THE INTERIOR ministry has prepared a bill that would make the offspring of refugee mothers eligible to apply to the government’s housing schemes. The bill satisfies the old demand by refugee mothers, for their children to be regarded refugees by the state when it comes to applying for housing assistance.
Presenting the bills on Thursday, Interior minister Neoclis Sylikiotis said that the bills would put an end to “an incredible anachronism and unforgivable discrimination against the women of Cyprus, created by the decisions of previous governments”. He is right that the previous arrangement, which recognised only the offspring of males as refugees, was blatantly discriminatory, but this is not the real issue.
The real issue is the absurdity of having a hereditary refugee status, which is in place 37 years after people were evicted from their homes by the Turks. If the minister is so concerned about discrimination, what about the low-income families and individuals who were discriminated against because they were not refugees? While giving priority to refugees in the years after the invasion was an imperative, there is no justification for it today.
The refugees who lost their homes in 1974 have been given houses, land, cash assistance or low-interest loans by the state, so why are their children, especially those born after the invasion, eligible for similar assistance from the state? They are not refugees or displaced persons, strictly speaking, and should not enjoy preferential treatment when it comes to state housing assistance. With the new law, which goes into effect next year, there will be even more so-called refugees applying for this assistance.
And who will suffer? The poorest families in most need of state assistance will be pushed to the bottom of the application list, so that more children of refugees are helped out by the state. It is a grossly unfair arrangement, dictated by crude populism rather than by rationality. This commitment to populism was advertised by Sylikiotis on Thursday when he boasted that the Christofias government had increased spending on its refugee policy programmes to about €150 million a year. This was double what other governments had spent annually for refugees.
Surely 37 years after the invasion, spending on refugee assistance programmes should have markedly decreased, not increased by 100 per cent in the last couple of years? But this is what happens when refugee status is turned into a hereditary right. Refugee assistance programmes will absorb more and more funds every year, depriving the truly needy of state help. How fair is that?
It is high time the state put an end to this discriminatory practice and helped out people truly in need, rather than those with refugee ID cards.
