 I'm Salvatore Bobonis and today's lecture is the United Nations and Refugees. There are now more refugees in the world than at any time in history, more even than at the end of World War II. Before World War II, many Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany were turned away from safe havens like the United Kingdom, the United States, and Latin America, with the result that many of them died in the Nazi genocide of the Holocaust. Many other refugees from Soviet occupation in Eastern Europe were also turned away from the West after World War II. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was created in the wake of the Holocaust and of these events of World War II to help prevent future genocides and improve life for refugees. We should keep in mind that today's 21st century refugee and asylum system was a historical response to the harsh treatment of refugees in World War II and a response to the Holocaust. This photo shows Jewish refugees from Western Europe being relocated from the United Kingdom to the United States in 1944. They were making open-boat voyages across the Atlantic in much the same way as today's refugees are fleeing from North Africa and Turkey to Europe or from Indonesia and Sri Lanka to Australia. Now, they had more secure boats, these refugees are actually on the deck of a US Army transport ship, but nonetheless they made these howling sea voyages across North Atlantic to reach safety in North America. What we're seeing now, people on boats seeking refuge from war, is not a new thing. It's something that first happened in a large-scale way in World War II and is now happening again. Though the US and UK do take credit for admitting many refugees from Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe during World War II, their record is not always positive, leaving refugee decisions to an ad hoc political basis caused many problems. The most famous of these is the ship the SS St. Louis which sailed from Hamburg to Havana in 1939 with 937 Jewish refugees on board. At the time they left in 1939, Germany had not yet invaded Poland. World War II had not broken out in Europe in full, but there was already serious anti-Semitic action in Germany. The crystal-knocked burning of Jewish businesses had already occurred and Jews were being harassed and hunted down all across Germany. So people were very aware in 1939 that there was already a serious problem with anti-Semitism in Germany. In fact, anyone who read Mein Kampf would know that Germany's ruler, Adolf Hitler, fully intended to exterminate the Jews of Germany and indeed of the whole world. Nonetheless, when the ship the St. Louis arrived in Havana, only a small number between 20 and 30 refugees were allowed to disembark in Cuba. These were people who had Latin American or Cuban or Spanish passports. Then the ship sailed all up the US coast, the east coast of the US, but was denied the ability to dock and unload its passengers. In fact, the ship had to return back to Europe. Of the 937 passengers on the St. Louis, 254 more than a quarter were later murdered in the Holocaust. Some of those passengers were actually accepted into the UK as refugees. Of the 288 who were accepted into the UK, 287 survived the war. One was sadly killed in an air raid. So here we see in just the history of this one ship the huge difference that acceptance of refugees makes. Those who achieved asylum in the UK largely survived out the war. Those who did not did not either spent their entire war on the run in hiding or ended up being killed in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Again, after World War II, between 1945 and 1949, there was a second wave of refugees from Eastern Europe, this time fleeing Soviet occupation. And again, many of them were turned away. The Soviet Union, or USSR, was an ally of the United States United Kingdom during World War II. And so for political reasons, people who were store owners or political activists or anti-communists, or who were simply patriotic nationalists in places like Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, many of them were trying to escape to come to Western Europe. People at particular risk were people who were officers in the pre-war armies of these countries. The Soviet Union was particularly afraid that resistance groups might form around trained military officers. Many of those military officers were slaughtered by the Soviet Union or sent for decades to the gulags of Siberia by the Soviet Union. These people clearly had a need of refuge, but for political reasons were turned away by the Western powers. In 1950, as a result of these kinds of politicized atrocities, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UNHCR, was created, quote, to provide international protection from refugees. And the ellipses that I've included there to allow this to fit in the title says to include to provide free of political interference international protection for refugees. Right from the beginning, it was recognized by the UNHCR and the United Nations that part of the problem with giving safe haven to refugees was that it became politicized. It became politicized then in the 1940s, just like it's becoming politicized now in the 2010s. The UNHCR has grown from a small organization providing relief packets and trying to establish international law into a major part of the United Nations system. In fact, its budget of $7.5 billion a year is larger than that of the United Nations itself. It's kind of like the tail wagging the dog of the United Nations. Though it does accept private donations, and many of you will have seen UNHCR solicitors on the sidewalk asking for help, 86% of the budget comes from country contributions, from countries that donate to the budget. The biggest donor by far is the United States. The United States last year gave $1.5 billion to the UNHCR, or about 20% of the total budget. The EU and large European countries also gave substantial amounts as did Canada, the UK, and the Scandinavian countries. But much of the rest of the world gives very little to the UNHCR. The UNHCR is a medium-sized organization taking on a global-scale problem. It has around 11,000 staff members and to put that in context, that's about the same number of people who work for a large university like the University of Sydney. Nonetheless, it must operate in 128 countries. More than half the countries of the world have some kind of UNHCR operation to be staffed. So you can imagine that they're spread pretty thin. Refugees are only one of the major population groups served by the UNHCR, and they're not even the largest. Out of the 65.3 million forcibly displaced people in the world, only 21.3 million are actually refugees. That means that one third, less than one third of refugees, more than two thirds of the forcibly displaced people in the world are still in their own countries. They are what are called internally displaced persons, or IDPs. Even in the Syrian conflict, there are many internally displaced persons, people who found themselves on the wrong side of the battle lines, and as a result had to move to somewhere where they would be safer inside Syria. It's the same story in Iraq, and really the same story in any conflict situation. There are also some 10 million stateless people in the world. Now, these are not forcibly displaced people, these are simply people who no country is willing to recognize as being a citizen. And as we studied a few weeks ago, that is really a serious problem for people who are unable to acquire citizenship or passports, or be recognized as a citizen of any country in the world. Those 10 million people face severe discrimination, and they also come under the broad supervision of the UNHCR. Now, the interesting number, maybe the most interesting number in this infographic, is the number of refugees resettled per year. In 2015, that was just over 100,000 people. Now, if you put that in context, 21 million refugees, all right, 5 million of those 21 million are Palestinians who are long-term refugees, people who are refugees from the 1949 and later wars between Israel and the Arab countries. But even leaving aside the long-term Palestinian refugees, there are another 16 million refugees waiting to be resettled. Only 107,000 being resettled in any particular year. At that rate, it would take 200 years to resettle all of the refugees in the world today. Most people will remain in refugee camps until the end of their lives at this rate. And that's exactly what's happened in the large Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. It's worth noting that most of the world's displaced people, and this is out of that big figure of 65.3 million forcibly displaced people, most of them are in the developing world, they're being hosted in the developing world. Only about 20% of the world's refugees and other displaced persons are being hosted in the developed countries of the Americas, Europe, and Australia, New Zealand. Most of the world's displaced people are in poor countries and being hosted by poor countries. Over half of the world's refugees today come from just three countries, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria. And it should be no surprise, these are three countries that have all experienced civil war. Afghanistan, of course, has been in a civil war long before 2001 and the US invasion. In fact, the Afghan civil war started in the late 1970s when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1980. That was as an intervention in the Afghan civil war. So you can imagine Afghanistan, which has been in the middle of a civil war for 40 years now, has been the source of an enormous number of refugees. The Syrian civil war, of course, only started in 2011, but has already generated around 5 million refugees. Somalia in East Africa also has been in a civil war for about as, well, almost as long as Afghanistan, for about 30 years. Somalia has been involved in a civil war and, again, it has become a huge source of refugees, mostly to neighboring countries like Ethiopia. If you look at the hosting countries, the top hosting countries in the world are mostly next door to the top civil war refugee-creating countries. Turkey, the country with the most refugees in the world, is right next door to Syria. Pakistan is right next door to Afghanistan. Lebanon next door to Syria. Iran next door to Afghanistan. Ethiopia next door to Somalia. Jordan next door to Syria. So you can see most refugees end up in neighboring countries. They don't end up making huge journeys to Europe or Australia or the United States. They end up making short journeys just fleeing for their lives. Refugee issues in international law are covered by the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Refugee Protocol. Almost every country in the world has signed on to the Refugee Protocol, and almost every country except the United States has signed on to the Refugee Convention. In effect, by signing on to the later protocol, the United States, in effect, endorses the convention as well. The 1951 Convention was specifically addressing the refugee problems resulting from World War II. The 1967 Protocol extended those procedures put in place in 1951 to cover refugees from all other future conflicts. Without the 1967 Refugee Protocol, no one could legally be a refugee after 1951. And of course, the world needed a continuing legal framework for refugees even after World War II ended. So the 1967 Protocol simply made the 1951 Refugee Convention permanent. The Refugee Convention and Protocol define refugees and guarantee them a range of basic rights in signatory countries, which is most of the countries of the world. And those are very basic rights, like the right to live unmolested, the right to receive money from overseas, the right to have their children educated in schools, the right to access social services. Importantly, the right to work is not a right granted to refugees, and that's something that's very contentious. It also defines a refugee. A refugee is a person who, quote, owing to well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or owing to such fear unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country. Now notice that even though this passage uses the word he and the words he and his to refer to refugees, that's a very old fashioned usage and in law that applies to all people, regardless of gender. A country that receives a request for refuge shall not impose penalties on account of their illegal entry or presence on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened, enter or present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence. That means that you can't jail a refugee for entering illegally. Refugees are often unable to cross at official order crossings, which is why they seek to enter countries illegally. And it's very explicit. The refugee convention, which has been signed by every country, nearly every country in the world, is very explicit that refugees cannot be discriminated against, that refugees cannot be penalized for entering illegally. They can, any way they can get into the country, they should claim refugee status the moment they arrive and they still receive the full protection of the law. These definitions have caused all sorts of controversies over the ensuing half century. The definition of a refugee has caused controversy because it specifically enumerates a list of reasons why a person can be legally terminated. So if you look carefully at that definition of a refugee, it's a person who meets one of five categories. The person must have a well founded fear of being persecuted by a four, one of only five categories, being persecuted for their race, being persecuted for their religion, being persecuted for their nationality, for being persecuted as a member of a particular social group, or for being persecuted as a political opinion. Notice what's missing here. Simply being caught in the crossfire of a vicious civil war is not technically a grounds on which to claim refugee status. So it's not enough for someone to appear at a post-country tribunal and say, my life was in danger in my home country. They have to be able to specifically establish that their life was in danger for one of these reasons. And here you can see the echoes of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was very different from, say, all of the death in World War I. In World War I, many millions of people were killed, but they weren't singled out to be killed because of their religion, or because of their race, or because of their membership in a specific group like the Roma minority, which was also put in concentration camps and subject to genocide during the Holocaust. The Refugee Convention does not protect people who simply are casualties of a civil war. Now, that's a serious, huge gaping hole in our international infrastructure of protective law, but that hole is there. And it creates all sorts of problems when people then apply for refugee status. Many of them end up having to apply under the very vague title, membership of a particular social group. But that's very ill-defined, and it's difficult to make that case. Note also that gender is not listed as one of these five categories. Unless the case is made that gender is a particular social group, it's not covered. It's difficult to imagine that the people who framed the Refugee Convention were unaware that they could list gender as one of the possible categories. They chose not to. And again, this has resulted in violence against women not being in automatic grounds for acceptance for refugee status. Now that said, most courts in most civilized countries will grant people asylum if they face violence against women, if they face a death threat, an undeserved death threat in their home country. But putting it under one of these specific legal criteria can be difficult and can cause problems. Another problem is the fact that a person only has a legal right to claim refugee status in the first safe country entered. That's very specific in the responsibilities placed on countries. A country that receives a request for refuge shall not impose penalties, etc., etc., on someone coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened. This has caused all sorts of problems. For example, in the European refugee crisis, should Syrians who enter Europe via Turkey, can they be put in jail? Can they be subject to immigration detention? Can they be deported back to Turkey? Well, if they were safe in Turkey, then Turkey was the first safe country they entered, and they can be accused of violating the law by moving forward to Greece or Italy. And similarly, if when they enter Greece, they can be accused of violating the law when they move forward from Greece into Macedonia or onward in the chain. So this has caused a lot of problems because even though a refugee from Syria may be physically safe from harm in Turkey, Turkey already has 2.5 million refugees from Syria. Conditions may be very difficult. There may be no food for the person in Turkey. Nonetheless, this clause makes life very difficult, makes the legal status of refugees very problematic. This is why, for example, when Australia deals with boat refugees, they can more reasonably argue that Australia has the right to turn back the boats to Indonesia than they can to turn back boats coming from Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, members of the Tamil minority are fleeing persecution in Sri Lanka. When they take a boat directly from Sri Lanka to Australia, they can't be returned to Sri Lanka because that's the country in which they have a fear of persecution. And so Australia, probably unreasonably, keeps them on Christmas Island, prevents them from coming to Australia proper, but cannot repatriate them to Sri Lanka. On the other hand, when people come from Indonesia, the same Tamil who has transited via Indonesia can legally be returned to Indonesia as long as Tamils don't face persecution. Specifically as Tamils, because remember, people only have a right to refugee status if they are a member of a group. No person has a right as a refugee, only as a member of a persecuted group do they have a right. So unless, for some reason, Tamils come under threat in Indonesia, Australia can always force back boats coming from Indonesia and refuse them entry into Australia. Now, these are difficult legal arguments. I'm not a lawyer and I don't know Australian law on this matter. I'm merely talking about the broad guidance of the 1951 Convention on Refugees. On that broad guidance, these become very problematic situations. The strict definition of refugee status and the first safe country rule are two reasons why many refugees choose to travel without proper identification, without documents. By treaty, that is, by the 1951 Convention on Refugees, a refugee cannot be penalized for lacking documentation. A refugee can wash up on your shore with nothing to her or his name and that refugee must be accorded the same respect as someone flying in at an airport with a proper passport. And that's something that almost every country in the world has agreed to. But why don't people have documentation? Well, many people don't have documentation for lots of good reasons. They never had documents in the first place. They have been denied documents by their country, which maybe doesn't want them to leave. They've lost their documents at sea or in a difficult journey. Documents have been stolen by smugglers or other criminals. But there's also the problem that people might choose to give up their documents in order to claim to be somebody else. So, for example, with the current wave of refugees going to Germany, it's well known, well it's reported in the press, that Syrians have a much higher probability of being granted refugee status in Germany than Afghans do. As far as Germany is concerned, Afghanistan is no longer a country in which people are considered automatically in danger. And thus, most requests from Afghans are denied, whereas most refugee asylum requests from Syrians are accepted. So what's an Afghan to do? Lose his or her documents and claim to be Syrian. Now, nobody knows the scale of this problem. What we do know is that both in Germany and in Australia, misprint in the lecture, both in Germany and in Australia, it's estimated that just over 80% of refugees arrive without any documentation of who they are. They simply have to be taken on their word. And like I said, there are many reasons for people to lie. In Germany it's become very contentious about children, people claiming to be under the age of 18 because children are much less likely to be sent home than adults. Some of those children look quite old indeed, but there's no way to tell someone's exact age without a birth document. A final note, technically there is a difference between refugees and asylum seekers. People use the words in many different ways. Lawyers and the legal system use strict definitions by which a refugee is an asylum seeker who has successfully claimed asylum. So if someone arrives on the shores of a country asking for asylum, that's an asylum seeker, and that person becomes a refugee when a court declares the asylum application successful. But that's a legal definition and the rest of us are not all lawyers. The legal definition is not the only appropriate definition. For example, sociologists, journalists, and many ordinary people appropriately use these terms in their plain English language senses. So for me, if someone wants refuge, that person is a refugee. For me, an asylum seeker is someone who legally has applied for asylum. A person can be a refugee without necessarily ever becoming an asylum seeker. And I think that usage is in line with what news organizations do. So for example, news organizations routinely report on the Syrian refugee crisis, not the Syrian asylum seeking crisis. The Syrian refugee crisis is a crisis of people who are without a home fleeing a conflict and looking for refuge. Thus, refugees. Some key takeaways. First, the UNHCR, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, was created in 1950 in the wake of the Holocaust and the other refugee failures of World War II. Second, more than half of all forcibly displaced people are not refugees. In fact, about two thirds are so-called internally displaced persons, IDPs, so-called because they may have been forced out of their homes, but they're still physically inside their countries of citizenship. And finally, the First Safe Country Rule is responsible for many of the problems and iniquities and debates about the fairness of the international refugee system. Thank you for listening. I'm Salvatore Babonis. You can find more about me at my website, SalvatoreBabonis.com, where you can also sign up for my monthly Global Asia newsletter.