UNHCR: Poland Receives 10 Times More Refugees than Serbia did at the Peak of Crisis in 2015

Ukrainian refugees in Poland, May 9 2022 ( BETPHOTO/RP)

There were ten times more Ukrainian refugee arrivals in Poland than Belgrade would accept at the peak of the refugee wave from the Middle East in 2015, a spokesman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Rafal Kostrzynski, said on May 11.

“Belgrade would receive 13,000 refugees a day at the peak of the refugee crisis. Poland had 141,000 people coming in on March 8, which was ten times as many. Even now, when the situation has improved, around 20,000 people cross the border every day,” Kostrzynski said during a meeting with Serbian journalists in Warsaw.

UNHCR discusses the opportunities of a refugee status with the fleeing Ukrainians in Poland, but they are also made aware of dangers and the risks of trafficking. “Most of the refugees are women and children – particularly vulnerable to those risks and trauma in general.  Having been exposed to some form or trauma back home, they are now fighting to get disturbing images out of their mind and need psychological support,” the UNHCR spokesman said to BETA.

Maria Schmelova of the Warsaw-based Culturelab, facilitating the education of refugee children, said to a BETA reporter that the integration process was very difficult, because of a language barrier between Polish teachers and Ukrainian children. She suggested that the Ukrainian teachers who had fled their homes should be hired instead, but cautioned that it would be another burden Poland’s ailing education system would need to bear.