Kirstyn Higgins |
From the vatican, to David Cameron: as the refugee crisis across Europe and the Middle East intensifies, the response from across the United Kingdom and the world has been mixed.
On Monday 7th September, David Cameron announced the role Britain will play in the refugee crisis, and for many people it has not come soon enough.
But almost immediately the government has faced backlash over what has been called “a pitifully small” response by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas.
Cameron has announced that Britain will accept 20,000 refugees over the next five years. This sounds like an impressive show of generosity and morality, but actually amounts to only 12 a day. To make matters worse, Cameron also announced that refugees who have not achieved asylum status will be deported once they turn 18.
Of course, there are those who argue that Britain should not accept any refugees at all. A cold hearted view perhaps, but in times of economic trouble here in the UK, it is not difficult to see where this view comes from.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are those who have actually offered to house refugees in their own home, in parallel to Pope Francis. On Sunday 6th September, the Holy Father announced that the Vatican would be housing two refugee families, and has urged every Catholic parish in Europe to do the same.
It could be argued that as kind-hearted and good-willed as this is, it is simply a naïve, fruitless attempt at solving a problem of such epic proportions. But then came the heart-breaking image that touched people around the world, of Aylan Kurdi, the 3 year old Syrian boy found drowned on a beach in Turkey, dead fleeing from a war he could not understand.
Efforts to help the refugees can be called futile or starry-eyed, but if the images of the little boy do not spark the realisation that something must be done, it is doubtful that anything will.
