The present global refugee crisis recalls the period immediately after World War II. By one contemporary estimate, there were more than 40 million refugees in Europe alone. These “displaced persons,” as they were called at the time, were forced to flee their homes because of violence, forced relocation, persecution, and destruction of property and infrastructure.
The dire postwar situation led to the creation in 1950 of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which was expected to serve only a temporary mandate, protecting displaced people for three years.
However, the problem never went away. On the contrary, the UNHCR is not only still here; it is sounding an alarm.
In its mid-year report last year, the agency put the number of “forcibly displaced” people at the end of 2014 at 59.5 million, including 19.5 million internationally displaced, which they define as “true” refugees.
Some countries — Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Colombia, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine — each accounted for more than half a million forcibly displaced people at the end of last year. The total number has certainly grown substantially since then, the report said.
Unfortunately, the report underscores how incompletely the refugee problem is understood. Throughout history, the fate of refugees seeking asylum in another land has largely been unstudied. Historians record wars, and they mention diasporas, but they rarely show much interest in how refugee crises arose or were resolved.
To the extent that history is written by the victors, that is not surprising. The knowledge that one’s country terrorized a minority to the point that its members had to flee, or that a substantial share of one’s forebears arrived in defeat and panic, is not exactly an inspiring source of national identity. So the stories, unheard and untold, are lost.
That is why more research is needed on what can and should be done for refugees in the long term. The UNHCR has been doing an important job in protecting refugees, but it cannot possibly address their needs by itself. Its budget last year of US$7 billion might seem large, but it amounts to only about US$100 per displaced person — not enough to cover even essentials such as food and shelter.
As this year’s president of the American Economic Association, I felt a moral obligation to use our annual meeting this month as a setting in which to bring attention to serious economic problems and the refugee crisis — whatever else it might be — is an economic problem.
However, a dearth of papers addressing it had been submitted to the meeting. So I decided to create a session entitled Sixty Million Refugees and invited some of the most distinguished academics on migration. I asked them to describe the dimensions of the refugee problem in economic terms and to propose some sensible policies to address it.
One of the papers, by University of Essex and Australian National University professor Timothy Hatton examined refugee flows around the world, to see what drives them. Hatton confronts a popular argument against admitting refugees: That asylum seekers are not really desperate, but are just using a crisis as a pretext for admission to a richer country.
He found that, contrary to some expectations, refugee flows are driven largely by political terror and human rights abuses, not economic forces. People in fear for their lives run to the nearest safe place, not the richest. There is no escape from the moral imperative to help them.
Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey research and monetary policy department deputy director-general Semih Tumen presented evidence regarding the impact of the 2.2 million Syrian refugees on the labor market in the border region.
Tumen’s paper, too, takes on an argument frequently used to oppose admitting refugees: That the newcomers take locals’ jobs and drive down wages. He found that in the formal sector, jobs for locals actually increased after the influx of refugees, apparently because of the stimulative effect on the region’s economy.
If further research backs up this finding, countries might actually welcome the inflow of labor.
Another paper, by Georgetown University professor Susan Martin, described the arbitrariness of our current refugee procedures and called for “legal frameworks based on the need for protection, rather than the triggering causes of the migration.”
However, formulating such rules requires some careful economic thought. The framers of a refugee system need to consider the rules’ incentive effects on the migrants themselves and on the governments of their countries of origin. For example, it should not be made too easy for a tyrant to drive unwanted minorities out of their country.
Finally, Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs detailed a major new system for managing refugees. Sachs is concerned with how such a system’s rules would shape the world’s economies in the longer run.
He wants such a system to prevent encouraging a brain drain by enforcing a commitment to admitting low-skilled and desperate immigrants, not just those who are highly useful to the host country. Moreover, the rate of flow must be regulated and economists need to develop a way to ensure equitable burden sharing among countries.
With the present haphazard and archaic asylum rules, refugees must take enormous risks to reach safety and the costs and benefits of helping them are distributed capriciously. It does not have to be this way.
Economists can help by testing which international rules and institutions are needed to reform an inefficient and often inhumane system.
Robert Shiller, a 2013 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, is a professor of economics at Yale University and chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC, which he cofounded.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.
As Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s party won by a landslide in Sunday’s parliamentary election, it is a good time to take another look at recent developments in the Maldivian foreign policy. While Muizzu has been promoting his “Maldives First” policy, the agenda seems to have lost sight of a number of factors. Contemporary Maldivian policy serves as a stark illustration of how a blend of missteps in public posturing, populist agendas and inattentive leadership can lead to diplomatic setbacks and damage a country’s long-term foreign policy priorities. Over the past few months, Maldivian foreign policy has entangled itself in playing
A group of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers led by the party’s legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (?) are to visit Beijing for four days this week, but some have questioned the timing and purpose of the visit, which demonstrates the KMT caucus’ increasing arrogance. Fu on Wednesday last week confirmed that following an invitation by Beijing, he would lead a group of lawmakers to China from Thursday to Sunday to discuss tourism and agricultural exports, but he refused to say whether they would meet with Chinese officials. That the visit is taking place during the legislative session and in the aftermath