No Refuge

Civil wars and insurgencies have displaced the most refugees in absolute numbers. Syrians account for nearly one-quarter of refugees worldwide. From the start of the protest movement against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, dissidents disappeared into prisons, where torture is the norm, and the regime sought to punish recalcitrant populations and capture their neighborhoods with sieges, indiscriminate bombing, and chemical weapons. As the opposition took up arms and civil war ensued, many militant groups preyed on the population as well, often targeting civilians on a sectarian basis. Even as Assad consolidates his victory over rebel factions, more than ten times as many Syrians are fleeing the country as are returning home. Young male refugees in particular are fearful of conscription should they return.

Afghans make up the second-largest refugee population, at some 2.6 million; their migration has occurred in waves over the past four decades, beginning with the Soviet invasion at the end of 1979. Under a decade-long occupation, some six million Afghans fled to neighboring Pakistan and Iran. Until Syrians surpassed them thirty-two years later, they constituted the world’s largest refugee population. The Soviet withdrawal in 1989 both facilitated some returns and generated more refugees, first due to civil war, then the Taliban takeover, and, since 2001, a U.S.-led counterinsurgency campaign. The Afghan refugee population continues to grow not just from people fleeing current political violence, but also as children of refugees are born in exile.

South Sudan, which in 2011 became the world’s newest country, is the third-largest producer of refugees. As former Vice President Riek Machar contested control of the government, security forces and militias loyal to President Salva Kiir massacred and pillaged villages in southern Unity State, where members of Machar’s Nuer ethnic group predominate, as part of what UN investigators described as a “scorched-earth strategy.” Forces loyal to Machar are accused of abuses as well. More than six million South Sudanese have fled predation, mass atrocities, and conditions nearing famine. A peace agreement signed in September 2018 is considered fragile.

Foreign forces are fighting in one-third of armed conflicts today, and in still more conflicts, arms, funds, and militants cross borders. Such internationalization can prolong conflicts, as warring parties can replenish their resources more readily, postponing the prospects of either a negotiated settlement or decisive victory. Foreign backing can also reduce belligerents’ reliance on local populations, leaving civilians vulnerable to abuse. Negotiated settlements are more difficult to achieve when compromises must take into account not just the local warring parties, but also international rivalries. Many observers, for example, see Pakistan as having long undermined the prospects of an Afghan peace process by sheltering the Taliban.

In other instances, persecution directed or abetted by the state forces people from their homes and across international borders. Eritrea, for example, has persistently been a source of refugees, driven in particular by the conscription of young people into a national service program that a UN commission of inquiry described as “an institution where slavery-like practices are routine.”

The largest such example today is Myanmar’s massacres and expulsions of the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority rendered stateless by discriminatory citizenship laws. Seven hundred thousand Rohingya, out of a population of about one million, fled the military and local Buddhist vigilantes to Bangladesh in a matter of weeks in the second half of 2017.

The system created to manage these crises—and protect refugees’ rights—is fraying like never before. Without reforms, the refugee population is likely to remain at historically high numbers, and new refugees are likely to be displaced for long durations.

Campaigns to create homogenous territories by expelling minorities are as old as the nation state. More recently, democratization and globalization have in some cases stoked such ethnically motivated violence. Representational political systems have given a degree of political power to previously excluded minorities and the specter of transnational terrorism has given majority groups an excuse to fear even small minorities and rationalize collective punishment as self-defense.

Weak institutions, often the legacy of colonial rule or foreign interference, underlie other refugee crises. In such cases, dire economic circumstances typically accompany violence that is perpetrated, directed, or tolerated by the state, or that the state is unable to snuff out.

State failure takes different forms. In the Northern Triangle region of Central America, for example, the immediate impetus for tens of thousands of migrants to seek asylum in the United States has been endemic gang and domestic violence. Police and judicial systems in these countries have failed to protect individuals targeted by gangs, whose power is rooted in the region’s political history.

El Salvador’s gangs, for example, have their origins in the U.S.-backed anticommunist counterinsurgency of the late 1980s. Some 350,000 Salvadorans fled to the United States, where the gangs were founded. When many of their members were deported in the late 1990s, they overwhelmed public security and judicial institutions that had been hollowed out by civil war.

Venezuela, the source of one of today’s fastest-growing migrations, represents a different kind of state failure. Mismanagement of the economy and corruption has caused prices to soar and staples to vanish from stores. Hunger has become rampant and black markets have proliferated. Organized crime and small-time rackets are on the rise, as are homicide rates. Police are often said to be the perpetrators.

Protests mounted in February 2014 against deteriorating security conditions. These drew harsh government reprisals, including abusive detentions, galvanizing broader demands for change and setting off the current mass migration. Countries hosting the bulk of Venezuelans abroad asked the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor in 2018 to investigate officials accused of rights abuses. These countries do not, however, typically recognize Venezuelans as refugees, more often admitting them on temporary residency visas.

As a consequence, some 85 percent of refugees are concentrated in low- and middle-income countries. The majority of refugees do not live in camps but instead among local populations in cities and border towns; hospitality there can wear thin when large-scale arrivals depress wages while inflating rents. Host countries often designate refugees as “temporary guests” rather than bona fide refugees, thus exempting themselves from the refugee convention.

Reinforcing this temporary status, many host states adopt laws and policies that block refugees from entering the workforce legally. Yet the realities of modern-day civil wars, such as Syria’s or Afghanistan’s, will in many cases preclude refugees’ safe return for years or even decades, meaning that the precarious arrangements in which refugees now find themselves are likely to become the norm.

For some, the prospect of such circumstances leaves only one option: taking the risky flight to more affluent nations to seek asylum. Without visas, they must circumvent border controls, in many cases requiring the assistance of smugglers. For the relatively small number who make it to their destinations—most often Northern Europe, in the case of Middle Eastern and South Asian refugees—and are granted asylum, they must contend with integrating into new societies—learning a new language, finding housing, and securing work, for example.

Resettled refugees face challenges similar to those granted asylum. Refugees are often at a significant disadvantage compared with the native-born population and other immigrants, lacking language skills and local networks. Many are low-skilled, their educations interrupted by war or inadequately provided in camps. Even high-skilled refugees have difficulty getting their credentials recognized. Moreover, many live with trauma or disability.

With time, however, refugees become self-sufficient while bringing benefits to their host communities. In the United States, for instance, well-developed public and civil society programs—the world’s largest—have resettled three million refugees since 1980. Economists have found that these resettled refugees become self-sufficient within several years, catching up to or even exceeding the employment rate of the U.S.-born population and becoming net contributors to the tax base.

Asylees in Europe have historically faced employment rates lower than that of the overall population, but programs such as vocational schools and apprenticeships promise mutual benefits for refugees and receiving countries. An aging population and strong economy in Germany have created large labor shortages, and nearly four hundred thousand of the million refugees who arrived in 2015 are already employed or apprenticed.