"Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt."
Exodus 22:21
The World’s Refugee System Is Broken
Rules created decades ago do not account for the modern migrant.
... The leaders who created international refugee policy never envisioned people like Rose, a middle-class 39-year-old woman desperate for safety from a conflict the rest of the world isn’t paying attention to. Violent flash points rooted in all kinds of new phenomena—police corruption, climate change, gang warfare—now dot the Earth, creating the conditions for the worst protracted migration crisis since World War II. The pull to more stable corners of the planet is more potent now, too, given social-media postings from cousins and friends abroad who amplify (and often inflate) newfound opportunity. And given relatively affordable airline travel, plus the ubiquity of smartphones—which ease language, navigation, and homesickness challenges—moving is logistically easier now. This has all turned Japan into an unlikely destination for asylum seekers.
The problem is that the refugee system set forth in United Nations documents signed by most of the world’s countries, including Japan and the United States, does not apply to Rose—at least not how it is currently enforced. The 1951 and 1967 agreements were drafted to specifically address European displacement from World War II while more broadly setting rules to protect people from persecution going forward: Anyone who is “unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” ...
... We are in an age of mass displacement. Yet the powerful and stable nations of the world have not figured out a humane way to handle the influx of people claiming persecution while balancing domestic concerns about security and cultural change. Instead, doors are simply closing, with asylum protections rolled back seemingly everywhere. In Italy, where the former interior minister denounced “fake refugees,” boats of Africans have been blocked from docking. The European Union pays handsomely to keep asylum seekers away, while Turkey considers sending Syrian refugees back to their homeland, which is still at war. In the U.S., the indefinite detention of asylum-seeking children prompted the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to say she was appalled. Thousands of asylum seekers are sent from the U.S. to dangerous sections of Mexico and even to countries they’re not from.
Cameroon’s problems may have not attracted international attention, but its people are showing up around the world, including at the U.S.-Mexico border; Rose has a brother in South Korea and a son, who also fled for safety, in Minnesota, living with an uncle. On her layover to Tokyo, someone sent Rose a WhatsApp message with a number for a Cameroonian woman in Japan.
Rose didn’t ask for asylum at Narita International Airport in Tokyo, which would have likely gotten her locked up in a detention center. ...
... Domestic laws, of course, don’t reflect the kind of refugee the world is creating. Climate change is expected to displace at least 25 million people by 2050, while sexual violence and gang extortion in Central America are forcing migration to the U.S. and even Europe, yet there’s no international standard on how to deal with such victims. The Obama administration granted asylum to credible cases involving gangs, but that was reversed under President Trump. In Europe, Belgium recognizes gang violence as a legitimate refugee claim, but Spain doesn’t. ...
... “I would say that the system is broken,” Slater says. “The amount of conflict in the world and the number of people who are fleeing are so disproportionately larger now. For us to try to use a framework that was designed under a particular set of conditions and under a particular scale is no longer feasible.” ...
https://www.theatlantic.com/internationa...8DDCjP9R1nwFkKs
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