Two days ago World Refugee Day drew attention to the millions of people whose flight from the world’s troublespots is so often misrepresented or exploited for political gain. By grim coincidence, on the same day a Hungarian court sentenced four human traffickers to life imprisonment for causing the deaths of 71 migrants who suffocated in a locked truck at the side of an Austrian motorway in 2015.
The United Nations High Commission for refugees puts the global total of refugees at around 70 million, 30 million more than it was a decade ago. Four fifths have been displaced for more than five years and one fifth have been unable to return home for more than 20 years. According to the UN’s latest figures, more than two thirds of the total originates from just five countries: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan and Syria. (Nearly four million Syrians have sought refuge in Turkey, Pakistan hosts 1.5 million Afghans, and Uganda has received more than a million refugees from its neighbours.) The only developed country in the top 10 recipients is Germany. It had taken in a little more than a million people up to the end of 2018, half of them from Syria. Mass migration is not a remote problem: nearly four million of the world’s current refugees are Venezuelans. If the situation there deteriorates further another million could be displaced with a year. It is important to note that refugees seek safety within their own country, or in an adjacent country. Less than one in 20 seeks asylum in another place – even though media coverage often suggests otherwise. Nevertheless, the influx of large numbers of migrants into poor or middle-income countries inevitably produces economic tensions and tends to provoke xenophobia.
This is readily apparent in Trinidad’s chaotic attempts to register 28,000 migrants for one-year work permits. The Rowley government recently refused to extend its registration deadline even though only three of five registration centres were functioning properly. Furthermore Trinidad has begun to turn back refugees from its shore – shirking its international obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol on the rights of asylum seekers.
There are no simple solutions to the complexity posed by mass migration, as can be seen by the shameful proliferation of detention centres in the United States. Nevertheless, the hardship which has caused migrant crises in the Middle East, North Africa and the Americas has not received the media coverage it deserves.
Faced with the potential influx of a large group of strangers it is understandable that many of us argue against naive open border policies that could encourage further migration. But hardline attitudes overlook the depth of suffering underlying these crises, and they ignore what Abraham Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature’. With sufficient imagination the prospect of welcoming strangers, even in large numbers, can seem much less daunting.
In 2015, shortly after the 71 suffocated migrants were discovered in Austria, the Icelandic writer Bryndis Bjorgvinsdottir penned a moving open letter to her government:. “Refugees are our future spouses,” she wrote, “[they are our] best friends, our next soul mate, the drummer in our children’s band, our next colleague, Miss Iceland 2022, the carpenter who finally fixes our bathroom, the chef in the cafeteria, the fireman, the hacker and the television host … People [to whom] we’ll never be able to say: ‘Your life is worth less than mine.’” The message was endorsed by thousands of her compatriots and it persuaded the government to increase its refugee quota.
Bjorgvinsdottir’s central insight is worth recalling at a moment when compassion fatigue is dangerously close to becoming our new normal. Today’s migrants are tomorrow’s friends, neighbours and family. Seen in that light, who among us can view with indifference the suffering of our future companions?
