Refugee Crisis: The public figures campaigning to end the biggest crisis of the modern era in 2015
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The refugee crisis has become one of the most devastating humanitarian crisis of the modern era. The biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War, it shows no sign of abating as the number seeking refugee steadily increases each day.
Millions facing increasingly desperate situations are risking their lives and the lives of their families to flee countries ripped apart by conflict and to escape persecution.
Figures from the UNHCR show 59.5 million people have been forcibly displaced internally and externally by war, tyranny and terrorism. Many have fled the homes they have lived in for decades, the lives they have carefully built and the people they love for neighbouring Middle Eastern countries already at breaking point. Left with no other option, one million travelled to Europe to seek refugee in 2015. Of these, 800,000 made the perilous journey across the Mediterranean. Four thousand men, women and children died in the process or remain missing.
The world was galvanised into action by the harrowing pictures of toddler Alyan Kurdi; the small boy washed up, alone, on the shores of a Turkish beach in one image, his lifeless body cradled by an officer in another.
Hundreds of high-profile figures added their names to The Independent’s Refugees Welcome campaign, signed by over 387,000 people. Others also campaigned passionately for meaningful action to help those most at risk during such a turbulent time in the Middle East.
The Boomtown Rats singer had one of the most forthright suggestions for actually making a dent in the “sickening f**king disgrace” of a crisis by offering to take four refugees into his home “immediately”.
Geldof reacted with fury at the scale of suffering in comparison to the action being taken to alleviate a situation growing exponentially. “It is a monstrous betrayal of who we are and what we wish to be,” he thundered on RTE radio. “I can’t stand what is happening. I cannot stand what it does to us. It’s that failure of new politics that has led to this f**king disgrace. This absolute, sickening disgrace.”
The actress and UN envoy joined forces with Baroness Arminka Helic, a member of the House of Lords and herself a former refugee, to call for refugees facing an immediate threat to their lives to be prioritised by governments over economic migrants.
Their piece urged leaders to think with their heads and recognise the grave humanitarian responsibility they face if they are ever to stand a chance at easing it. “Nothing tells us more about the state of the world than the movement of people across borders,” they wrote. “It is time to look for long-term solutions and to recognise that governments, not refugees, have to provide the answer.”
Cumberbatch used his performance in Hamlet at the Barbican to launch an expletive-filled, ‘”f**k the government” call for action. Cumberbatch has repeatedly expressed his frustration at the Government’s response to the crisis and the number of refugees it has pledged to take in. “To say 20,000 over five years when 5,000 arrive in one day? We’ve all got to wake up to this,” he warned at the premiere of his film Black Mass in October.
The comedian dedicated a series of blistering, eloquent columns to the British response to the crisis, particularly David Cameron’s controversial decision to use the term “swarm” to describe the influx of refugees in the UK. He also undermined the attitudes of many Brits who opposed resettling refugees in the UK and were more concerned about how thousands of families arriving off boats and onto the shore of popular tourist destinations would affect their holiday plans.
“In Europe we have the stereotype that Africans view life cheaply,” he wrote in The Guardian, “but we’ve spent much of the summer watching van loads of Syrians being washed in by the tide and all we worried about was whether this meant the beach might be closed during the summer holidays. There were Greek kids incorporating human remains into their sandcastles and yet the big story here was that the drinks trolley didn’t make it down the Eurostar.”
The tennis ace chose to channel his energies into fundraising by combining it with his love of sport. Murray pledged to donate £50 for every ace he served to Unicef after being moved by the increasingly bleak pictures emerging from across Europe and beyond. “Having seen the images broadcast in the news in recent weeks I felt I had to do something to help the millions of children and their families who have been forced to leave their homes and had their lives turned upside down,” he said.
The Walking Dead actor appeared dazed as he realised the scale of the crisis when he joined the coast guards helping to rescue children from life boats arriving at the island of Lesvos in July.
Morrissey, an ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), described the deplorable scenes he witnessed as “the challenge of our age” and urged European leaders to deal with the growing humanitarian crisis by offering “meaningful and credible alternatives” such as resettling refugees.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments