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Understanding the Refugee Crisis in Europe, Syria, and around the World

2015-09-08 · explainer · John · 9:21 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Global development (also: World affairs) · mode: News analysis · tags: timely hook, fundraising ask, heavy topic

John explains the Syrian and wider refugee crisis, the difference between refugees and migrants and refugees' rights under international law, blames nearly every government for the response, and argues that all countries have legal and moral obligations to give refugees safe harbor and fund host countries.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Stalin's saying on deaths and statistics; the drowning of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi and his father's words; statistics without forgetting what is precious

  • ★★ John opens with a saying often attributed to Stalin: one death is a tragedy, thousands a statistic; large numbers feel cold, distant, even comforting, because they don't feel like people. — 00:00:01
  • ★★ John thinks this is one reason much of the world could ignore the years-old Syrian refugee crisis until recently. (hedged) — 00:00:19
  • ★★★ After thousands of refugees died this year (2015) trying to reach Europe, three-year-old Aylan Kurdi's body washed ashore in Turkey; he drowned with his five-year-old brother and mother heading for Greece. — 00:00:25 · Europe
  • ★★ Aylan's father Abdullah survived and has returned to Syria to bury his wife and children; offered resettlement elsewhere, he said he now wants nothing, since what was precious is gone. — 00:00:37
  • ★★★ To talk about the refugee crisis we need statistics, John says, but we must not forget what is precious. — 00:00:49

00:00:54 — Background: the Syrian civil war since the 2011 Arab Spring; displacement statistics; host countries stretched thin; Turkey's legal limbo pushes refugees to Europe

  • ★★ Syria's horrific civil war, four and a half years old, began with the hope of the 2011 Arab Spring, which toppled several dictatorships, some since replaced by new dictators. — 00:00:54
  • ★★ Long-reigning dictator Bashar al-Assad refuses to give up power and has fought the rebellion with astonishing violence, including torturing children and gassing his own people with chemical weapons. — 00:01:06
  • ★★★ Syria had 22.4 million people in 2011; now over 250,000 have been killed, about 10.6 million (under half) remain home, 7.6 million are internally displaced and 4 million have left. — 00:01:18
  • ★★★ About 1.6 million Syrian refugees are in Turkey, about a million each in Lebanon and Jordan, a few hundred thousand in Iraq and Egypt; these stretched countries host 95%. — 00:01:41
  • ★★ Jordan's population is now 25% refugees. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ The sprawling camps in Jordan and Lebanon are completely underfunded because the UN's refugee agency lacks nearly enough money for this many refugees. — 00:01:59
  • ★★ In Turkey most refugees live in legal limbo outside camps, not expelled but barred from work, so many educated, skilled Syrians can't earn a living; thousands have turned to Europe. — 00:02:11 · Europe

00:02:27 — Smugglers and Europe's response; migrant vs refugee; refugees' rights since 1951; why governments tolerate dangerous routes; legal routes as the real solution

  • ★★ Refugees pay smugglers thousands of euros for boat passage from Turkey, Morocco or Egypt to Malta, southern Italy or Greece's southern islands. — 00:02:27
  • ★★★ John says the smugglers are essentially the only ones benefiting from Europe's inconsistent, inhumane and disorganized response to the refugee crisis. — 00:02:34 · Europe
  • ★★ John quotes the UN High Commissioner for Refugees: better cooperation against smugglers is needed, but nothing will work without more legal ways to reach Europe and find safety. — 00:02:41 · Europe

  • ★★★ John says this isn't a 'migrant crisis': migrants choose to leave for education or jobs; refugees, per the UNHCR, flee armed conflict or persecution, and denying them asylum can kill. — 00:03:04

    “are persons fleeing armed conflict or persecution”

  • ★★★ Since the 1951 refugee agreement (John says 'Commission'), refugees have rights under international law: no return to unsafe countries, no penalty for illegal entry when seeking asylum, and basic rights. — 00:03:23

  • ★★ Illegally arriving migrants can be sent home fairly quickly from most EU countries, but most arrivals now are refugees, with rights basically the whole world has accepted for 65 years. — 00:03:43
  • ★★★ European countries owe refugees nothing until they arrive, then have legal duties; so governments want the trip hard and benefit when it is dangerous, which is why boat smuggling continues. — 00:04:01 · Europe
  • ★★★ The real solution, John says: far more refugees accepted legally through non-smuggling routes like a quota system, which is politically unpopular; until then, smuggling and deaths will continue. — 00:04:25
  • ★★ John quotes the UNHCR: thousands of refugee parents risk their children's lives on unsafe smuggling boats primarily because they have no other choice. — 00:04:39

00:04:48 — Who is seeking asylum: Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea; why the refugee/migrant distinction matters

  • ★★★ About half of sea-route asylum seekers are Syrian, 12% Afghan (Afghanistan led the world in refugees for 30 years until Syria) and 8% Eritrean: about 70% from three countries. — 00:04:48
  • ★★ Eritrea has one of the worst human rights records on Earth; the UN has cited its government for executions, torture, forced labor and systemic rape by officials. — 00:04:59
  • ★★ Many migrants also take the dangerous water routes, but most people in the news are refugees, and John calls the distinction incredibly important. — 00:05:15

00:05:25 — Who's to blame: Assad, Iran, Russia, China, Gulf states, Australia, Canada, the US (and the immigrant-crime myth), xenophobic European governments and Hungary's prime minister

  • ★★★ Who is to blame? Pretty much everybody, John says: the Assad regime, and Iran, Russia and China, which support it directly or indirectly and do very little about the crisis. — 00:05:28 · China
  • ★★ The Arab states of the Gulf have pledged financial support to Syrian refugees but accepted zero refugees from Syria. — 00:05:41
  • ★★ John calls Australia's refugee record truly abysmal and possibly in violation of international law. (hedged) — 00:05:49 · Australia
  • ★★ Canada is accepting 30% fewer refugees than a decade ago. — 00:05:55 · Canada
  • ★★ The United States is to blame too: it has accepted a tiny number of Syrian refugees, fewer than Brazil. — 00:05:59 · United States
  • ★★ Instead of seriously discussing the refugee crisis, John says, the US immigration debate has become increasingly racist and irrational. — 00:06:05 · United States
  • ★★★ John says the common claim that immigrants disproportionately commit crimes is untrue: a huge body of data shows US refugees and first-generation immigrants commit crimes far less than other Americans. — 00:06:11 · United States
  • ★★★ John calls some European governments' xenophobic responses shameful; Hungary's prime minister, saying Muslims must be kept out to 'keep Europe Christian', denies Europe's multi-religious history and international refugee law. — 00:06:28 · Europe

00:06:49 — All humans are our people; Aylan Kurdi; regional crises are global (Ebola, ISIS); refugees-welcome promises; root causes and a 13-year-old's plea; obligation to give safe harbor and fund host countries

  • ★★★ Against 'it's not our problem' or 'we have to take care of our people', John says we are one species sharing one interconnected world, and all humans are our people. — 00:06:49 · othering
  • ★★★ The powerful are at fault when the oppressed and marginalized die for it; Aylan Kurdi would be alive had the EU, Canada, Australia, the US or Brazil welcomed his family. — 00:07:02 · Canada, Australia, United States
  • ★★ John thinks the world reacted so viscerally to the image of the dead boy on the beach because we all instinctively knew his blood was on all our hands. (hedged) — 00:07:20
  • ★★★ We have legal obligations to refugees under international law and also ethical obligations, because they are our people. — 00:07:28
  • ★★★ John partly blames the mess on the delusion that regional crises lack global importance: Ebola in Liberia is Liberia's problem until it's Nigeria's, Germany's and America's; so with Syria's war. — 00:07:36 · United States
  • ★★ The Syrian civil war has led to the growth of ISIS, a terrorist organization that kills not only Syrians and Iraqis but Ethiopians, Americans, Brazilians, Koreans and Turks. — 00:08:02
  • ★★ John finds Europeans at train stations and football games promising refugees are welcome moving and hopes governments follow, but keeping the promise is the hard, long-term, expensive, complex part. (hedged) — 00:08:13 · Europe
  • ★★ As the UNHCR has said, John notes, this massive flow of people will not stop until the root causes of their plight are addressed. — 00:08:31
  • ★★ John says the only ultimate solution was outlined by a 13-year-old Syrian refugee, shown pleading for help. — 00:08:38
  • ★★★ 13-year-old Syrian refugee (clip) (quoted): In a clip, the 13-year-old Syrian refugee pleads for help for Syrians now: just stop the war, and they won't want to go to Europe. — 00:08:44 · Europe
  • ★★★ Until the war stops, John says, we have a legal and moral obligation to give safe harbor to this young man and others like him. — 00:08:58
  • ★★★ We also must financially support the less developed countries, from Jordan to Pakistan to Iraq, that shoulder 90% of the world's refugee burden. — 00:09:05

00:09:13 — Links to donate to UN and Save the Children refugee work; sign-off

  • ★★ John has put links below to donate to the UN's refugee work and to Save the Children's refugee work. — 00:09:13 · Save the Children

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Among the places to give, John lists the UNHCR and a Save the Children fundraiser created by author Patrick Ness. — video description · Save the Children
  • ★★ John notes that most of the video's statistics and graphs come from the UN High Commission on Refugees, and that he quotes extensively from the UNHCR's plan forward from Europe. — video description · Europe
  • ★★ John corrects himself: the 1951 agreement is the Refugee Convention, which he mistakenly called a Commission in the video. — video description
  • ★★ John adds that Stalin probably never said the line about one death being a tragedy and a thousand or a million a statistic; he quoted it the way a Soviet historian did. (hedged) — video description
  • ★★ John thanks Rosianna Halse Rojas, whose data-gathering and fact-checking made the video possible. — video description · Rosianna Halse Rojas

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Alan Kurdi · Europe · European migrant crisis · identifiable victim effect · othering · people smuggling · refugee · Syria · Syrian civil war

Also: People: 13-year-old Syrian refugee (clip) · Abdullah Kurdi · Bashar al-Assad · Joseph Stalin · Viktor Orbán

Organizations: European Union · Islamic State · Save the Children · UNHCR · United Nations

Concepts: chemical weapon · globalization · human migration · immigration and crime · international law · Islam · xenophobia

Places: Afghanistan · Arab states of the Persian Gulf · Australia · Brazil · Canada · China · Egypt · Eritrea · Germany · Greece · Iran · Iraq · Italy · Jordan · Lebanon · Liberia · Malta · Morocco · Nigeria · Pakistan · Russia · Turkey · United States

Events: Arab Spring · Western African Ebola virus epidemic

Policies: Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees

Only in the description or credits: Patrick Ness · Rosianna Halse Rojas

Also centred on refugee: Volunteering (In Your Pants) · THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2013 IS UPON US! · The Refugee Crises: Project for Awesome 2015 · Aida and Majeeda: Thoughts from the Azraq Refugee Camp · The Extraordinary Story of Hussam: Teenager, Writer, and Syrian Refugee · Zaatari: Thoughts from a Refugee Camp

Also centred on Syria: Know Your News! Understanding the Syrian Revolution in Under 4 Minutes · Syria in Five Minutes · THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2013 IS UPON US! · The Extraordinary Story of Hussam: Teenager, Writer, and Syrian Refugee

Also centred on Syrian civil war: Know Your News! Understanding the Syrian Revolution in Under 4 Minutes · Syria in Five Minutes

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