Refugee Crisis Presents US, Russia Opportunity to Show Solidarity - NGO

© AFP 2023 / ARIS MESSINIS Syrian refugees and migrants along a railway line as they try to cross from Serbia into Hungary near Horgos on September 1, 2015
Syrian refugees and migrants along a railway line as they try to cross from Serbia into Hungary near Horgos on September 1, 2015 - Sputnik International
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Human Rights Watch Refugee Rights Program Director Bill Frelick claims that the United States, Russia and other nations should overcome geopolitical differences and unite to provide additional aid to Syrian refugees.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The United States, Russia and other nations should overcome geopolitical differences and unite to provide additional aid to Syrian refugees, Human Rights Watch Refugee Rights Program Director Bill Frelick told Sputnik.

"Refugee protection and assistance ought to be an occasion for humanitarian solidarity regardless of politics or the happenstance of geographic location," Frelick said on Tuesday. "Not only the United States, but also Russia, the Gulf States and others could do more."

On Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told journalists that the Syrian conflict is one of the root causes of Europe’s migrant crisis and can only be solved with help from the United States and Russia.

Directed by Hungarian police officers, migrants make their way through the countryside after they crossed the Hungarian-Croatian border near the village of Zakany in Hungary to continue their trip to north on September 21, 2015 - Sputnik International
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Merkel said on Monday that the United States could take more refugees from Syria, help to improve the living conditions in the refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey as well as work to eliminate the causes that prompt people to flee their home countries in the first place.

On Monday, the State Department announced the US government will donate $419 million in humanitarian aid to help refugees fleeing political unrest and violence in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries.

Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Sunday that the United States will take in an additional 10,000 refugees next year for a total of 85,000 in 2016 and will raise the total number to 100,000 in 2017.

More than 500,000 migrants, many from conflict-torn Syria, have come to the borders of the European Union or have entered the bloc in 2015, according to the European Commission.

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