With newspapers full of stories about the challenges that migrant families face, it might be tempting to assume that the causes of displacement are also being addressed. However, in most cases, such an assumption would be wrong.
Today, solutions to forced migration focus almost exclusively on aiding refugees after they flee, rather than targeting the reasons for their flight. To resolve the world’s refugee crises, the causes require as much attention as the effects.
Why would parents risk their lives, or the lives of their children, to leave home and journey into the unknown? And what can be done to keep families from being forced to migrate in the first place?
These are among the key questions that colleagues and I have attempted to answer in a new Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study, States of Fragility 2018. The findings are as illuminating as they are troubling.
By 2030, more than 80 percent of the world’s poor will live in an area defined as “fragile” — a status that may reflect any number of political, social, security, economic or environmental causes. Unfortunately, if current trends hold, far too little development aid will be allocated to address the factors contributing to fragility.
In 2016, for example, just 2 percent of the US$68.2 billion in official development assistance (ODA) that went to places affected by fragility was used for conflict-prevention activities and only 10 percent went to peacebuilding initiatives. There is no other conclusion to draw: We must change how ODA is allocated.
According to the UN Refugee Agency, a record 68.5 million people were forcibly displaced last year. Many of these people hailed from just five countries — Afghanistan, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan and Syria.
However, while countries hosting refugees have an urgent need for money to support long-term relocation efforts, most ODA is still channeled to short-term solutions. Humanitarian initiatives — such as food and shelter — accounted for about one-third of all ODA last year, and that share has been climbing for nearly a decade.
By contrast, funding for construction of schools, hospitals and other infrastructure continues to lag. While it is understandable that donors would gravitate toward solutions that offer immediate assistance to the displaced, neglecting refugees’ long-term needs is shortsighted. Simply put, the international community’s ambition for aid must evolve beyond keeping people alive; it must also offer migrants a future.
If allocated properly, ODA can be a powerful tool in preventing conflict and reversing the trends that contribute to fragility. Moreover, this type of spending is often a source of hope for migrants, given that in many crisis-affected areas, ODA is among the most reliable funding sources. That is particularly true as emergencies age, because funding levels typically drop as donations from other sources dry up.
To be sure, reversing current ODA spending trends will not be easy. Fragility manifests itself in myriad ways, and addressing challenges as diverse as violent extremism, climate change, organized crime and gender discrimination will require a new playbook for development spending.
Still, the need for actions has become urgent. If unaddressed, conflict, violence, and other forms of fragility will set development gains back decades, further fueling the very dynamics that lead to instability in the first place. Unless the international community changes its approach to investing in fragile regions, the world will fail to achieve a key objective of the UN Sustainable Development Goals: to leave no one behind.
Spending on long-term solutions also makes financial sense. According to the UN and World Bank, if more money were allocated to conflict-prevention programs, up to US$70 billion could be saved annually in refugee-relocation costs.
While the world has accepted the premise of cost-effective prevention in health care — by promoting regular screenings and checkups, for example — this philosophy has yet to be applied to policymaking on migration. This can and should change.
The global migration crisis — the worst since the end of World War II — has consumed huge sums of financial and political capital. To address it effectively, the focus must shift to improving stability and security, and hope for better futures, in the places where migrants originate.
And that means that the development community, and especially official donors, must rethink their priorities and policies.
Jorge Moreira da Silva is development cooperation director at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and former Portuguese minister of environment and energy.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
When it became clear that the world was entering a new era with a radical change in the US’ global stance in US President Donald Trump’s second term, many in Taiwan were concerned about what this meant for the nation’s defense against China. Instability and disruption are dangerous. Chaos introduces unknowns. There was a sense that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) might have a point with its tendency not to trust the US. The world order is certainly changing, but concerns about the implications for Taiwan of this disruption left many blind to how the same forces might also weaken
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
As the new year dawns, Taiwan faces a range of external uncertainties that could impact the safety and prosperity of its people and reverberate in its politics. Here are a few key questions that could spill over into Taiwan in the year ahead. WILL THE AI BUBBLE POP? The global AI boom supported Taiwan’s significant economic expansion in 2025. Taiwan’s economy grew over 7 percent and set records for exports, imports, and trade surplus. There is a brewing debate among investors about whether the AI boom will carry forward into 2026. Skeptics warn that AI-led global equity markets are overvalued and overleveraged
RSS