The British public underestimates the number of refugees fleeing Syria by 4.5 million people, a report has found.
Nearly 5 million Syrians have been displaced by the civil war, yet Britons believe the figure to be closer to 300,000, the study says – 16 times fewer than official figures suggest.
The report also found the public believed the UK had accepted 10,000 Syrian refugees – twice as many as the latest official number of 5,000. The government has pledged to accept 20,000 Syrians by 2020.
The humanitarian index compared six nations that have accepted refugees, revealing a huge public underestimation of the scale of the crisis and an exaggerated perception of their own governments’ response.
The US, UK, Germany, France, Iran and Lebanon were surveyed in the report, carried out by the Edelman group, a communications firm, as campaigners and charities meet this weekend at a humanitarian conference in Armenia.
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the conflict has prompted 4.8 million Syrians to flee their homes since 2011.
The survey, which claims to be the first of its kind to attempt to compare international opinion, conducted online interviews with 4,800 people from six nations, including 1,000 British adults representative of the general population in terms of age and gender.
Across the surveyed countries, the refugee crisis was seen as a more pressing issue than hunger, water and climate change. Half the people questioned said they thought the Syrian people had been abandoned by the international community.
The study also found Britons have more faith in Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and the US president Barack Obama to address the crisis than in their own prime minister. Just 39% of those surveyed in the UK said David Cameron was the most capable world leader to deal with the situation.
Moreover, despite the continued uncertainty surrounding the future of the EU, almost half of Britons back it to take the lead on dealing with the crisis.
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