refugees for an EU total of 1,752 since the beginning of the war in April 2003, and the EU’s largest38 and most successful39 country, Germany, had not agreed to take a single one.40 In contrast, Syria was admitting an average of 2,000 Iraqi refugees a day through much of 2006 and 2007. Given the paucity of resettlement to the European Union, the only option for most Iraqis who want to seek asylum in Europe is to embark on a dangerous and illegal journey that exposes them both to the predations of traffickers and the abuses of law-enforcement officials. A refugee seeking protection in the EU has little option but to cast off on a rubber dinghy or unseaworthy boat into the uncertainty of the Aegean Sea or to wade and swim across the Evros River. Faced with a refugee crisis of the magnitude of the Iraqi emergency (with an estimated 2.8 million internally displaced persons and 1.8 million refugees),41 the European Council could have recognized the existence of a mass influx through its “temporary protection” directive of 2001 or developed a long-overdue refugee resettlement mechanism to provide a legal mechanism to identify and protect refugees who need to be removed from the region.42 But it did not. Instead, the EU exacerbated the lack of international solidarity and burden sharing by using the Dublin system to shift its own internal burden to Greece as the entry-point to the EU for most Iraqis and not even to share the responsibility of hosting its own relatively small number of Iraqi asylum seekers equitably among its members. 38 The World Bank listed Germany as the 14th largest country in the world by population, higher than any other EU member state. See http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/POP.pdf. 39 The World Bank listed Germany as the world’s third strongest economy as measured by GNI and GDP in 2007, trailing only the United States and Japan. See http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GNI.pdf and http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP.pdf. 40 Iraq Operation, Resettlement Submissions Reporting and Tracking Table, Refugees from Iraq submitted to non-US resettlement countries by UNHCR, as of August 15, 2008. (On file with Human Rights Watch.) This table refers to submissions, not departures. The number of refugees who have actually been resettled lags considerably behind the number accepted for resettlement. 41 International Organization for Migration, “Iraq Displacement and Return: 2008 Mid-year Review,” August 2008, p. 1. 42 Council Directive 2001/55/EC of July 21, 2001 on minimum standards for giving temporary protection in the event of a mass influx of displaced persons and on measures promoting a balance of efforts between Member States in receiving such persons and bearing the consequences thereof. The temporary protection directive authorizes the EC to establish through a Council Decision the existence of a mass influx which is binding on all member states in relation to the displaced persons to whom the Decision applies. 27 Human Rights Watch November 2008