Refugee Crisis

First of all, I would like to welcome everyone to this crucial and timely debate “Refugees should always be accepted by other countries?” hosted by The Muslim Debate, an online debate platform of MUSLIM Institute. This debate not only seeks to answer some of the most challenging questions about refugees and their right to seek asylum in other countries but also gives everyone around the world an opportunity to voice their opinion on this important issue.

The importance of this debate can be realized when one looks at the figures and statistics on refugees around the world provided by the UNHCR. There were 19.5 million refugees worldwide by the end of 2014. For the first time, Turkey became the country hosting the largest number of refugees with 1.59 million, followed by Pakistan (1.51 million) and Lebanon (1.15 million). Also by the end of 2014, Syria had become the world’s top source country for refugees, overtaking Afghanistan, which had held the position for more than three decades.

Conflict and warfare around the world has unfortunately led to an upsurge in the number of refugees. Whether it be Middle East, South Asia, Central America or Africa, refugee crisis affect nearly every country around the globe. In the latest exodus from Syria and Iraq, neighbouring states such as Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey as well as European states have faced an unprecedented challenge to host huge number of refugees. As a result, sadly, estimates today for the number of refugees worldwide are predicted to be far greater than what was recorded at the end of 2014.

According to the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention, every individual has the right to seek refuge if he is unable to avail the protection in his own country. However, this debate is about whether a country should ‘always’ accept refugees or not. Although the 1951 Convention protects people who meet the criteria for refugee status, however, it does not prescribe a particular procedure nor does it ensures that every ‘refugee’ gets refuge in a particular country. That decision lies with that respective country, which assesses applications of refugees through a designated authority.

Countries which refuse to accept refugees usually voice economic concerns, worries about substantial demographic change, security or other political challenges. But are these reasons legitimate? Does it matter where the refugee is coming from or should all potential refugees be treated in the same way? Should countries be selective when it comes to accepting refugees (Muslims/Non-Muslims, Syrian/Rohingya, etc.)? Are the 1951 convention obligations binding upon all the member states? Is there any need for amendments to refugee convention? Or has the standards to accept refugees changed since the convention in 1951? Does it make a difference if the refugee is fleeing from a civil war? And should an individual country be solely responsible for the decision to accept refugee or can the international community intervene in any way?

These are some of the many questions which currently surround this debate. In order to seek answers to them and many others, we look forward to remarks from our respected debaters as well as guests. Going For the motion is Dr. Kirsten McConnachie from University of Warwick. Defending the motion is Mr. David Goodhart from The Integration Hub. Later in the opening session we will also be joined by Dr. Olaf Kleist from University of Osnabrück and Ambassador Tariq Osman Hyder from Pakistan as featured guests. Once again, welcome to all of you and thank you for participating at The Muslim Debate.

The reception of refugees is an increasingly emotional and polarised issue, particularly in Europe. It is also an issue where the stakes could not be higher. There are 19.5 million refugees in the world today and their lives depend on our answer to this question. 

With so much at stake it is essential to ensure some basic facts are understood. Language matters, and it matters particularly to this debate because different legal categories of person attract different legal protections. The definition of a refugee in international law and the nature of states’ obligations towards refugees have repeatedly been explained by refugee lawyers to the press, politicians and wider public. Yet lack of understanding continues, as is apparent even in our Moderator’s opening remarks to this debate.

To argue this motion, therefore, I must first explain the position of refugees in international law.  

The current regime for the protection of refugees was created in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the scale of displacement makes our current situation seem manageable. Tens of millions of people in Europe were displaced by the Second World War, followed after 1945 by a further exodus of people fleeing communism. In Asia, as many as 50 million people were displaced during the Sino-Japanese War, and a further 15 million people were displaced by the Partition of India. In the Middle East, more than 700,000 Palestinians were displaced by the creation of Israel.

The world was in turmoil, and people were forced to move in dizzyingly vast numbers. The response from the major powers of the day was to recognise displacement as an international problem necessitating an international solution. Their notion of ‘international’ was, it must be said, essentially Eurocentric, with limited awareness of or concern for displacement in Asia. Nevertheless, the core point remains true today: refugee flows are not refugees’ fault, nor are they the sole responsibility of neighbouring countries.

The centrepiece of the United Nations response was the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, which defines a refugee and outlines core responsibilities and entitlements. A refugee is defined as a person who is outside his or her country of origin and is unable to return due to a “well-founded fear of persecution” on the basis of a number of specified grounds (race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group). In several important respects this definition is narrower than the popular understanding of a refugee. First, it excludes persons who are displaced within their country of origin and who have not crossed an international border. Second, it is forward-looking rather than backward-looking; i.e. it is based on future fear of persecution rather than past experience of it per se.  Third, it requires a nexus between the fear of persecution and the listed Convention grounds, and in so doing excludes (among others) people fleeing natural disaster and people who have left their country for purely economic reasons. 

The Refugee Convention thus establishes a crucial distinction between refugees who are entitled to international protection and migrants who are not. However, in at least one respect the definition is wider than is generally recognised. Refugee status is not granted or conferred by outside authority but is inherent in the individual (albeit that, in practice, ensuring protection requires administrative recognition). Furthermore, there should be no discrimination between different groups. Protection flows from the individual’s status as a refugee, not from their nationality, political opinion or any other characteristic.

Of 193 UN member states, 145 have ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention and are legally bound by its contents. States that have not ratified the Refugee Convention are not so bound: with the exception of one central obligation, which is the centrepiece of refugee protection and a rule of customary international law binding on all states. This is the obligation of non-refoulement, which states that a refugee cannot be expelled or returned to a place where she or he would face a threat to life or freedom.

The implications for our current debate should be clear. Though the obligation is defined negatively (refugees cannot be returned) rather than positively (refugees should always be accepted), the result is similar. By virtue of the international legal obligations which have been accepted by an overwhelming majority of the world’s states, and particularly by the customary international law obligation of non-refoulement, refugees must be accepted. 

Readers in Europe may be tempted to draw distinctions from this historical overview, arguing that the world today is different from post-war Europe. This is true: post-war Europe was economically and politically devastated from insecurity and violence that we can – fortunately – hardly imagine today. Yet the response was of cooperation, based on a recognition of shared humanity and shared responsibility. This political maturity is absent today, replaced by a climate of fear and fear-mongering.

The legal regime for refugee protection is far from perfect but it exists for precisely the situation that we currently face: to protect those who are in need of protection. And it was created in the knowledge that binding legal commitments were necessary to ensure that this protection would be granted. This is not a debate to be argued solely in law – there are also powerful ethical and economic arguments to support my position – but it is important to recognise that it is an area governed by law, and to understand some essential facts about the nature of our legal obligations.

Having clarified the legal position, this motion is clear: should refugees always be accepted by other countries?  The answer is, straightforwardly,  yes.

No refugees should not always be accepted by other countries. No country can have an open-ended commitment to take an unlimited number of outsiders.

There is such a thing as society and it is a complex organism based on habits of trust and cooperation and a shared language, history and way of life. Most successful, modern welfare democracies are relatively open to outsiders but are based on the principle of fellow citizen favouritism—citizen rights come before universal rights and even more so since, thanks mainly to social democratic government of the past 60 years, the value of national citizenship (in terms of access to free public goods) has risen so dramatically.

Charity begins at home but it doesn’t end there and rich, liberal, Christian countries like Britain do feel moral obligations to suffering humanity—both politicians and the general public. But there are many ways in which those obligations can be fulfilled—through foreign aid to poor and fragile states, through helping countries to trade their way out of poverty, through military intervention to restore order and through providing either temporary or permanent refuge to people in trouble.

In my view far too much emphasis has been placed on this last method for helping the desperate: we have the resources and technology to help at distance. We can fulfill our moral obligations without tempting the most dynamic people from poor societies that desperately need them to lead political reform and stimulate economic growth.

For decades the grounds for claiming refuge or asylum have been steadily widened—the 1951 Convention has been subject to constant legal evolution and it has been supplemented by the EU’s 2004 Humanitarian Protection directive and underpinned by the European Convention on Human Rights. According to former Labour home secretary, Charles Clarke, there are now “hundreds of millions” who could legitimately claim protection. But this was only feasible in an era when people were too poor or ignorant or too locked up in prison states like Iraq or Libya to take advantage of this theoretical generosity.

Now that our bluff has been called and millions are pouring through Europe's back door it has become not so much a foundation stone of European civilization, as the refugee lobby claims, but an embarrassing example of European hypocrisy and wishful thinking.

We need different rules to reflect our more mobile times and to keep numbers to a level that is broadly acceptable to European publics—for too long this issue has been a matter of law and not of politics, the preserve of small groups of legal experts and NGOers.

That means keeping the offer of permanent refuge to those genuinely facing individual persecution—people such as African opposition leaders, many Ahmadiyyan Muslims [who are not regarded as Muslims as per law of many Muslim countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - Debate Editor] in Pakistan, Nato interpreters in Afghanistan—but not extending it to everyone who lives in an authoritarian country or whose country is experiencing some kind of conflict.

We should also continue to offer at least time limited refuge to those caught up in particularly all-consuming natural disasters or conflicts like Syria. Though even in the Syrian case we should select the most needy—not allow the most mobile and affluent to select us, as we do now—and for the rest turn refugee camps into decent small towns with schools, clinics and jobs, where people can remain as close as possible to their homes and can prepare to rebuild once peace returns.

This is what most people want and it is up to us in the rich world to make sure both that the conditions in temporary towns are good enough and that the poor neighbouring countries where they are mainly situated are adequately compensated for the disruption.

The idea that 1.5m refugees a year is trivial for a continent of 500m ignores the cumulative effect of such small changes and the fact that they are not spread evenly but are mainly coming to 30 or 40 urban areas in north western Europe. Illegal Mexican immigration into the US started as a trickle in the late 1970s and in another 20 years the US will be one third Hispanic—one of the factors behind Donald Trump.

As Dutch writer Paul Scheffer has put it—we in Europe tend to underestimate our ability to control our borders and vastly overestimate our ability to integrate people into our complex, liberal, modern societies.

Debaters, guests and users’ statements and comments are their independent thoughts, opinions, beliefs, viewpoints and are not necessarily that of MUSLIM Institute's.