If reports are correct, the trickle-down effects of Justin Trudeau’s decision may force young Syrian men to choose between the lesser of two evils back home

Justin Trudeau’s decision to welcome 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada before the end of the year has been widely welcomed by refugee advocates, but one aspect of his plan has drawn criticism: the widely reported decision to exclude single men from the resettlement program.



In some respects, this is an understandable move. The resettlement of 25,000 human beings from one continent to another is not an impossible task – to put it in context, more refugees arrived in Greece during each week in October – but it still will involve a great deal of coordination and tough decision-making.

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Given that there are around 4 million desperate Syrian refugees still stuck in the Middle East, it won’t be easy to assess which 25,000 of them are most deserving of Canada’s generosity – particularly in such a short space of time. Restricting the field to families would arguably be a pragmatic way of making the choice more straightforward for Canadian officials.

Then there’s the security argument. Amid fears of the threat posed by Syrian refugees, perhaps Trudeau feels it would be easier to win over skeptics if the refugees he welcomes are parents with children. In the western id, the image of a doting father is much easier to swallow than one of a potentially disaffected youth.

But there are good reasons why it might have been better if Trudeau had held his nerve. An unmarried young man may not have a family to support. But he may have been a dissident in Syria – an opponent of both President Bashar al-Assad and his jihadist enemy, the Islamic State. His case should be considered on its merits, rather than being dismissed at the stroke of a pen.

Secondly, by excluding young Syrian men, you risk separating them from their families. An unmarried 19-year-old is technically an adult, and as such would not be eligible for a Canadian welcome. But his parents and young siblings might still qualify.

It remains to be seen how exactly Trudeau’s system will work in practice – but it could conceivably see vulnerable teenagers left thousands of miles away from their mother and father. Technically they’d be able to fend for themselves. But in reality they’d have been severed from both their emotional and financial support networks.

Thirdly, 20-something Syrian males arguably form one of the groups that are most at risk in the areas of Syria still controlled by the regime. Since his army is shrinking, Assad is press-ganging reluctant young men into the military. But many of them neither want to fight for a man who has overseen the deaths of over 200,000 of his own citizens, nor join forces with rebel militias, many of which have troubling links to extremism.

On the migration trail this year in Europe, the Guardian encountered several young men who say they need asylum because the only life left to them in Syria is the prospect of death on the battlefield. Majd, a Syrian schoolboy interviewed in Serbia, will soon turn 18 and so be ineligible for resettlement in Canada. But Majd’s story highlights the vulnerability of many refugees of his age and gender: he knew that if he stayed at home until adulthood, he risked being press-ganged into Assad’s ranks. He said his only remaining options were to either to fight for the rebels or leave Syria entirely. So he chose the latter.

“I wasn’t sure who was right and who was wrong, and I didn’t want to just join the army,” said Majd. “So I left.”

Walking alongside him, Nizam, a 24-year-old computer scientist, gave a similar account of why he fled Syria. “They want us to be rabbits in their war,” said Nizam. “But I’m a peaceful man and I don’t want to fight. The government is against us – and Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra [two of the main jihadi groups] want to kill us.”

If young men like Majd and Nizam are led to believe that they have little hope of gaining asylum through formal channels, there are two potential pitfalls. The first is that they will simply continue to walk through the Balkans to Germany, adding to the chaos at Europe’s borders. The second: they may conclude that they have no option but to pick a side in the Syrian war, worsening a conflict that many diplomats now accept can only be resolved politically.