(CNN)The
expanding Syrian refugee crisis highlights the differences among
countries that welcome desperate migrants and those that don't.
Some
4.1 million Syrians are fleeing a homeland riven by more than four
years of civil war. Some countries have taken in so many migrants it's
caused a population spike, while others have done little or nothing at
all.
Here's a country-by-country look
at what is being done to address the worst refugee crisis since the
Rwandan genocide more than 20 years ago, according to experts.
Which countries take in the Syrian refugees?
Turkey: 1.9 million
Remarkably, this country now shelters almost half of the Syrian refugees and clearly has more than it can handle.
It's the No. 1 destination for displaced families.
Erdogan: 'Western world to be blamed' for migrant crisis 03:12
Geography explains much of it: Turkey and Syria share a border.
The masses are so vast that 14% of them are sheltered in camps, U.S. figures show.
A staggering share of them are children and teens: More than half are under age 17, according to U.N. figures.
Lebanon: 1.1 million
The influx is so profound in Lebanon that the 1.1 million Syrian refugees mark a 25% increase in the country's 4.4 million population.
Those
figures make Lebanon the country with the highest per capita
concentration of refugees, the United Nations says. It also shares a
border with Syria.
"The
influx of a million refugees would be massive in any country. For
Lebanon, a small nation beset by internal difficulties, the impact is
staggering," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said
last year.
Jordan: 629,000
Jordan
provides shelter to a large number of refugees from Syria, Iraq,
Somalia and Sudan, but Syrians constitute the majority of Jordan's
refugee population, the United Nations says.
Putin, Erdogan blame West for Syrian Crisis 04:42
Jordan has a history of taking in refugees. Nearly half of its 7 million population is of Palestinian origin.
The
Syrian arrivals, however, strain resources and "could have a negative
impact on Jordanian public opinion of refugees and make preserving the
country's asylum space in the country challenging," the United Nations says.
About 20% of the Syrian arrivals live in camps.
Iraq: 249,000
Like
Syria, Iraq has been torn by attacks launched by ISIS, the extremist
Islamist group that has captured portions of both countries for what it
calls its Islamic caliphate.
Not
surprisingly, most of the Syrian refugees have settled in northern areas
such as Irbil, Duhuk and Nineveh, which are among the closest to the
Syrian border and have large Kurdish populations, the United Nations says.
The
notion of Syrian refugees in Iraq may strike some as ironic, if not
absurd, because Iraq has deteriorated under sectarian strife and ISIS
assaults, producing a sizable population of Iraqi refugees.
24 photos: Destination unknown: The struggle of refugees at Keleti station
"As
Syria's civil war has dragged on, the direction of forced migration for
many Iraqi refugees has reversed. Tens of thousands of Iraqis who
sought refuge in Syria between 2003 and 2011 have returned home, joining
about a million Iraqis who were already internally displaced," Refugees International said.
About 38% of the Syrian refugees live in camps in Iraq, the U.S. State Department says.
Egypt: 132,000
Egypt rounds out this look at how the Mideast hosts most of the Syrian refugees.
No refugees live in camps there.
In
fact, Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, one of the region's
wealthiest men, has offered to buy an island for refugees. He would like
to buy an isle from Greece or Italy. His name for the proposed island
home: Hope.
Which countries are getting Syrian asylum requests?
Germany: 98,700
As Germany faces the largest share of Syrian requests for asylum in Europe, Chancellor Angela Merkel called for quotas to be set for each country to take a share of displaced people, including from Syria.
Germany expects the overall asylum requests to soar above the current U.N. count of 98,700 from Syrians alone.
A Syrian family arrives at a train station in Saalfeld, Germany.
There
could be 800,000 applications for asylum in Germany this year, and the
country could take 500,000 refugees annually for several years, Vice
Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has said.
Sweden: 64,700
Sweden
joins Germany in demonstrating a high standard of responsibility in the
refugee crisis, and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven joined Merkel
at a press conference this week in urging a Europe-wide solution for hosting refugees.
In the 1990s, Sweden accepted 84,000 refugees from the Balkans.
"We
accept that every person has a right to seek asylum," Swedish Foreign
Affairs Minister Margot Wallstrom said. "This also puts the European
solidarity to a test. I think it's important that we signal being a
community that rests on common values of democracy and defense of human
rights."
France: 6,700
The number of asylum requests has been relatively low.
But
they will surely increase now that French President François Hollande
has said France is ready to take on more responsibility and host 24,000
refugees over the next two years.
The
French leader said this number would be France's share under a proposal
by the European Commission for EU nations to take in 120,000 refugees
over the next two years.
"We will do so because it is the principle to which France is committed," Hollande said.
United Kingdom: 7,000
The
United Kingdom will likely see an upswing in asylum requests now that
it has said it will take up to 20,000 Syrian refugees over the next five
years.
British PM says UK will resettle 20,000 new refugees 02:47
But
Britain will focus on resettling vulnerable refugees from camps in
countries bordering Syria, not those who have already entered Europe,
Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday.
"This
provides refugees with a more direct and safe route to the United
Kingdom rather than risking the hazardous journey to Europe, which has
tragically cost so many lives," he said.
The
refugees will receive a five-year humanitarian protection visa, Cameron
said. Britain has been the second largest provider of humanitarian aid
to Syrian refugees within the Middle East region, according to U.N. figures.
Denmark: 11,300
Denmark
has received a relatively large number of Syrian asylum requests but
has sought to discourage the arrival of more migrants.
On
Wednesday, Danish authorities tried to restrict migrants from crossing
into the country from central Europe. Danish police said via Twitter it
blocked access to some highways and suspended some international railway
traffic.
The country earlier had paid
for ads in Arabic in four Lebanese newspapers to get the word out about
its new, tightened restrictions -- such as reducing social benefits --
to try to prevent refugees from getting into the Scandinavian nation.
"We
cannot simply keep up with the present flow," Immigration and
Integration Minister Inger Stojberg, a member of the right-wing Venstre
Party, said on Facebook. "In light of the huge influx to Europe these
days, there is good reason for us to tighten rules and get that
effectively communicated."
Hungary: 18,800
Many Syrian refugees are reluctant to register an asylum application in Hungary.
Having
traveled north through the Balkans, those arriving on the country's
border with Serbia have had police greet them, and they've been forced
to wait, sometimes for days, in holding areas and transit camps, where
conditions are said to be poor.
Tensions flare along Serbia-Hungary border 02:17
Many
migrants would prefer to register as refugees in countries such as
Germany, Sweden and Austria, continuing their journey through Hungary to
Northern and Western Europe.
Hungary's
right-wing government, which has been trying to stop the flood of
migrants, has erected a barbed wire fence along its more than
160-kilometer (100-mile) border with Serbia to prevent them from
crossing there.
Serbia, which has received 49,500 asylum requests from Syrian refugees, is not a member of the European Union.
Other European countries
Syrian
refugees have made a wide range of requests for asylum in other parts
of Europe, including -- between April 2011 and this July -- 5,500 in
Spain, 14,100 in the Netherlands, 18,600 in Austria, 8,300 in
Switzerland and 15,000 in Bulgaria, according to the United Nations.
Italy,
where many migrants who've made the perilous Mediterranean crossing
from North Africa first land, had received 2,143 asylum applications as
of July, the United Nations said.
Greece,
which lies on a popular transit route from Turkey north through the
Balkans to Northern Europe, has seen more than 250,000 people arrive on
its shores this year, according to the International Organization for Migration. It had received 3,545 asylum applications as of July, U.N. figures show.
What's North America doing?
United States: 1,500 resettlements
About
1,500 Syrian refugees have been admitted to the United States since the
start of the conflict in 2011, the vast majority of them this fiscal
year.
Here's a breakdown: 23 in 2011,
41 in 2012, 45 in 2013, 249 in 2014 and 1,199 so far this fiscal year,
which ends September 30, according to the State Department.
About
300 more refugees are expected to be admitted by the end of this fiscal
year. This equates to a grand total of about 1,800 refugees from
Syria's four-year civil war being admitted to the United States by
October 1, according to U.S. officials.
In
the face of growing questions about such small numbers, President
Barack Obama ordered his administration to "scale up" the number of
Syrian refugees -- at least 10,000 in the next fiscal year, a White
House spokesman said Thursday.
The
proposed resettling of at least 10,000 Syrian refugees would be
allocated out of a U.S. quota of 75,000 refugee admissions slated for
next fiscal year, beginning October 1, a senior administration official
said.
That quota applies to refugees
from all over the world and is determined at the beginning of the fiscal
year, but Obama can raise that quota if there's a crisis. Secretary of
State John Kerry has already indicated to lawmakers that such an increase is in the works.
Should the U.S. be doing more to help Syrian Refugees? 05:01
The United States has given the largest share of aid to the Syrian refugee crisis, more than $574 million, or 31% of total aid donated, the United Nations said.
Canada: 10,000 resettlements
More
than 2,370 Syrian refugees have resettled in Canada since January 2014,
and the government promised in January to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees
over a three-year period, the Toronto Sun reported.
Since that pledge, 1,074 Syrian refugees arrived in Canada, the newspaper said.
What about other wealthy nations?
Australia: 12,000 resettlements
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said his country would take in an extra 12,000 migrants fleeing conflict in the Middle East.
The
intake almost doubles the number of people currently allowed into
Australia through its humanitarian program, which is capped at 13,750
each year.
13 photos: 24 hours of Europe's migration crisis
Priority
would go to persecuted minorities -- especially women, children and
families -- who are in camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, Abbott said.
Canberra also plans to spend $44
million on food, blankets and emergency supplies to support 240,000
people in UNHCR camps as part of its $230 million aid program
Amnesty
International said other high-income countries -- specifically Russia,
Japan, Singapore and South Korea -- have offered zero resettlements to
the Syrians.
How many refugees are Gulf countries taking in?
Saudi Arabia: 0
Kuwait: 0
Qatar: 0
Bahrain: 0
United Arab Emirates: 250,000
They
are collectively known as the Persian Gulf states, and even though they
share a language and the Arabian Peninsula with Syria, the Gulf nations
are among the few nations that haven't participated in the 1951 U.N.
treaty on refugees, the agreement that energizes the West's efforts to
provide asylum to refugees from far-flung corners of the globe.
A cold reception: Gulf states shun Syrians
In short, the Gulf nations aren't legally obligated to provide refuge or asylum.
Nadim
Houry, Human Rights Watch deputy director for the Middle East and North
Africa, has called those wealthy countries' inaction in the Syrian
crisis "shameful."
The United Arab Emirates would seem to be the exception.
The
UAE has received more than 100,000 Syrian nationals since the Syrian
crisis began in 2011 and extended residency permits to them, bringing
the number of Syrians living there to almost 250,000, a UAE government
source told CNN.
"We would like to see
the Syrian refugees stay close to their homeland and to support them
while they are there, so they can eventually return to their homeland,"
the source said, adding that most refugees fleeing to Europe will likely
never return to Syria.
The
source said the UAE also is financing al Mreejab Al Fhood refugee camp
in Jordan, contributing some $72 million over two years for camps
elsewhere in that country and in Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey.
The
Gulf nations have said each has given millions of dollars to help the
refugees, amounting to more than $500 million over 2½ years, according
to the United Nations.
The Gulf states also say that Syrians have entered their countries on visas and continue living there.
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