Most of the commentary on this past Sunday's World Refugee Day praised the courage of people who have been forcibly displaced and called for greater global solidarity and action to support refugees. I, instead, looked to two Oxford professors, Alexander Betts and Paul Collier, and their assessment of a broken refugee system and their call to transform it.
Following a visit to Jordan and its Za’atari refugee camp in 2015 that coincided almost exactly with the European refugee crisis, the two scholars realized “that the existing refugee system was broken, and that a new approach was needed.” They decided to write a book titled Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World to “contribute to the search for a more effective refugee system, fit for purpose in the twenty-first century.” According to them, “the refugee system is failing refugees badly” and, “[d]espite the fancy international edifice of agencies, and the warm glow of media attention around them, most of the world’s refugees receive virtually no material assistance at all from any of them.” (Emphasis in original.)
Betts and Collier denounce an obsolete refugee system designed at the onset of the Cold War to provide people who were persecuted by communist regimes an opportunity to live elsewhere. It was “unambiguously a product of its time and place, explicitly temporary and at the time intended only to apply to people in Europe.” The 1951 Refugee Convention that “explicitly focused on state persecution of individuals in postwar Europe was applied globally and permanently in 1967 [through the “Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees” that entered in force on October 1967] without modification.” (The United States did not sign the 1951 Refugee Convention, but did sign the 1967 Protocol.)
The co-authors call for the need to “build a new system that works” and to find an “international agency that can guide this task of building anew”. According to them, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) “is not currently equipped to be that agency.”
They condemn the international community for being “too lazy to distinguish the quest for refuge from the desire to migrate”. They draw a clear distinction between migrants and refugees: “refugees are not moving for gain but because they have no choice”; and, while “[m]igrants are lured by hope; refugees are fleeing fear.” This clarification is crucial; especially at a time when the definition of a refugee is being stretched to fit most migration needs and when the Biden administration is designing programs in Central America (see here and here) to be able to process, as “refugees”, those who are facing problems at home and/or who simply wish to reunite with family members or acquaintances in the United States. The desire to migrate is widespread, explain the authors: “Among the global population of 7 billion, only one person in seven lives in a honeypot country. Many of the other 6 billion would like to move to one of them.” By contrast, a very small percentage are refugees, around 20 million today.
Before leaving the floor to the two Oxford professors, I would like to underline the incredible lesson they bring forward through their collaboration. It is no secret to anyone familiar with the work of both men that Betts and Collins have different perspectives on certain aspects of migration. When asked how they came to agree on the book’s core arguments, the co-authors write:
The answer is that we discussed, deliberated and debated. We reasoned through, based on the evidence, until we reached agreement. Both of us found this enriching and enlightening, and often ended up rethinking our original positions.
This example of critical thinking and open-mindedness should be a source of inspiration for all, especially in today’s world of academia. They also avoided lesson-giving and moral shortcuts (an uncommon approach to sensitive humanitarian issues nowadays): “[T]hroughout this book, we eschew moral grandstanding: we do not preach the moral standards of sainthood.”
Those interested in learning more should certainly read Betts and Collier's book. But I offer below a number of the book's important points, followed by longer excerpts providing more detail on key matters. All that follows is quoted from the book's text; emphases are mine unless specified otherwise.
- Refugees are not like other migrants: they are not moving for gain but because they have no choice.
- People seeking refuge are not fleeing poverty; they are fleeing danger. [Emphasis in original.]
- Among the global population of 7 billion, only one person in seven lives in a honeypot country. Many of the other 6 billion would like to move to one of them. In contrast, less than 1 per cent of the world’s population are displaced, and less than half of them are refugees.
- In some cases, when individual risk is severe and targeted, people may need to seek asylum. But, for the most part, this is not what is driving the flight to refuge — it is vital to distinguish mass violence from such manifestations of individual insecurity. Mass violence is rare; insecurities are pervasive.
- The focus of international refugee law remains the antiquated notion of “persecution” but the practical reality is that fragility ultimately underlies most of today’s refugee movements.
- With the onset of the Cold War in 1948, the societies of Eastern Europe found themselves behind the Iron Curtain. The purpose of the refugee system was that the people who were persecuted by these [communist] regimes should have the right to live elsewhere, and to be well cared for while a new home could be arranged.
- The refugee system was designed in the late 1940s. It was unambiguously a product of its time and place, explicitly temporary and at the time intended only to apply to people in Europe.
- The 1951 Refugee Convention that explicitly focused on state persecution of individuals in postwar Europe was applied globally and permanently in 1967 without modification.
- The world has changed radically since 1948. The Convention and UNHCR are still there, ever less appropriate for modern needs.
- Even according to its own metrics, the refugee system is failing badly.
- The founding statute of UNHCR outlines two main roles: to provide protection to refugees and to find long-term solutions to their plight. Yet neither is met.
- Contrary to popular belief, most refugees are not in camps. ... The international community has still not adopted an adequate model for assistance outside camps.
- Despite the fancy international edifice of agencies, and the warm glow of media attention around them, most of the world’s refugees receive virtually no material assistance at all from any of them. [Emphasis in original.]
- When international agencies don’t know what else to do they convene a conference. Despite a series of these high-level conferences convened by the United Nations there is still no clear strategy for the future of the global refugee system.
- Helping countries to become resilient is not easy. International actions may be able to assist these processes, but each is primarily a domestic struggle.
- Less than 1 per cent of the world’s refugees will be lucky enough to get that lottery ticket [resettlement].
- For the most part, refugees stay in the countries close to home. Almost 90 per cent of refugees are in havens in the developing world, and just ten of these countries host around 60 per cent of the world’s refugees.
- The lists of fragile states typically include between forty and sixty countries around the world but only three of them account for half of all the world’s current displacement. One is dominant: the conflict in Syria alone has generated over 11 million displaced people. The other two conflicts are Afghanistan and Somalia.
- The other half of the world’s total displacement comes from recent collapses into mass violence and flight: South Sudan, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Ukraine, the Central African Republic, Myanmar, and Eritrea.
Refugees Are Not Migrants
There have been refugees for as long as there have been political communities. There is documentary evidence of people who needed to flee city-states in Ancient Greece or Rome in search of sanctuary.
At its core, refuge entails the principle that when people face serious harm at home, they should be allowed to flee and receive access to a safe haven, at least until they can go home or be permanently reintegrated elsewhere.
Refugees are not like other migrants: they are not moving for gain but because they have no choice.
At its core is the psychological impetus for the decision. Migrants are lured by hope; refugees are fleeing fear. Migrants hope for honeypots; refugees need havens.
Among the global population of 7 billion, only one person in seven lives in a honeypot country. Many of the other 6 billion would like to move to one of them. In contrast, less than 1 per cent of the world’s population are displaced, and less than half of them are refugees.
Were the international community to be too intellectually lazy to distinguish the quest for refuge from the desire to migrate, a vital need which is manageable to meet would get drowned in a tidal wave of would-be migrants.
People seeking refuge are not fleeing poverty; they are fleeing danger. [Emphasis in original.]
The flight for refuge happens when a society ceases to provide security for its people. For one reason or another, it falls into violent disorder. During the decade 1935-45 Europe fell into such disorder. The rise of fascism made Germany dangerous for Jews, and triggered a civil war in Spain.
In some cases, when individual risk is severe and targeted, people may need to seek asylum. But, for the most part, this is not what is driving the flight to refuge — it is vital to distinguish mass violence from such manifestations of individual insecurity. Mass violence is rare; insecurities are pervasive.
Numbers and Destination
There are more people displaced than at any time since the Second World War. Most of these 65 million uprooted people remain within their own countries, but nearly a third — over 20 million — had no alternative but to cross a border. When they did, they became refugees.
For the most part, refugees stay in the countries close to home. Almost 90 per cent of refugees are in havens in the developing world, and just ten of these countries host around 60 per cent of the world’s refugees. Several of them — countries like Iran, Ethiopia, and Jordan — have been repeat hosts for decades. These havens are not atypically generous: they are simply located in a “rough neighbourhood”.
Until recently, the world largely ignored the plight of refugees. The default response was for rich countries to wait for an emergency and then contribute money to the United Nations humanitarian system. This money was spent on establishing refugee camps providing food, clothing, and shelter until people could go home. ... This might have made sense if refugees were able to go home relatively soon. But since the end of the Cold War, the average duration of exile has been over a decade and so the default response has been hopeless.
Driven out by fear, rather than lured on by hope, refugees overwhelmingly head for havens that are proximate.
Countries such as Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo did not become haven countries because they put up “welcome” signs at railway stations. They became haven countries by default: refugees flocked to them because they were close by.
Main Countries Involved
Refuge is what statisticians call a ”fat tails” phenomenon: a very low likelihood event but with catastrophic consequences that create a thick tail to a distribution curve.
The lists of fragile states typically include between forty and sixty countries around the world but only three of them account for half of all the world’s current displacement. Even within those three, one is dominant: the conflict in Syria alone has generated over 11 million displaced people.
The other two conflicts that with Syria account for half of all displacement are Afghanistan and Somalia.
The other half of the world’s total displacement comes from this steady drizzle of mass violence, not sufficiently dramatic to dominate the daily news, but still the stuff of tragedy. The recent such collapses into mass violence and flight are South Sudan, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Ukraine, the Central African Republic, Myanmar, and Eritrea.
The Options for Flight: Internally Displaced (IDP) and Refugee
Where fragility [state fragility] crystalizes into mass violence, civilian populations need to flee their homes. The focus of international refugee law remains the antiquated notion of “persecution” but the practical reality is that fragility ultimately underlies most of today’s refugee movements.
The concept of “internally displaced” (IDP) describes somebody who is displaced in his or her own country. Often a displacement leads some people to move within the country as IDPs, and others to leave it as refugees. Sometimes people do not have an option.
German Jews were at one extreme: terrorized by the fascist government, they were at risk everywhere in Germany, and so flight abroad was the only safe resort. In contrast, the people terrorized by Boko Haram, a supremacist Islamic insurgency operating in north-east Nigeria, may have the option of moving elsewhere within Nigeria.
In Syria most of the 11 million displaced have remained in the country. This was probably inherent to the nature of the violence, which has been predominantly territorial.
International agencies and the international media tend to focus mainly on those who cross borders.
The Refugee System Was Designed in the Late 1940s
With the onset of the Cold War in 1948, the societies of Eastern Europe found themselves behind the Iron Curtain. Led by the USA, the concern of Western democracies was for opponents of the Communist regimes imposed on these societies by the Soviet Union. The purpose of the refugee system was that the people who were persecuted by these regimes should have the right to live elsewhere, and to be well cared for while a new home could be arranged. Through an international treaty now signed by 145 countries — the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees — and an international organization — the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) — governments committed to reciprocally allow people fleeing persecutions onto their territories.
Reflecting its intention, the legal definition of a refugee was someone who is outside her or his country of nationality and faces a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. It was unambiguously a product of its time and place, explicitly temporary and at the time intended only to apply to people in Europe.
Nor is the political situation like the late 1940s. The Cold War is long over.
Obsolete System
Time did not stand still. Refuge is as relevant today as it was in the late 1940s: the numbers speak for themselves. But both the causes of flight and the appropriate responses to flight have changed radically. Some refugees are indeed still fleeing persecution by their state.
But now the overwhelming majority are now fleeing disorder: the fallout from state breakdown.
The world has changed radically since 1948. As other global institutions designed in the late 1940s hit crisis, they were reformed. But, being out of sight, refugees never received the global attention needed for major change. The Convention and UNHCR are still there, ever less appropriate for modern needs. In the absence of root-and-branch reform, they have drifted into piecemeal adjustments.
In a classic instance of Eurocentrism, a convention explicitly focused on state persecution of individuals in postwar Europe was applied globally and permanently in 1967 without modification. Unsurprisingly, several of the countries that provide the main havens for refugees — notably those in the Middle East and Asia — have not signed it, believing it not fit for the realities of refuge in their regions. Elsewhere, its wording has since been tortured into reinterpretations stretched for new circumstances.
Meanwhile, UNHCR found itself with refugee situations that had not been envisaged. A model intended for the temporary care of the persecuted was confronted with a mass flight from violence.
Though a product of the cold War, the Convention has noble aims, and some of its principles remain as relevant today. But arcane disputes about how words in a treaty can be reinterpreted to fit today’s challenges miss the central point.
The way forward is not to reinterpret past wording, but to build a new system that works. We need an international agency that can guide this task of building anew. UNHCR is not currently equipped to be that agency, but it must become so.
The policy and media focus has been on the 10 per cent who try to reach the developing world, rather than the 90 per cent who do not.
Refugees — as refugees — need and should be entitled to expect three things: rescue, autonomy, and an eventual route out of limbo. Currently, the majority of refugees are not getting any of them.
Even according to its own metrics, the refugee system is failing badly.
The founding statute of UNHCR outlines two main roles: to provide protection to refugees and to find long-term solutions to their plight. Yet neither is met.
[L]ess than 1 per cent of the world’s refugees will be lucky enough to get that lottery ticket [resettlement].
Contrary to popular belief, most refugees are not in camps. ... The international community has still not adopted an adequate model for assistance outside camps. Despite the fancy international edifice of agencies, and the warm glow of media attention around them, most of the world’s refugees receive virtually no material assistance at all from any of them. [Emphasis in original.]
2015 European Refugee Crisis
Then suddenly in April 2015 something changed. … There had been no overnight escalation in the number of refugees in the world. What changed was that, for the first time, refugees moved spontaneously in large numbers from the poorer regions of the world to the richest. With mass violence in Syria since 2011, some 10 million people had been displaced: 6 million within their own country and 4 million to neighbouring countries. Initially most had not moved further afield than Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. But since there are limited opportunities for refugees in those countries, the dynamic began to change.
For the first time in its history, Europe received a mass influx of refugees from outside of the European region.
While this catastrophe was absorbing political and media attention, the parallel tragedy was the neglect of the nearly 90 per cent of the world’s refugees who remained in the developing world.
Fewer than one in ten of the 4 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan receive any material support from the United Nations or its implementing partners. [Emphasis in original.]
When international agencies don’t know what else to do they convene a conference. Despite a series of these high-level conferences convened by the United Nations there is still no clear strategy for the future of the global refugee system.
What, in the twenty-first century, should the world do about refugees? In this book, we seek to answer that question. To get there we start by diagnosis: why is the global refugee system not working today? From that base we suggest what needs to be done to build a system that works.
The Need for a New Approach
The moment for a rethink is long overdue.
The existing model is mired in collective action failure, and bereft of new thinking. Not only is there a lack of practical new thinking, but the very institutions that should be generating it are clinging desperately on the status quo.
Targeted persecution remains a real threat for a minority, but the overwhelming majority of refugees are fleeing a single cause: insecurity in fragile states. The relevant threats are to groups from violent areas rather than from states to targeted individuals.
[H]elping countries to become resilient is not easy. States need to enhance their legitimacy in the eyes of their citizens, and also enhance their capacity to maintain security. International actions may be able to assist these processes, but each is primarily a domestic struggle.