4.12 – Refugees

There are 43.7 million refugees worldwide at last count (June 2024), according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which defines refugees as “people who have fled their countries to escape conflict, violence, or persecution and have sought safety in another country.”  Natural disaster is also included among the defining causes by Oxford/Google, and UNHCR acknowledges that such calamities will increasingly force displacement of people.

Another 68.3 million people are classified as “internally displaced persons” (IDPs), who leave their homes for similar reasons but remain within the borders of their home country.

These numbers are rising steadily, and as climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of sudden-onset disasters, such as floods and wildfires, and slow-onset disasters like desertification and sea-level rise, the scale of movement is expected to increase even more. Recent examples include Storm Daniel in Libya, which caused over 11,000 deaths and displaced at least 30,000 people in September 2023, severe floods in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, resulting in over 150 fatalities and displacing around half a million people, and the four-decade long drought in Somalia, which continues to cause massive displacement.

Criminal enterprise also plays a significant and often under-recognized role in forced migration. The illicit arms trade and smuggling networks can profit from desperate conditions that compel mass displacement.

Most refugees (31.6 million) are served by UNHCR, with support including emergency response, interim protection of rights, and assistance with return, resettlement, or naturalization. Palestinian refugees and displaced persons (6 million) are served instead by the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA). Other IDPs are served by a Special Rapporteur in the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, to a degree limited by national sovereignty. 

Unfortunately, the world as a whole is poorly served by our current patchwork of piecemeal refugee management policies. 

Refugees are generally met with minimal support when reaching a new country, slowing their efforts to get on their feet and contribute to society. Host countries typically invest as little as possible, as politicians treat refugees as a hot potato or a cudgel with which to score points against political rivals. Our current approach also generates political instability, with popular resentment stoked by demagoguery rather than mitigated through proactive, comprehensive policy.

We can be smarter about this. A global investment in language training and workforce development would help refugees become self-sufficient much more quickly, benefiting the economies of host countries while reducing the strain on public budgets from higher cost services such as housing, food, and medical assistance. It would also spread costs more equitably compared to concentrating the burden in a small number of destination countries. 

More ambitiously, we could look at global virtual citizenship mechanisms, such as reviving the model of the Nansen Passport, an internationally recognized travel document for stateless people issued by the League of Nations between 1922 and 1938. Even if limited in scope (e.g. conferring less than full citizenship rights), a global ID for refugees could facilitate provision of language training and workforce development services, and perhaps broader protections as well. 

Still more ambitiously, a new global governance system could serve to promote human rights everywhere, to help protect people from violence when the integrity of their local legal systems fail to do so. The Eurasia Group has identified ungoverned spaces that lack such protection as a top global risk for 2025. This upstream solution would help people live more safely where they are, reducing the number who become refugees. The recent return of former refugees to Syria and Gaza indicate that people generally prefer to be home when it’s a viable option, even following extensive destruction, a preference UNHCR confirms and quantifies as the most widely applicable refugee settlement solution.

Notably, a conversation is emerging about rethinking social attitudes toward migration, which can boost destination economies and may be required to sustain populations that are increasingly weighted toward retirees.

Examples such as the EU’s Schengen Area suggest the possibility of liberalizing migration more generally, which could have dramatically positive impacts on the world economy.