Over 12,000 Icelanders to house Syrian asylum seekers

More than 12,000 Icelanders have offered to house Syrian asylum seekers into their homes in a bid to increase their government’s cap of accepting only few dozens of asylum seekers from the war-torn country.

After Iceland’s government announced last month that it would allow just 50 Syrian asylum seekers, Bryndís Björgvinsdóttir, the Icelandic author, folklorist and professor at Iceland Academy of the Arts, started a Facebook group called “Syria is Calling” on Sunday, urging fellow citizens to offer shelter to Syrian asylum seekers.

By late Tuesday, more than 12,000 Icelanders participated in this humanitarian campaign, showing their readiness to accommodate Syrians in plight.

The group started with an open letter Björgvinsdóttir wrote addressing Eygló Harðardóttir, the Iceland’s minister of social affairs and housing, saying these asylum seekers would be “human resources”.

“They have experience and skills. Refugees are our future spouses, best friends, or soul mates, our next colleague, the computer genius,” the letter read.

“I think people have had enough of seeing news stories from the Mediterranean and refugee camps of dying people and they want something done now,” Björgvinsdóttir told Icelandic public television RUV.

Björgvinsdóttir said she started the group to show the level of public support for welcoming more asylum seekers, and hopes that her government considers raising the number of them accepted under a humanitarian quota.

"I have made it clear that I don't want to name a maximum figure, but that we (will) explore every avenue available in welcoming more refugees," she further said.

Located between the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, Iceland has a population of around 330,000 and enjoys a subpolar climate.

The foreign-sponsored conflict in Syria, which flared in March 2011, has reportedly claimed more than 240,000 lives up until now.

The United Nations says the militancy has displaced 7.6 million Syrians internally, and compelled some 4.6 million others to take refuge mostly in neighboring countries.

Tens of thousands of asylum seekers from conflict-hit states in the Middle East and Africa have been trying to make their way to Europe in recent months.

Nearly 340,000 asylum seekers reached the European Union’s borders during the first seven months of the year, up from 123,500 during the same period in 2014, according to the bloc's border agency Frontex.

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