‘Recasting’ needed in global response to refugee crisis, report says

TheStar.com
Jan 24, 2019
Nicholas Keung

A Canadian-led group is calling on world leaders to form a network of countries to work together outside the constraints of the United Nations to tackle the global refugee crisis.

The World Refugee Council, chaired by former Canadian foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy, has made 55 recommendations aimed at reversing the UN’s top-down approach to the issue by having a core group of like-minded countries spearheading creative solutions and allowing them to bypass the bureaucracy of the international body.

In a report to be released Thursday at UN headquarters in New York City, the council calls for the creation of a Global Action Network to tackle the crisis through such means as funding refugee relief by confiscating foreign assets of corrupt rulers responsible for world conflicts or by creating early warning systems to forecast repression and incitements to violence that can cause people to flee for their lives.

The network --consisting of five or six countries --would take a similar approach to the initiative spearheaded by Canada in the 1990s that ultimately led to the global ban on landmines and involved partnerships among countries, non-governmental organizations, international groups and the UN.

As of last June, the United Nations Refugee Agency said 68.5 million people were forcibly displaced, including 40 million who relocated within their own countries and 25.4 million who made it out of their homeland. (The balance were asylum seekers.) In 2013, there were only 51.2 million displaced people worldwide, including 33.3 million displaced internally and 16.7 million refugees.
“What we’ve witnessed during our consultations across five continents is that there is an appetite to end the growing impunity and deficit of accountability on the part of those responsible for the conflicts and other actions that are forcing people to flee their homes and countries,” said Axworthy.

“There is also the reality that some nations are shirking their responsibilities to protect refugees, often driven by nationalism and xenophobia to achieve short-term political gain,” he said. “At the same time, genuine concerns in receiving states deriving from uncontrolled movements of people need to be addressed.”

The council’s recommendations followed the passage of the UN Global Compact for Refugees in December, which took more than two years of negotiation just to finalize the language to better define co-operation and share responsibilities among member states.

“This distempered time, with its attacks on global refugee principles, demands a recasting of the system to protect those fleeing danger, supply host country needs, alleviate citizens’ fears, hold those leaders generating displacement accountable and re-establish international co-operation,” said the 126-page report.

“International co-operation is losing ground to the trolls of nationalism. There needs to be a clear call for reforms to meet the contemporary reality.”

The World Refugee Council was launched in 2017 by the Centre for International Governance Innovation, an Ontario-based think tank, with a self-appointed body of two-dozen global political figures, academics and civil-society representatives to develop an action plan to tackle the skyrocketing number of refugees around the world.

The proposed Global Action Network should begin as a small group of committed progressive governments and other organizations willing to work together to address the root causes of the crisis and respond to the needs of those currently displaced.
“In contrast to a rigid structure of a top-down hierarchy, a network can shift and adapt as circumstances require drawing on different actors depending on the issue, deploying task forces or creating ad hoc working groups as the need requires,” the report explains.

“In short, the network will provide the most flexible and effective way to marshal the energy and commitment of its disparate members --as they move in parallel on various fronts, at the same time, to advance the changes that are needed.”

Among the priorities recommended to the network’s member states:

• Passing domestic law to seize frozen assets of warlords and corrupt leaders and use the money for aid and development of the population of their country of origin;
• Making trade arrangements with refugee-hosting countries to ease their economic and political pressures;
• Asking international financial institutions such as the World Bank to offer special consideration to refugee-hosting countries when setting terms for loans and investments;
• Combating growing nationalism and countering any negative narrative attached to refugees and asylum seekers.

“This is a report that will not sit comfortably on a shelf,” said Axworthy, adding that it will draw on the skills and experiences of its members and partners to make these reforms happen.