July 18, 2017, Cairo – International
Rescue Committee President David Miliband said in an interview published today
in the Cairo Review of Global Affairs
that wealthy Western countries and Gulf states should open their doors to more
refugees.
Miliband, who served as British foreign
secretary from 2007 to 2010, applauded nations providing humanitarian aid to
address what he called “unprecedented flows of people” since World War II. But,
he added, “It’s not enough to be a good aid provider. You, richer countries,
Western countries, should be good at welcoming refugees as well.”
The fact that only 120,000 places were
available for refugee settlement in 2016 “is very damaging, both substantively
and symbolically,” Miliband said. “The traditionally big donors in the West
have their own economic challenges that have led to a philosophy of
quote-unquote ‘charity begins at home,’” he explained. “I would say to people,
you should be careful, while charity begins at home, it mustn’t end at home.”
Miliband said he was worried that President
Donald Trump’s plan to curb refugee admissions into the United States could
have a symbolic, domino effect. “We are concerned that something which was
bipartisan and successful in America is going to become partisan and less
successful,” Miliband said. “It’s perfectly reasonable for any U.S.
administration to review the security procedures, but there’s no need for them
to suspend the program as they are seeking to do.”
Miliband, interviewed for the Summer 2017
edition of the Cairo Review,
cautioned that global humanitarian policy needs to shift from focusing on
short-term survival to long-term displacement. “The system has an implicit or
explicit assumption—that people will go back—but actually we are living in a
world where displacement is long term, displacement is urban, and people don’t
actually go back,” he said.
Thus, Miliband added, policies are needed to
help refugees thrive. “That means education, employment, become extra
important,” he said. “That’s not what the humanitarian sector has been practicing
in over the last forty or fifty years.”
The Cairo Review of Global Affairs is the quarterly journal of AUC’s School of Global Affairs and
Public Policy (GAPP). The journal is available online at www.thecairoreview.com.
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