Nadia Cavner is a long-time philanthropist and activist. A member of the Assyrian Church of the East, an Eastern Christian organization traditionally centered in Iraq and Syria, Nadia Cavner has a focus on the plight of Syrian refugees fleeing the regime of Bashar Assad, president of Syria.
With Russia staging new attacks in support of Assad in Idlib province on Turkey’s southern border, a former de facto “safe zone” has vanished and millions of refugees are at imminent risk. A recent Brookings Institution article recently proposed one plausible solution to this crisis, which has caused 500,000 deaths since 2011.
With approximately 3.6 million refugees already in Turkey and another 3 million in Idlib, traditional solutions such as resettlement and dignified voluntary return appear unfeasible at present.
The practical proposal is that the European Union could provide Turkey with trade concessions linked to programs in Turkey to formally employ Syrians now considered refugees. The rationale is that Turkey should be repaid for its efforts to host refugees through better EU market access for its exports.
This approach to refugee self-reliance already has had significant institutional support for several years. After the 2015 European migration crisis, it was endorsed at events such as the 2016 London Conference, the U.N. Summit on Refugees and Migrants, and at the 2018 U.N. Global Compact on Refugees.
~Nadia Cavner
www.nadiatcavner.com
Leave a Reply