They are hundreds of thousands to flee the Russian bombardments. Since the start of the offensive launched by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine on Thursday 24 February, many inhabitants fled to neighboring countries. Marine Le Pen judged, Tuesday, March 1 on BFMTV, that it would be “natural” to welcome these Ukrainian refugees in France. A position that contrasts with its previous outings on the reception of Syrian and Afghan refugees, also driven to exodus by wars in their countries.
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To justify this reversal, the candidate of the National Rally in the presidential election invokes the “regional solidarity” with Ukraine, but also the gender of the refugees concerned. According to her, Ukrainians currently on the road or already welcomed in European countries are “women, children and old people, or people who are not able to fight”. While “almost all of the Syrian refugees were men.” So, is she saying true or false?
The High Commission from NOTUnited Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) closely follows the movements of Ukrainians. According to data released as of March 2, more than one million refugees have already left the country since February 24 (link in English). Contacted by franceinfo, the UNHCR specifies that at this stage it does not have data on their gender and age. But he is working on collecting this information.
Present at the Polish border, the UNHCR spokesperson nevertheless delivers his first observations to franceinfo. “I have been here for six days now and have seen tens of thousands of refugees crossing the border. Very few are men and most are elderly. Men between the ages of 18 and 60 are even fewer,” says Chris Melzer. And for good reason, men in this age group have been prohibited from leaving the country since the entry into force of martial law. The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has indeed announced the general mobilization of men subject to conscription to respond to the Russian invasion.
The situation is identical on the border with Hungary, for the moment the second host country for Ukrainian refugees after Poland. Zoran Stevanovic, Regional Communications Officer for UNHCR, also observes that “the vast majority of refugees from Ukraine in neighboring European countries are women and children.”
What about the Syrian refugees that Marine Le Pen compares to the Ukrainians? Among the 21,498 who arrived on French soil (link in English) since the beginning of the war in 2011, women have been slightly outnumbered by men. In 2019, the last year for which UNHCR has complete data, 8,347 Syrian women and 9,897 Syrian men were refugees in France. He It is therefore wrong to assert that men represent almost all of the refugees from this country.
This trend is not specific to France: we find a similar ratio in Turkey, where 52.5% of Syrian refugees are men. According to UNHCR, thehe neighboring states of Syria are those who received the most refugees from that country (link in English). Of the 5.7 million people affected, 65.8% are in Turkey. Lebanon and Jordan host 830,000 and 670,000 Syrian refugees respectively, or about 15% and 12% of them.