'We have filled our text-books and streets with cultural references of the sacrifice of refugees'

Fishing people out of the Mediterranean will draw the cameras and tell a story. The real problem is elsewhere. The Med accounts for only a fraction of the global refugee crisis.

The wider issue is the inability to solve protracted crises like those in the Middle East and in the horn of Africa. Our international system is arranged so that this function sits with the UN Security Council. However, the Council is no longer fit for purpose. It would be a pity if it was just a waste of money but it is a tragedy because the Security Council’s ineffectiveness is actually contributing to the sum of human suffering.

For example, the Resolution on the use of chemical weapons in Syria (UNSCR 2209) carried all sorts of blood curdling warnings. It has been breached and the response has been the definition of irresolution.

Reforming the UN Security Council will not happen so all we can do is consider how to make life more tolerable for those who are refugees.

We have filled our text-books and our streets with cultural references and veneration of the sacrifices of refugees. “Send these the homeless, the temptest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door”, wrote Emma Lazarus in a poem that appears on a plaque on the Statue of Liberty. Down by the Custom House, you can find Rowan Gillespie’s beautiful bronze statues of famine victims heading towards the sea.

WH Auden’s poem “Refugee Blues” references the mentality that more refugees will mean less for everyone else.

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;

"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":

He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

I have met all types of refugees; the young college-educated Syrians taking to the Mediterranean in fear of persecution and death; the dazed and wandering families fleeing war in rural South Sudan; the families eking out a living in sprawling refugee camps on the Somali border.

It is a reasonably well-known fact that there are more refugees now than at any time since the second World War.

But as the arc of history bends once more towards great numbers of displaced, the scene is not so sanguine. Countries fight to avoid taking in too many. Barriers are erected at every turn and excuses made.

And people do say that refugees are coming here for a better life as if that is some kind of grievous sin. Some say that we have our own problems and charity begins at home but should it end at home?

I asked the young Syrians I met on the Turkish border a couple of weeks back: “Why are your friends taking these risks on the Mediterranean?” Their words were matter of fact; more resignation than acceptance, providing for me a clear picture that illuminated a world of fear.

The fear of being kicked out of Turkey and back to Syria; the fear of conscription or arrest; the fear of trying to get legitimate travel documents. And that’s not to mention the fear of death or injury as a result of a government tactic of targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure.

As one said to me, “Fifty per cent chance of death on boats, one hundred per cent chance in Syria”.

Barry Andrews is CEO of GOAL. GOAL cares for hundreds of thousands of refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) every year. Currently, we are providing support such as healthcare; water, sanitation and hygiene; food and non-food items, and shelter assistance for refugee and IDP families in Syria, Turkey, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Haiti and The Philippines. For further information, or to donate, please visit www.goalglobal.org.