Scotland has welcomed its 1,000th Syrian refugee, almost exactly a year after the image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi’s drowned corpse washed up on a Turkish beach galvanised the global response to the humanitarian crisis.

The milestone, which was reached after 120 refugees arrived in Scotland in the past week, means that Scotland has taken about a third of the total number of Syrian refugees who have come to the UK since last October.



The government committed last September to resettle 20,000 people from refugee camps on the Syrian border in the next five years, while the Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said at the time that Scotland should accept 1,000 refugees “as a starting point for a meaningful discussion”.

The Scottish government’s equalities secretary, Angela Constance, described the milestone as significant, saying: “It is a great credit that 29 out of 32 local authorities in Scotland have now taken Syrian refugees, in marked contrast to what is happened south of the border.”



Figures released by the Home Office in May exposed a wide disparity in the acceptance rates of councils across Britain. Scotland welcomed more Syrian refugees than any other part of the UK under the official resettlement scheme, accepting more than 600 people, compared with just 33 who were taken in by London local authorities, and none by Greater Manchester.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An English lesson at The Welcoming in Edinburgh. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

Asked whether the Scottish government would be setting further limits on numbers, Constance said: “It’s difficult to put a limit on what is our moral duty when responding to a humanitarian crisis. Given that refugee and asylum matters remain reserved, what we have always said is that we stand ready to take our fair and proportionate share.”

Constance added: “It’s important that we remember the refugee crisis is not over. I am particularly concerned about unaccompanied children, and we will continue to urge the UK government to accept more refugees.”

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The minister marked the milestone with a visit to The Welcoming, a drop-in project in Edinburgh that provides English language lessons to refugees, as well as assistance with CV writing and form-filling, and a “Scotland for Newcomers” course, which explains issues from Brexit to independence, to people of about 60 different nationalities each year.



The director, Jon Busby, explained that members of the established Syrian community in Edinburgh had volunteered to help with particular cultural and social needs of those who had arrived in the city since the winter. “What we learned is that they need lots of support and security, and routine, having come from the camps in Lebanon,” said Busby.

Kawthor Saloom, 48, who was taking an English lesson based on transport safety, arrived in Edinburgh with her three daughters from Homs, via Lebanon, last December. “People were so welcoming at the airport, but for the first few weeks it was difficult trying to understand the different systems,” she said. Perhaps inevitably, having arrived in Scotland mid-winter, one of her first impressions was of the dreadful weather. “At the very beginning, it was raining and foggy all the time, but then it got better.”

She said that the language barrier had been her greatest obstacle so far, but that she has started to build friendships with local people at her daughters’ school. “One English teacher offered to come to the house to help me.”

UK-wide figures on refugee resettlement released by the Home Office last week show that, between the start of October 2015 and the end of June 2016, 2,646 people have been resettled under the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme across 118 different local authorities, including 862 in Scotland and 1,784 across the rest of the UK.