An appeal to the Interior Minister: Help the refugees from Syria – facilitate family reunions!

On the occasion of the Interior Minister Conference which will take place in Osnabrück from December 4 to 6 – the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) sent an appeal to the politicians on Wednesday, asking them to facilitate family reunions for Syrian refugees in Germany to alleviate the situation of their relatives in the civil war zone. "Almost every day we receive requests for help or advice from Syrians and also German citizens who would like to bring their threatened or fleeing relatives here to keep them safe," says the human rights organization's letter to the ministers and senators." The German authorities need to be much more generous and less bureaucratic in order to transfer the people to Germany, especially the children, women and elderly people. "The Foreign Office should provide for more staff in the German diplomatic missions in Ankara, Beirut, Amman and other cities of the neighboring countries to Syria in order to process applications for family reunification more quickly.

Syrian citizens who are recognized as refugees in Germany already have the right to bring their families too. However, the procedure tends to become lengthy and complicated. Thus, the family members have to submit numerous documents to prove that they are related: a marriage certificate, a certificate to prove the registration of the marriage in the Syrian civil registers, a family book, birth certificates and other documents. Many of the war refugees are hardly able to provide all the required documents in a short period of time. In addition, the German embassies demand the documents to be confirmed authentic by the Syrian Foreign Ministry. "However, this legalization process has its dangers and problematic issues," says the STP's Middle East consultant, Kamal Sido. "Sometimes, the applicants are even asked to travel to Damascus for a personal meeting – meaning that they put themselves in danger, as the surrounding region of Syria's capital city and several other parts of the country are embattled. Also, the applicants are forced to apply to a government administration that pursues them. This is unacceptable!"

During the last weeks and months, the STP had repeatedly demanded that Germany should take up a quota of at least 50,000 refugees from Syria. The capacities in the neighboring countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraqi Kurdistan are exhausted with the two to three million refugees who sought shelter there. It is past time that Germany and the rest of Europe show more committment for the displaced people.