By: JP Schnapper-Casteras
Today, the UN announced a 14% rise in refugees from last year — the highest since 2002. This was due in large part to significant growth in the number of Iraqi refugees. By some estimates, a total of 4 million Iraqis are refugees: half of them internally displaced, the other half in neighboring countries. This is the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world, and the “equivalent of a Katrina-induced displacement every two months.”
This announcement prompted some people to feel guilty and support the Kennedy-Smith “Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act.” Pope Benedict XVI responded by urging world leaders to accept and care for more refugees.
Elizabeth Ferris, a senior Brookings scholar, wrote a column in the Washington Post criticizing the U.S. for having “no strategy to meet the humanitarian needs for those displaced by war….” She went on to call on America to develop, finance, and implement a comprehensive refugee plan, in collaboration with international organizations like UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration. Although her comparison of the U.S. to Sweden and Syria is hopefully meant more rhetorically than literally (see, e.g., Syria as a “poverty trap” for Iraqi refugees), her ultimate recommendations are sound.
Irrespective of specific policy proposals for the war in Iraq, Democrats and Republicans alike can agree that the U.S. should assume a greater role in curbing or at least mitigating the escalating refugee crisis in that country. We should do so for humanitarian and security purposes, and, in the Pope’s words, as a “dutiful gesture of human solidarity.”
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