The world’s refugee system is broken, and solutions are elusive
The images of a 3-year-old Syrian boy’s body, face down on a Turkish Beach after having perished at sea, and another Syrian boy with blood splattered all over him vividly illustrate the refugee story.
And beyond the two iconic photographs, the figures are staggering: more than 65 million have fled their homes because of armed conflicts. Four million Syrians, half of them children, are in neighboring countries — Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey — and perhaps 8 million are internally displaced inside Syria. Imagine these numbers: more than a million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, a country of 4 million. It would be as if 80 million had crossed our own borders in the past four years.
The refugee system, based on the current treaty, the 1951 Refugee Convention, was created to address the plight of millions who were displaced by World War II in Europe. It defined a “refugee,” and under the refugee system — the Convention and the U.N. refugee agency, the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees — the refugees were to be provided durable solutions. These were repatriation, integration into the receiving country, and resettlement in a third country.
This system is indeed broken and there is no denying that world leaders have yet to find a working solution. The refugee numbers are overwhelming, with none of these “solutions” being capable of addressing the current challenges. There is no end to the conflicts, not only in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, but also in many African countries, as well, which gives rise to people leaving their homes and seeking shelter from the violence. Grinding poverty and no prospects for the future tempt young people to seek fortune in distant lands. How should the system be reformed is a burning question.
Last year, the asylum crisis in Europe was a rude awakening. The continent was flooded by refugees who boarded boats and walked across land routes to reach Germany. Countries built fences, closed their borders, and turned away the asylum seekers, who still kept coming. Germany opened its doors, accepted 1 million, and Angela Merkel is paying a heavy political price. In many countries that once had welcomed refugees, internal politics are compelling them to take stringent measures to control their borders. Now that the EU and Turkey have agreed that with financial help and other concessions, Turkey will ensure no further flows of refugees to Greece, the rush is now for Mediterranean routes to Spain and Italy. And the drownings continue, the latest being hundreds young Egyptians who lost their lives when a boat sank en route to Europe.
In the West, the U.S. has traditionally been the most generous, accepting more refugees than any other country, with a total of 85,000 this year. President Obama has raised the number to 110,000 for next year. The U.S. has settled 12,500 Syrians this year, while Canada, with its much smaller population, has accepted 30,000. There are calls for the U.S. to receive many more Syrian asylum-seekers.
International efforts to address the crisis continue. Two refugee summits in New York — one under the U.N. auspices on Sept. 19, and the other a Leaders’ Summit convened by President Obama the next day — resulted in the adoption of the New York Declaration by the former summit and the leaders’ commitment. There was consensus that the international community must take effective measures to protect refugees and share the burden of doing so, especially for the benefit of countries in the developing world that receive asylum-seekers.
As a short-term Band-Aid to this mindnumbing challenge, adequate and effective humanitarian assistance for care and maintenance and burden-sharing have to be undertaken. However, the long-term response must be to bring to an end the ongoing armed conflicts. In the meantime, the international community must ensure that refugees have basic human rights so they can live productive lives with dignity and that development programs are established under which they can achieve self-reliance. Ved Nanda (vnanda@law.du.edu) is Evans University Professor and director of the Nanda Center for International and Comparative Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.