Despite UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s pointing that his country owes gratitude to Afghans who helped British personnel in Afghanistan, his government is only ready to accept 5,000 Afghan refugees this year, demanding other countries to share the burden.
British Home Secretary Priti Patel pointed in an op-ed about the new plan – the Afghan Citizens’ Resettlement Scheme – that the UK is ready to take up to 20,000over five years with 2.000 already resettled in the UK , but insists that London cannot do this alone and called on other nations to open their doors to refugees.
Pointing that UK’s international engagement is significant, Patel praised the latter scheme that has already proved controversial for some observers with journalist Otto English asking if Johnson will slam the door in the face of refugee 20,001.
According to the UN refugee agency, more than 550,000 Afghans had fled their homes to escape violence in the first eight months of 2021 alone while Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre points that the number of displaced Afghans overall has soared beyond 3.5 million.
According to the US and Canada’s own schemes for resettling Afghans that helped their troops during the 20-years long occupation, they plan to relocate around 20,000 people each without setting exact timeframe for that.
Germany, on the other hand, plans to evacuate up to 10,000 people apart the 1,900 that have already been resettled in Germany, but only managed to put seven Afghans on its first evacuation flight from Afghanistan.
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