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UN Refugee Chief Sees Creating Safe Zones for Refugees in Syria as a 'Challenge'

© AFP 2023 / DELIL SOULEIMANIraqi refugees, who fled due to the ongoing conflict between pro-government forces and Islamic State (IS) group jihadists, walk at a camp in the northeastern town of al-Hol in Syria's Hasakeh province on October 19, 2016
Iraqi refugees, who fled due to the ongoing conflict between pro-government forces and Islamic State (IS) group jihadists, walk at a camp in the northeastern town of al-Hol in Syria's Hasakeh province on October 19, 2016 - Sputnik International
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UN High Commissioner for Refugees said that establishing safe zones, providing sufficient security level for refugees, on Syria’s territory is a challenging task, while peace agreement is likely to create safety by ending continued fighting.

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MOSCOW (Sputnik) Establishing safe zones, providing sufficient security level for refugees, on Syria’s territory is a challenging task, while peace agreement is likely to create safety by ending continued fighting, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told Sputnik.

"I consider it a big challenge to create an area that has the sufficient level of security to say this is absolutely safe for people. I think it is better to concentrate on making this [peace] agreement. Because that is what creates the safety, when people stop fighting. I think it is the peace agreement that will create the safety," Grandi said, when asked about the possibility of establishing the safe zones.

Grandi added that he doubted whether it was possible to establish the safe zones in Syria in the light of continued fighting among various groups.

US President Donald Trump said on January 25 that he planned to create safe zones for civilians in Syria, aimed at guaranteeing that civilians in that area would not be targeted by any party in Syria's civil war. On Sunday, Trump reiterated that it was necessary to create safe zones in conflict-torn countries like Syria for the locals to live there safely instead of taking them into the United States. According to the UN data, over four million of Syrian people have fled their state to escape from the war since 2011.

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow was waiting for the United States to clarify its proposal on Syria's safe zones and added that this kind of initiatives should take into account the present situation on the ground.

All EU member states should take in their quota of migrants to help Greece, which is bearing the brunt of the migrant influx at the moment, UN High Commissioner for Refugees said.

"A quota system should be followed by all member states of the European Union. That is the only way to do it. As a principal [migrants] quotas should be really applied," Grand said.

The high commissioner added that Greece required support as it has had to accommodate an especially large number of migrants since several Balkan countries closed borders last year.

"We should not complicate life for Greece. We should make it easier," Grandi said.

The February 8 report of the European commission on the revocations from Greece showed that, by February 7 2016, 8,766 refugees out of pledged 15,329 had been successfully relocated, while the legally foreseen commitment determined by the EU authorities was 63,302 relocations. France took in the largest number of migrants from Greece, 2,445, while Germany came in second with 1,342 relocations and the Netherlands was a distant third with 939 successful relocations.

According to the International Organization for Migration, 156,364 migrants arrived in Greece by sea in the first six months of 2016, almost thrice the number of the arrivals in Italy in the same period and about four times the number of the arrivals in Greece in the same period in 2015.

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