World leaders agreed on Wednesday (September 30) that the global community must help shoulder the burden of the migrant crisis in Europe, but they don’t seem to be any further in being able to forge a clear path forward on exactly how it ought to be done.
At a special U.N. meeting held on the sidelines of the General Assembly in New York, U.N. Chief Ban Ki-Moon recalled the image that swept across social media and sparked global outrage of a drowned toddler that washed up on the beach in one of Turkey’s tourist resorts.
“Epic tragedies are sometimes distilled into a single image. The haunting photograph of a lifeless young boy on a beach has come to symbolize the greed and cynicism of smuggling human beings. It also symbolized the deficiencies and failures of broken migration policies as well as our importance to resolve conflict and address the desperation and dash the hope of millions,” Ban said.
“Such an image can also catalyze solutions,” he added. “Let us make sure that the heartbreaking death of Aylan Kurdi and so many other nameless tragedies compel us to move forward together and see the long term benefits of integrating refugees and migrants.”
The strain of sheltering the world’s largest refugee population is showing in Turkey, whose open door to those fleeing Syria and Iraq is shielding European nations from a migration crisis far worse than the one they are struggling with now.
President Tayyip Erdogan told leaders that “burden sharing is urgently needed for all neighboring countries. It is no longer just to expect from Turkey or the neighboring countries to face the migratory pressures, the risks and threats alone.”
Ankara has vowed to continue accommodating more than 2 million people from its war-torn southern neighbors and welcome any more who come. Yet Erdogan warned that absorbing migrants is not a long term fix.
“Sustainable solution to migration can only be attained if root causes such as wars and conflicts, human rights violations and economic deprivation in many of the origin countries are prevented.”
As some European governments turn to baton-wielding police and barricades to stem the flow of migrants, Germany has given a warm welcome for refugees. Yet fears about the scale of how to absorb an influx of about 800,000 people this year is growing.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier agreed with Erdogan that resolving root causes is key.
Yet in the meantime, urged leaders to add funding for humanitarian aid agencies in order to deal with the current crisis.
“We need to do much more than we are currently doing. First United Nations humanitarian agencies provide the most urgently needed assistance but they are dangerously underfunded. Germany has pledged an additional $100 million Euro and we call upon others to follow.”
He added that Europe needs to focus on developing a “common asylum system with common humanitarian standards.”
A record 300,000 or more Syrians and other migrants have arrived in Greece, mostly setting off from Turkey’s Aegean coast.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said more needs to be done on a global level to successfully deal with the long term effects of migration and war in surrounding countries.
“If we deal with them by bringing more distraction, by building higher walls and by increasing poverty, exclusion and racism we will lose. If we manage particularly here in the United Nations to ensure security, decisively but also inclusively, if we build a new growth oriented development model and if we build refugee and migration flows humanly and effectively, we will succeed.”
Sweden has a decades-long record of welcoming refugees from Chile in the 70s, the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s and the Yugoslav wars in the 90s. In the current crisis, it has received more asylum seekers per capita than any other nation in Europe.
Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who pointed out that migration can have a positive impact on societies, agreed that addressing the causes of displaced persons is important. Yet in the case of Syria’s refugees, he said that while “fighting the root causes of forced migration is key, but we can not wait until peace and sustainable development are in place before helping refugees.”
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned that mass migration will destabilize Europe and urged the “Secretary General to initiate negotiations on sharing this burden on a global level.”
He said that Hungary’s policies are not racist and have nothing to do with religion. He called the migrants victims and urged leaders to develop a plan to help the refugees stay in their home countries.
“They are victims of failed international political decisions which led to war torn regions. They are victims of the failed policy of ours in Europe, which raises expectations that are impossible to be fulfilled. And they are victims of human trafficking, which has become a robust business and untold story. It is our moral responsibility to give back these people their homes and their country. It can not be our objective to provide them with a new European life. We must assist them to regain their own life in their home. To achieve this we have to create peace and a plan of economic development in their home countries.”
Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic agreed. She said while quotas for absorption ought to be discussed to deal with issue right now, “this will not really solve this problem. We can not address the problem of refugees by saying lets empty Syria and lets empty Iraq and lets empty the Middle East and have all these people go somewhere else, especially the people that will be needed to rebuild those countries.”
She said there is only one way forward – “stopping the war in Syria and stopping the war in Syria this winter.”
