What to do About Refugees

I suspect that there have always been refugees. When Attila attacked the Roman Empire - refugees streamed west. When Genghis Khan expanded his empire - again there were refugees seeking to avoid his version of colonization. More recently in 1946 after WWII there were millions of Europeans (what my mother referred to a displace persons or D.Ps.) who were left with nowhere to live and no means of supporting themselves. In 1956 there were thousands of Hungarians who left their country after the failed uprising and the resultant punishment by the Soviet Union. In 1979-80 close to two million people fled Viet Nam and communist rule. At all of these times, many countries tried to do their best to assist those who were fleeing their country of birth because of war, the total absence of economic opportunity or a highly volatile political situation. In fact countries such as Canada not only have populated their country because they admitted so many immigrants and refugees, but by doing so they established an image of a country that cared. There have of course, been times Canada and other countries have not been as generous such as when Canada turned away a boat load of approximately 900 Jewish refugees in 1939. The refugee situation that the world now faces is perhaps both the most complex and the most heartbreaking. Easy answers have already been tried and they have failed.

(1) The United Nations Refugee Agency estimates that there will be, by December 2015, one million Syrian and Iranian refugees in Jordon (UNRA). That means that 12% of the total population of Jordon  will be living in refugee camps

(2) "According to the UNHCR, Europe received some 714,300 asylum claims in 2014" (Brookings). Given the number of individuals who are daily trying to escape across the Mediterranean in leaky, overcrowded and mechanically unfit boats (with hundreds drowning in the attempt), there is no reason to believe that these number will be reduced in the upcoming year.

(3) An unknown number, but certainly thousands of people from Myanmar and Bangladesh have been attempting to get to Thailand or Malaysia after having spent weeks at sea in boats that are again leaky, overcrowded and mechanically unfit. There are reports that Thailand and Malaysia have refused to let some of those people land.

(4) The United Nations Refugee Agency has reported that over hundred thousand refugees have recently fled Burundi (UNRA).

And this is only the tip of the iceberg. The United Nations states that there are over fifteen million refugees who have fled their country (UN). One of the most frightening aspects of this massive dislocation of people is that the majority of refugees are fleeing from one developing country to another.  Those refugees are not being welcomed by well developed nations with an appropriate level of resources but rather by countries that do not have the infrastructure or the capacity to develop the infrastructure to support the influx of homeless people. As well, in the past the majority of refugees that such countries as Canada took in, were people who were similar to other Canadians. Caucasian, Christian and a value system that while perhaps slightly different, was immediately recognizable. Many of today's refugee claimants are far more different than in the past. Those differences make it much more difficult for the refugee to "fit" in and unfortunately for the citizens to accept the need to be welcoming. This means that the responses of some of the developed countries have not been as enthusiastic as they once were or as they need to be.

There are of course, a few quick fixes to at least some of the underlying causes of such massive dislocation. Stop making and selling weapons of war; stop supporting dictators because they provide resources that rich countries need and stop trying to tell developing countries what is best for them. I appreciate that if those three things happened tomorrow, the refugee situation would not dramatically improve in the short term. But at least we would start the process of ensuring that no new refugees would be created.

In the meantime it is time for countries such as Canada to tighten their belts, review their priorities and start to contribute, at the very least, what we promised to do in 1969. That is - contribute 7% of our GDP to world aid. If we won't stop contributing to the creation of the underlying problems, if we won't take more people in, then the very least that we can do is provide money to those countries who will.