Will refugees in Turkey be vaccinated against COVID-19?

It is unclear whether refugees in Turkey will be vaccinated against COVID-19 and any failure to do so would undermine efforts to contain the virus.

Turkish Health Ministry data shows that over 1.4 million people have been vaccinated since the start of a government programme on Jan. 13. Turkey will be able to inoculate some 30 percent of its 82 million citizens with current orders to purchase 10 million doses of vaccines.

Experts say that the authorities need to allocate jabs for refugees in the country, for their own safety and that of the public at large.

There are around 4 million registered refugees in Turkey, along with an unknown number of unregistered migrants.

Metin Çorabatır, former spokesman of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Turkey and the president of an Ankara-based think tank, the Research Centre on Asylum and Migration (IGAM), said that thousands of unregistered migrants continued to arrive to the country.

“An exhaustive vaccination program without discriminating against any vulnerable group is a must,” he said last week, according to Arab News.

Omar Kadkoy, a migration policy analyst at the Ankara-based think tank TEPAV, said that not including migrants in the vaccination programme would hurt efforts to contain the virus.

“It is not a surprise that registered and unregistered refugees have not been included in the vaccination process; refugees must be included in the government’s designated groups of priority,” he said.

Turkey received a shipment of 6.5 million doses of the CoronaVac vaccine, developed in China, on Monday as part of a batch of 10 million doses.