No Christians at all among 1,112 Syrian refugees resettled in the UK this year

Jul 5, 2018 by

from Barnabas Fund:

In response to a Freedom of Information request from Barnabas Fund, the UK Home Office have just released figures on Syrian refugees resettled in the UK for the first quarter of this year (1 January–31 March 2018). Appalling as previous figures were, these are much worse.

The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) recommended 1,358 Syrian refugees for resettlement in the UK of which only 4 were Christians, representing a tiny fraction of just 0.29%. No Yazidis at all were recommended by the UN.

The Home Office agreed to resettle 1,112 of these (82%), all of whom were Muslims, and refused all recommendations of Christians.

As Barnabas Fund recently reported, of the 7,060 Syrian refugees the UNHCR recommended to the UK in 2017 only 25 were Christians (0.35%). However, the Home Office only accepted 11 of these – meaning that Christians made up only 0.23% of Syrian refugees resettled in the UK last year.

For the last 18 months, Barnabas Fund has had to go to considerable lengths to obtain these figures in the face of what appeared to be a sustained attempt by Home Office officials to avoid their release. After prolonged delays, we finally had to take the extreme step of obtaining an order from the Information Commissioner’s Office threatening the Home Office with contempt of court proceedings in the High Court. Even subsequent to this action, the figures were only released just before the deadline, when we insisted that the immigration minister personally order their disclosure.

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