BEIRUT — Prominent international aid groups called on the Obama administration Tuesday to accept more Syrian refugees than it has pledged and to take a stronger role in diplomatic efforts to end the country's devastating civil war.
Global attention has shifted again to the four-year-old conflict because of the unprecedented number of Syrians streaming into Europe. At the same time, the aid groups have been receiving increased donations, which the officials partly attributed to shock over a widely circulated image of a drowned Syrian refugee boy whose body washed up on a Turkish beach this month.
“We’re calling on the president and Congress to do more,” said Carolyn Miles, president of Save the Children. She said the United States should admit “tens of thousands” of Syrians.
Paul O’Brien, Oxfam America’s vice president for policy and campaigns, said the White House refugee proposal does not come “close to what the U.S. should be committing to.”
“This 10,000 is basically the number we could do in our sleep,” he said.
He compared that figure to the response from some European countries that have taken in far more Syrians. For instance, Germany, a country of more than 80 million people, has indicated it could admit 800,000 refugees, many of them from Syria.
The officials — from aid groups including Mercy Corps, Care USA and the Syrian Community Network — made the remarks during a conference call with journalists.
On Friday, State Department spokesman John Kirby defended the administration against criticism of its plan.
“This country, the United States, resettles more refugees from around the world by a factor of 40,000 than any other country in the world,” he said.
He also suggested that officials could decide to increase the number of Syrians allowed into the country. “There may be more decisions coming down the road,” he said.
Since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, the United States has taken in nearly 1,600 refugees from the war-torn country.
Humanitarian organizations regularly call on the United States and other countries to increase aid programs for displaced Syrians, including the more than 4 million refugees who reside largely in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
But the groups are rarely so vocal over political matters such as immigration policy and international diplomacy.
The officials said a U.S.-backed nuclear deal with Iran, reached in July after protracted negotiations, has created more goodwill to end a war that has killed 250,000 people and emboldened the Islamic State and other extremist groups.
Iran backs the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while the United States has backed moderate rebels and supports diplomacy aimed at eventually removing the Syrian leader from power. Previous diplomatic initiatives to resolve the conflict have failed in large part because of differences over Assad.
O’Brien, of Oxfam, said the Obama administration should “double down” on diplomatic efforts, saying the nuclear accord has created a “different world in the Middle East.”
The humanitarian officials said donations to their organizations have increased since the publication of photos of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian boy who drowned along with his brother and mother this month after their Greece-bound boat sank.
“We have definitely seen a change since the tragic photo of the little boy,” said Miles, the Save the Children president.
Since the beginning of September, she said, her organization has received $1 million from U.S. donors. From January through August, total donations reached only about $200,000, she said.
Carol Morello in Washington contributed to this report.
Read more:
