https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/n...ia-refugee-crisis-international-resettlement/
By December 2014
The six Gulf countries - Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain - have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees
Germany has pledged 30,000 places for Syrian refugees through its humanitarian admission programme; nearly half the global total of resettlement and humanitarian admission programme places for Syrian refugees and 82 per cent of the EU total.Germany and Sweden together have received 96,500 new Syrian asylum applications in the last three years, representing 64 per cent of all such applications in the EU.Excluding Germany and Sweden, the remaining 26 EU countries have pledged a mere 5,105 resettlement places, or 0.13 per cent of Syrian refugees in the main host countries.
In Europe, too, Internet users are calling out the Gulf states. A Facebook community of Syrians in Denmark recently demanded, "How did we flee from the region of our Muslim brethren, which should take more responsibility for us than a country they describe as infidels?"
The vast majority of the 4 million or so people who have fled conflict and hardship in Syria have gone to neighboring Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon, where they live in crowded refugee camps.
Thousands have sought to go on to Europe, particularly this year, as the four-year-old Syrian war shows no sign of winding down. They are attracted to Europe by the opportunity to apply for asylum or refugee status and, if accepted, to get jobs and begin rebuilding their lives.
But if social media are bristling over the fact the rich Arab Gulf states do not offer the same welcome, there seems little likelihood the situation will change. The reason is the Gulf Arab states' aversion to granting refugee status, not just to Syrians but to anybody.
"There are some Syrians who have found refuge in the Gulf, especially in Qatar, but they would all generally be on some kind of temporary visas," says Jane Kinninmont, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House in London. "The Gulf countries are not signatories to the international conventions on refugee rights that Western countries and indeed most world countries have signed up to."
She says their position appears to be motivated by the presence of so many migrant workers in the Gulf states, including from countries like Pakistan, where there is political unrest and repression.
"Their concern would be that if they started recognizing political asylum it could potentially open the doors for a multitude of their temporary workers to stay permanently and that would raise a lot of quite complex issues."
The number of migrant workers exceeds the native population in every Gulf country except Saudi Arabia and Oman. In all of the Gulf countries, the vast majority of the workforce is foreign, ranging from 88.5 percent in Oman to 99.5 percent in the United Arab Emirates.
source:businessinsider.com