OTTAWA—The Trudeau government is poised to announce today that Canada has given safe haven to almost 400 Yazidi refugees and other survivors of Islamist extremists in the last four months and will take in about 800 more by the end of the year.
The initiative is expected to cost $28 million, according to details obtained by The Canadian Press.
In addition to 1,200 government-assisted refugees, the government says it also intends to facilitate private sponsorships of Yazidi refugees.
The announcement comes four months after the House of Commons unanimously supported a Conservative motion that called on the government to provide asylum to an unspecified number of Yazidi women and girls.
The motion recognized Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is committing genocide against the Yazidi people and holding many of the religious group’s women and girls as sex slaves.
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Although the motion referred only to providing asylum to Yazidi women and girls, the 1,200 refugees will include male family members.
In speaking notes prepared for the announcement, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen says the government has learned that Daesh also deliberately targets young boys “and, as such, helping to resettle all child survivors of Daesh is vital to this work.”
He also contends that keeping families together will help the refugees adjust to living in Canada and heal from the trauma they’ve suffered.
Although the motion referred strictly to the Yazidi people, the government is not confining its efforts solely to members of that religious group, who live primarily in northern Iraq.
Hussen says Canada has long offered protection to refugees based on “vulnerability, not religion or ethnicity” and will thus focus on “highly vulnerable” survivors of Daesh. Still, he says a “significant majority” of the 1,200 will be Yazidi due to the “high level of violence” they’ve suffered.
While the Conservative motion did not specify the number of Yazidi refugees who should be given protection, Hussen appears to anticipate opposition criticism that the government is not doing enough.
The Yazidi people are “an integral part” of Iraq’s society and it’s important to preserve that, he argues, adding that’s why the government is focusing on “a small number of people for whom resettlement is the best option.”
Moreover, Hussen says the government is taking lessons from Germany — which resettled just more than 1,000 Daesh survivors from northern Iraq over the course of a year — on how to work safely in a volatile environment to identify and run security checks on refugees and how best to ensure that the necessary settlement services are in place once they arrive in Canada.
“As many have experienced unimaginable trauma, both physical and emotional, many will have unique psychological and social needs such as trauma counselling,” Hussen says in the speaking notes.
The government says its plan is supported by authorities in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and that it has the consent of the Iraqi government to operate in the region.
While the majority of the 1,200 refugees will come from Iraq, the government says some will also be accepted from Lebanon and Turkey.
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