ANY QUOTES MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now more than four million Syrians have fled their country since civil war broke out in 2011.  Added to that, more than seven million people within Syria have had to leave their homes because of the fighting, they’ve been displaced.  It’s the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation.  Sir John Hunt is the former Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief at the United Nations, he is now the co-chairman of the International Rescue Committee UK and very good morning to you Sir John.  Just those numbers are spine-chilling and we hear of course that the pace is accelerating.  

SIR JOHN HOLMES: The numbers are truly appalling and I think we are not really taking the full measure of them because we have become too used to it. It is a dreadful crisis with dreadful human consequences for the refugees, for those still living in Syria and for the countries around it and to be honest, the international community is just not doing enough in any sense.  We need first of all to fix the problem, we need another major international initiative to get round the table to try and do something about the problem, otherwise it is simply going to get worse and worse and the numbers are going to accelerate.  Those people are no longer staying where they were in Lebanon or Jordan, which are suffering hugely from the influx, they are beginning to move to Europe and that’s why we see the crisis in the Mediterranean as well.

DM: And Turkey, in terms of numbers, bearing the brunt.  

SIR JOHN HOLMES: I think Turkey has something like one and a half million refugees but in Lebanon it is one third of the population are now either Syrians or Palestinians.  Jordan, 20% of the population are now Syrians.  This is putting enormous strain on countries which are fragile and not particularly economically strong to start with and I think one of the things we need to do apart from continuing to finance the immediate relief for the refugees, is to give more help to those countries to bear that burden because they are acting in a way as our collective security by looking after these people, we owe it to them to really step up to the plate more than we have done.  I am not blaming the UK particularly, the UK I think has been very generous in many ways, but the whole international community has to recognise the real seriousness of this situation and start to do more about it, otherwise we are going to pay the price here even more than we are already.

DM: And is part of that recognition also recognising the situation within Syria, that isn’t being solved any time soon, far from it and therefore one has to look at the numbers that have left Syria and those displaced within it, and make a view as to whether they are ever going to be able to go back.

SIR JOHN HOLMES: I think there is a huge question about whether Syria will ever be able to be put back together in the form it was before all this started and frankly I have my doubts about that but whatever the truth of that, what we need to do now, what the international community need to do, the Americans and the Russians and the British and the Turks and the Saudis and the Iranians, is actually get round a table without preconditions, to discuss how to bring this civil war in Syria to an end.  I don’t have a magic solution, I recognise all of the problems but I think if you can do it without preconditions, without for example insisting that Assad has to go first, maybe that will provide a way forward because if we simply wait for a military solution this is going to get worse, there may not be one for years if ever and meanwhile people are suffering and when people have been refugees for four or five years already, you’re losing a whole generation of children.  Most of those children are not at school in any shape or form, they are losing their education, they are losing their chance for the future, that’s why they are beginning to cross into Greece particularly.  This is a desperate situation which we are too complacent about.  

DM: So do you think the European Union as a whole then, the UK included, just in terms of numbers should take more Syrian refugees?   

SIR JOHN HOLMES: I think we should as a gesture of solidarity with those who are bearing the burden on the borders but this is not going to solve the problem.  There are far too many to come to Europe and you don’t want to simply move the problem wholesale here but if we are not prepared to take a decent number of those who are most vulnerable and suffer the most in the US and in the European Union and elsewhere, to show that we care, as a gesture of solidarity, than I think we have no credibility to talk to the countries around Syria and even to talk to the Syrians themselves, about what they should do next.  So I think we should take more, it doesn’t need to be a vast number but without doing that we really look as if we are uncaring and simply trying to keep the problem away from our borders, which we will not succeed in the end in doing.  

DM: Sir John, very interesting talking to you, thank you very much indeed. Sir John Holmes there, former Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief at the UN.