Out of balance

The Middle East refugee crisis won’t be slowing anytime soon, judging by the ongoing horror of Syria’s civil war and its civilian toll.

In late September, government and Russian forces targeted civilians in the city of Aleppo with continued bombardments. The airstrikes, including what activists claimed were devastating “bunker buster” bombs, prompted American, British, and French delegates at a UN Security Council emergency session to walk out on Sept. 25—accusing Vladimir Putin’s regime of “war crimes” in Syria.

Such high-stakes UN wrangling isn’t alleviating civilian distress on the ground, or the problem of rising refugee numbers: According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 4.8 million Syrians have fled their country and registered as refugees.

The stream of humanity provokes policy debates for nations taking in these families. In the United States, the fallout from the Syrian conflict prompted President Barack Obama to increase the U.S. quota for refugees from the country to 10,000 in fiscal year 2016, up from about 2,000 for all previous war years (2011-2015) combined. He has indicated the quota could double to approximately 20,000 in 2017.

Opponents of the president’s policy question taking in more, given the rise in terror threats in Europe and the United States, and particularly when the numbers of refugees received this year suggest the Obama administration heavily favors Muslims over the Middle East’s non-Muslim minorities. Many ask, why not offer shelter to more fleeing Christians?

While Christians make up about 10 percent of the population in Syria, they constitute less than half of 1 percent of the refugees admitted to the United States so far this year.

Here’s the latest breakdown, from numbers available with just weeks left in a fiscal year ending Oct. 1:

According to Catholic News Service, the Christians include 14 Catholics, six Syriac Orthodox, four Protestants, one Greek Orthodox, and 29 identified simply as “Christian.”

Only 20 Shiite Muslims and 17 Yazidis are among the refugee arrivals for the year, even though the State Department in March declared ISIS to be committing genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and Shiites in Iraq and Syria.

Given the targeting of Christians in both Syria and Iraq, critics expected the United States to take in more from those groups. In fact, State Department resettlement of Iraqi refugees looks far different: Nearly 40 percent of Iraqi refugees admitted to the United States since 2007 are non-Muslims. While Christians represent perhaps 2 to 3 percent of Iraq’s population, they represent 37.5 percent of Iraqi refugees resettled in the United States.

In the case of Syrian refugees, the United States currently relies almost entirely on referrals from UNHCR. The UN agency registers refugees for resettlement purposes primarily in UN camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt, camps with populations that are almost entirely Muslim. Overall, Syrian Christians avoid such camps, fearing the persecution they already have faced will continue there via infiltration by ISIS, criminal gangs, and sex trafficking rings.

“It’s grossly negligent,” said Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. “The State Department after declaring genocide for Christians and Yazidis has outsourced its policymaking on victims of genocide to UNHCR.”

Beset by overcrowding and lack of security, the camps themselves “are scandalous,” Shea said. Relying on refugee selection based primarily in the camps is, not surprisingly, yielding problematic results.

A State Department spokesperson, who responded to my questions on condition she not be named, said, “Christians account for only slightly more than 1 percent of the approximately 2 million Syrian refugees in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon who are registered with UNHCR.” She confirmed what officials with UNHCR in Washington also told me: Christians are not applying for refugee status in the numbers they expected—perhaps out of fear of being identified as Christians, perhaps out of a desire to remain in or close to their homeland. Reports persist, say Shea and others, that local UN officers are discriminating against Christians, failing to complete the registration process with required follow-on interviews and background checks.

In February, the State Department launched a new resettlement program for Syrians with family already in the United States. “While no one has yet arrived via this new program, early indications are [it] will benefit a higher percentage of Syrian Christians,” said the spokesperson.

Resettlement officers also say they face local opposition to registering Christians: Church and political leaders don’t want to lose the region’s Christian population. At the UN General Assembly session in September, Assyrian and Chaldean church officials pleaded for international protection to allow them to stay and preserve ancient Christian populations within Iraq and Syria. But as long as government bombardments and ISIS-led atrocities continue in Aleppo and elsewhere, Christians will have little choice but to flee.