The Refugee Crisis: Global Solutions

• In Event: The Global Refugee Crisis: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

Abstract

The paper provides an overview of the scale and causes of the global refugee crisis. It argues that the crisis will only be resolved when it is resolved where the vast majority of forced migrants are: in the global south. What is needed, the paper argues, is a new sort of global compact between the north, which has the resources, and the south, which houses the refugees. These resources should be focussed on inclusion, which is to say granting forced migrants in the global south (generally, but not always, in the first countries of asylum) as much access as possible to work, to mobility rights, and to education. Both the global north, which does not want and politically cannot cope, with mass movements of forced migrants, and the global south, where – whatever happens – most will remain, have an interest in such a compact. And it is essential to improving at least somewhat the lives of the some of the most impoverished and persecuted people on the planet.

Author

• Randall A. Hansen, University of Toronto