The UK government’s newly reopened refugee resettlement scheme for Palestinians will only refer a very small number of urgent cases, all processed in Jordan and Lebanon, according to the organisation administering the programme.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the reopening of the resettlement scheme at Labour’s annual conference last month, stating that around one in four referrals would be for Afghan women and girls and Palestinian refugees fleeing war and persecution.
However, the International Refugee Assistance Project (Irap), which is tasked with making referrals, has confirmed it will only refer extremely urgent humanitarian cases from Jordan and Lebanon, contradicting public expectations that people in Gaza could also apply.
Communities for Palestinians (CFP), an umbrella alliance, said this crucial detail was absent from Mahmood’s speech and subsequent Home Office statements, leading people in Gaza and their supporters to believe they could also be eligible for the scheme.
Vicky Moller, co-founder of CFP, stated: “The applause at Shabana’s announcement at conference was at the prospect of a resettlement scheme for Palestinians fleeing war and persecution. People understood that would mean rescuing people from Gaza.”
The Home Office has defended the scheme, explaining that the UK resettlement programme has always been for people from outside their country of origin. A Home Office spokesperson said individuals must be outside their country of origin to qualify for refugee status under international frameworks.
“Palestinians who remain in Gaza would not initially be in scope for these routes. However, Palestinians who have fled Gaza could be referred to the UK through the International Refugee Assistance Project [Irap].”
Irap’s website states it will refer “a very small number of extremely urgent humanitarian cases to the UK for consideration for resettlement”, with cases referred by humanitarian organisations in Jordan and Lebanon before Irap conducts interviews to determine eligibility.
The programme focuses on extremely vulnerable refugees whose lives have become unsustainable in Jordan or Lebanon. Irap noted it does not know how many people the UK government will accept, as this depends on funding and local authority capacity.
Other UK safe and legal routes have previously allowed small numbers to enter from their country of origin, including schemes for Afghan refugees. Palestinian refugees fall outside the remit of the refugee convention and UNHCR, as UNRWA was specifically created to serve those displaced by the 1948 conflict.
Jon Featonby, chief policy analyst at the Refugee Council, argued that ministers should recognise the particular circumstances of Palestinian refugees, who may be displaced while living in their own country.
“The government is right to commit to safe and legal routes. They provide a vital way for refugees to reach safety without having to put their lives in the hands of smuggling gangs,” he said. “But the warm words have to be accompanied by ambition, and that means supporting people in the thousands, not the hundreds. They must also recognise the particular circumstances of Palestinian refugees and be accessible to them no matter where they are in the world.”
Dr Peter Walsh, senior researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, noted that resettlement programmes are typically designed for people who have already left their country. He explained that the Syrian scheme operated similarly, with around 20,000 people resettled to the UK between 2014 and 2021 all coming from countries around Syria.
“Bringing people directly out of Gaza would be a different kind of programme, closer to an emergency evacuation,” he said. “And crucially, such an emergency evacuation in Gaza would depend on Israel and Egypt letting people leave and on the Home Office finding a way to do security and biometric checks with no visa centre in Gaza.”
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