The former foreign secretary David Miliband has called for 1 million Syrian refugees in the countries bordering their homeland to be given work permits, saying it is a “fiction” to suggest the Syrian war will end soon.
Speaking before a London conference on Syria hosted by David Cameron and Germany’s Angela Merkel, Miliband urged the international community to lift the “legal and financial barriers” that prevent refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey from working.
As the first full day of formal peace talks got under way in Geneva, Miliband, now director of the New York-based International Rescue Committee, said: “Life is getting harder and harder for Syrian refugees. Five years into the crisis, their savings are exhausted, they are struggling to get aid, and they are increasingly unable to support themselves and their families.
“We must do everything we can to lift the legal and financial barriers that prevent Syrian refugees from working. Syrian refugees deserve not just a life but a life worth living.”
Proposing 200,000 work permits in both Lebanon and Jordan as well as 600,000 in Turkey, he added: “The conference has to end the fiction that the Syrian civil war is going to end any time soon.”
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