pressure on Syria's neighbours to be eased.
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| Syrian Refugees |
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison says the commitment to resettle the refugees was made in response to the UNHCR request. He says the Government will work with the UNHCR to determine who gets the places, and that they will focus on highly vulnerable people in urgent need of protection.
US president Barack Obama's administration, meanwhile, has announced it has eased immigration rules to allow more of the millions of Syrians forced from their homes during the country's three-year civil war to come to the United States. Only 31 Syrian refugees - out of an estimated 2.3 million - were admitted in the fiscal year that ended in October, prompting demands for change from rights advocates and many lawmakers.
And Britain announced in January it would give temporary residence to hundreds of vulnerable Syrian refugees, targeting those most traumatised by the war.
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