Head of the Finnish Refugee Council Anu Lehtinen said she is concerned about government’s plan to reduce the number of quota refuges accepted into Finland from the current 1,050 to 750.
Last year Jyrki Katainen’s administration agreed to increase the cap on refugees by 300 because of the humanitarian crisis arising from the civil conflict in Syria. However Yle understands that the new government wants to scale back that number in a bid to appear to comply with EU requests to place transfer refugees.
“Finland should not make decisions to adjust the current refugee quota to receive refugees coming from the EU. The global situation is very difficult in terms of the increasing number of asylum seekers so taking on additional responsibility should be in addition to the existing quota,” Lehtinen said.
The NGO wants Finland to accept an additional 100 refugees from the EU on top of the current refugee cap of 1,050 individuals. Lehtinen said that if Finland now decided to renege on last year’s decision to increase the refugee intake as a result of the situation in Syria it will impact on many lives.
“This means that people who have been waiting to get to safety will be left to linger even longer in refugee camps. The quota refugee system in Finland has received people fleeing from long-running crises and has focused on those who are in the most vulnerable situations,” she pointed out.
The UN Refugee Agency recently reported a rapid growth in the number of refugees fleeing their homes. Last year the number of refugees worldwide reached 60 million, some eight million more than the previous year, 2013.
“In the EU countries we have more resources and opportunities to shoulder that responsibility. If we look at the situation in Finland, we see that we are still talking about a small number of the global total,” Lehtinen noted.