(Eqtsad)- “I was born in Syria, I have a Syrian identity document, and when I arrived in Egypt, I was not treated like a refuge or Syrian citizen neither by UNHCR nor by the Egyptian authorities.”
These are the words of more than 5,000 Syrian Palestinians living in Egypt who were displaced from Syria since 2011 and to date without any solutions on the horizon to legalize their status by UNHCR or UNRWA or the Palestinian and Syrian embassies in Egypt.
We begin to explain the suffering of our Syrian Palestinian people starting with the UNHCR, which refuses to register them as asylum seekers like the Syrians living in Egypt.
This means that they are deprived of all the services provided by UNHCR including the right to protection, food aid, medicine, Resettlement or work despite being refugees for the second time. UNHCR's argument is that the Palestinians are not in its sphere of work as they are affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
UNRWA was formed after Nakba in 1948, by Resolution No. 302 adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 8 December 1949 in order to provide direct relief programs and operation of the Palestine refugees.
The UNRWA started operations on May 1, 1950 and providing services to some five million refugees from Palestine in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The scope of its work does not extend to the Arab Republic of Egypt except through an administrative office of two or more employees, and does not offer any services to those residing in Egypt. The service provided is offered to limited number of Syrian Palestinian families.
Hundreds of Syrian Palestinian families are living in dire humanitarian conditions and suffer greatly in enrolling their children in schools and obtaining annual or tourist residence, which is often rejected or delayed. They may be lucky to obtain the residency after months of processing the immigration and passport requirements. Even in this case, Palestinian Syrians are not treated like Syrians in terms of residency fees. The residency fees for the Syrian Palestinian are about 500 pounds per person, whereas Syrians are charged around 50 pounds.
It is the same regarding the fines resulting from being late in residency application. In the new residence law in Egypt, the Syrians are charged with a fine of 153 pounds, while the Palestinian Syrian are charged with 1050 Egyptian pounds and for every 3 months after, 500 Egyptian pounds .
The Palestinian Embassy in Cairo does not provide them with any services other than granting them a Palestinian passport issued by the Palestinian Authority, but in practice does not offer them any benefits or facilities even for residency.
The Syrian Embassy in Cairo also does not provide them with any services other than renewing travel documents issued by the Syrian Arab Republic.
The Syrian Palestinians in Egypt do not have any group representing them or organizing them or talking about their problems, concerns and legitimate demands. They are already forgotten refugees with no voice and no rights.
The biggest problem is that the Syrian Palestinians who enter illegally through Sudan have no legal means of legitimizing their status through UNHCR, like the Syrians, who enter illegally, making their stay illegal and unregulated, so they will not be able to enroll their children in school or Egyptian universities, and even if they wish to leave Egypt, they have no way to return to Syria.
In case they entered Egypt for the purpose of family reunification interviews in the European embassies in Cairo. They can only wait for a review of the editorial complex on the legal entry window for administrative and security approvals and the process may drag on for months to issue them a legal entry stamp and temporary residence for a week assigned to leave Egypt after.
Therefore, if you are a Syrian Palestinian, do not enter illegally to Egypt because there is no way to legitimize your status and stay for the purpose of residence in Egypt.
There is no doubt that Syrians have suffered a great deal in their refuge and displacement from Syria, but the suffering of the Syrian Palestinians is doubling, where no one represents their interests, defends them, protects them, or provides them with any services that even the European countries do not take them into consideration regarding asylum quotas to put pressure on UNRWA and UNHCR to assume their responsibilities towards them and to communicate with the Egyptian authorities to find legal solutions and exits to ensure their basic rights to residency, education, housing, work, Medicine and resettlement programs as refugees for the second time, and suffered as the Syrians suffered from the scourge of killing, shelling, displacement and the destruction of their homes and homes. They are the forgotten refugees. ( Reporting by Firas Haj Yahya)
Eqtsad
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