With conditions continuing to deteriorate in Syria, the Obama administration is making a major policy shift by agreeing for the first time to allow thousands of new Syrian refugees into the United States, The Cable has learned. 
 
 The numbers are relatively small: just 2,000 refugees, compared to an estimated two million people who have fled Syria during the civil war. But it's a significant increase from the 90 or so Syrian refugees who have been permanently admitted to the U.S. in the last two years. And it's not entirely uncontroversial. The refugees, mostly women and children, will be screened for terrorist ties -- a process that could take a year or more to complete. 
 
 Unlike previous efforts by the Department of Homeland Security to give temporary protected status to Syrians already in the United States, the State Department effort will bring in Syrians from overseas for permanent resettlement in America. 
 
 "Referrals will come within the next four months. We will need to interview people and perform security and medical checks," Kelly Clements, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration, tells The Cable. 
 
 While aid workers welcome the decision to let in more refugees, concerns remain about the time it will take to process the applications and move them into the U.S. "It's 90 degrees now, but in a few months it's going to snow and people are going to be freezing," Noah Gottschalk, Oxfam America's senior humanitarian policy advisor, told The Cable. "They don't have many options and many are living in unfinished buildings, abandoned shopping malls, schools, mosques and parking garages." 
 
 But the eligible refugees will have to wait out the cold. By Clements' own admission, given application processing times, "We're not likely to see Syrian refugees into those numbers before well into 2014." 
 
 Qualifying refugees include only the most vulnerable individuals -- likely women and children -- who were "exposed to everything from torture to gender-based violence to serious medical conditions" and have no intention of returning to Syria, Clements added. 
 
 Despite their vulnerable condition, even the youngest of children will be thoroughly vetted to ensure they do not pose a national security threat. It's not that they're worried about infants enlisting in al Qaeda. The worry is that terrorist relatives can more easily enter the United States, once they have relatives in America. "Refugees are subject to an intensive security screening process involving federal intelligence, law enforcement, defense, and homeland security agencies," a State Department official said. "The U.S. government makes every possible effort to uphold and enhance the security screening aspects of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Refugees are among the most carefully screened of individuals traveling to the United States." 
 
 In cases such as Iraq and Afghanistan, Congress and the White House have been wary about opening the floodgates to refugees too wide, citing concerns about terrorism. As a result, tens of thousands of refugees have been left waiting at the doors of American embassies there. Humanitarian groups are encouraging Washington to do more in Syria. 
 
 "It's a welcome move by the U.S. but they also need to do more to help the countries supporting refugees and support their infrastructure," said Gottschalk, who has recently visited the refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan. Another major resettlement country is Germany, which pledged to bring in 5,000 refugees in March 2012 on top of the several thousand Syrians it granteld asylum to in the last two years. However, unlike in the U.S., refugees to Germany are required to return after the fighting subsides. "We're very proud of the fact that the U.S. judges applicants on need and seek out the most needy cases," Erol Kekic, director of immigration at the Church World Service, tells The Cable. 
 
 The referrals come from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, which has been identifying and tracking the millions of refugees flooding into Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and elsewhere since the two-year-old conflict began. Earlier this summer, the United Nations approached Washington about referring Syrian refugees to a group of 27 resettlement countries, including the United States. Now, Clements tells The Cable the U.S. will not only participate but "will encourage other resettlement countries to do the same." 
 
 It's yet to be seen if Congress will push back against the Obama administration's acceptance of the Syrian refugees. (Ordinarily, the U.S. only admits refugees after a conflict has gone on for five years or longer.) Though the State Department's refugee admission program is authorized by a presidential determination, it does involve consultation with Congress. 
 
 Of course, admitting 2,000 Syrians won't even begin to ease the suffering of Syria's refugees; the U.N. estimates that by the end of 2013, 3.5 million Syrians will have fled the country. It's also worth noting the 6.8 million Syrian people in need of humanitarian assistance. Clements emphasized that permanent resettlement is just one means by which the U.S. is contributing to the humanitarian relief effort. "We are exceedingly frustrated to be quite honest because we can't keep up with the humanitarian need especially inside Syria," Clements said. "We are expanding our support for humanitarian assistance through all sorts of angles, but we can't keep up." 
 
 This was post was revised to differentiate between the number of refugees versus asylum seekers the German government has agreed to accept. ||||| Expand Displaced children eat inside a house in al-Zanbaqi village, in Idlib countryside on May 27, 2013. 2013 Reuters 
 
 When I met them in early June, Abu Nizar, his wife and their three daughters — aged 22, 18 and 14 — were perched on threadbare mattresses in a rundown house in Ramtha, Jordan, where they survive on charity from the local community. Blankets covered the windows to keep out the mid-afternoon heat. Inside, a musty darkness hovered. 
 
 Abu Nazir pays almost 300 Jordanian dinars per month — nearly $424 — for rent and utilities. Alone, he and his wife could rent a room for 70 dinars. He said to me, only half-joking, “Of course my daughters need to get married — it will lift the burden off of me!” 
 
 A doctor from Dubai asked to marry Abu Nizar’s 22-year-old daughter, Rima, and he seriously considered the proposal. “He’s related to people who live upstairs. He’s a doctor, he has studied,” Abu Nizar told me. 
 
 Ultimately, Abu Nizar refused the offer. With her identity documents left behind during their flight from Syria, Rima would not be granted the passport and authorization to accompany her new husband to Dubai, leaving her vulnerable to becoming a so-called “pleasure” wife, abandoned after a short stint of marriage. 
 
 “A lot of women ask us here in Jordan if we want to marry our daughters,” Abu Nizar said. “We say no because we can’t guarantee her rights here.” 
 
 The focus on Syrian refugee women and girls has largely centered on accounts of forced and early marriage as a coping mechanism. Yet during investigative missions to Lebanon and Jordan by Human Rights Watch in March and June, I found that many Syrian families remain determined to protect their daughters from violence and exploitation. 
 
 While there are some reported cases of early or forced marriage, we have not found evidence that marriage patterns differ substantially from those in pre-conflict Syria. However, inadequate international assistance and the threat of ongoing poverty could eventually lead refugees to desperate measures, including exploitative marriages. 
 
 In early July, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported that over 1.7 million registered Syrian refugees are living in neighboring countries; more than three quarters are women and children. UNHCR estimates that urban and rural host communities — rather than camps — house 77 percent of Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey. 
 
 Refugee sites I visited are overcrowded, lack resources and are underserved. The expanding refugee population is straining already scarce water, food, housing and employment in receiving countries, causing rising tensions with host communities. 
 
 Refugees reported apprehension about seeking assistance from local police and security forces, some of whom, they believe, may be corrupt, abusive or unwilling to help. Scant support for generating income or rent and insufficient humanitarian assistance are creating heightened desperation as refugees seek to sustain their families and escape long-term dependence. 
 
 Women and girls are particularly vulnerable. Aid agencies say reports of domestic violence have increased since the refugee crisis began, a common outcome amid the stress, disruption and idleness of refugee settings and poor access to resources and services for women and girls. Social constraints and fear limit their mobility, restricting their access to income-generating activities or health and other critical services. 
 
 Whether based in fact or rumor, refugees’ belief that women and girls face danger outside the home creates a very real barrier to using facilities, from clinics and schools to latrines. Yasmin, in her thirties and living in Jordan’s Zaatari camp, said: “We make a bathroom in our tent to use at night.” A new UN Women assessment says that male relatives restrict women’s movement in Jordan’s urban refugee areas to protect them from harm. 
 
 In interviews in Lebanon and Jordan, aid agencies and refugees confirmed that refugees remain largely unaware of available services, especially outside of camps. Services are often out of easy reach, and women must secure transportation or child care to use them. 
 
 Aliyah, 20, described trying to register for humanitarian aid when I met her in Beirut in March: “I would have to go [to UNHCR] all day, take the children with me, wait three months for an interview. That’s what happened to my sister-in-law.” Aliyah said the cost of a shared taxi prohibited her from going to the local branch of an international non-governmental organization to seek assistance. 
 
 The inability to sustain a household and access key resources makes women — in particular, those who head households — vulnerable to high-risk situations, including exploitative work or housing arrangements, dependence on others for food and other necessities, and early or forced marriage. 
 
 The international community needs to bolster protection for displaced women and girls by increasing their economic well being and developing and improving access to services. 
 
 Women need rent subsidies in non-camp settings, opportunities to increase their skills, cash for work assistance programs, and income-generating activities. Ensuring greater access to services requires not only outreach to increase awareness, but also creative solutions such as programs that meet multiple needs in one location, mobile services, transportation and child care, and group assistance for safety and security. 
 
 To respond to the many needs of women and girls, United Nations member states and other donors should fund the $2 billion-plus gap that remains in response to the United Nations appeal for Syrian refugee response. 
 
 Donor countries that value rights for Syria’s women and girls should ensure that this includes significant investment in concrete measures to reduce their vulnerability.
– By most accounts, more than 2 million people have fled Syria in the last two years amid its civil war. In that time, the US has allowed maybe 90 of them to relocate to the US. Now, in what Foreign Policy describes as a "major policy shift," the State Department has agreed to let 2,000 Syrian refugees enter the US. It will make only a small dent in the refugee crisis, say human rights advocates, but it's something. "Referrals will come within the next four months," a State Department official tells The Cable blog of FP. "We will need to interview people and perform security and medical checks." It's those security checks that will take longest—and keep refugees from getting here before winter sets in. While the most vulnerable refugees such as children and women will get top priority, the concern is that they might have a terrorist relative who would then be able to enter the country more easily because of ties here. (Human Rights Watch warns that young women at the camps are being forced into marriages or worse.) The majority of the new refugees aren't expected until well into next year. Meanwhile, the war hasn't stopped Bashar al-Assad from posting frivolous photos on Instagram.