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Alexander Betts Biography

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“The current system for refugees who remain in their region of origin is a disaster. It is premised upon an almost exclusively 'humanitarian' response. A system designed for the emergency phase - to offer an immediate lifeline - ends up enduring year after year, sometimes decade after decade. External provision of food, clothing, and shelter is absolutely essential in the aftermath of having to run for your life. But over time, if it is provided as a substitute for access to jobs, education, and other opportunities, humanitarian aid soon undermines human dignity and autonomy.”

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“For the period that refugees are in limbo, we should be creating an enabling environment that nurtures rather than debilitates people's ability to contribute in exile and when they ultimately go home. This should involve all of the things that allow people to thrive and contribute rather than merely survive: education, the right to work, electricity, connectivity, transportation, access to capital.”

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“Creating opportunities for self-reliance is not in itself a long-term solution for refugees, but it is an important step towards all of the main long-term solutions: repatriation, local integration, or resettlement. This is because offering people autonomy and economic opportunity is likely to empower them to better contribute to whichever society into which they are ultimately assimilated. It can make refugees' eventual return more sustainable because they will return with the skills and motivation to rebuild their country of origin. It can make people better equipped to contribute to a new society once resettled. And it can make them a more desirable resettlement prospect because of their ability to find work and live autonomously.”

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“The humanitarian silo model is increasingly out of touch. It fails against almost any metric. It doesn't help refugees, undermining their autonomy and dignity. It doesn't help host governments, transforming potential contributors into a disempowered and alienated generation in their midst. It doesn't help the international community, leaving people indefinitely dependent upon aid, less capable of ultimately rebulding their countries of origin, and with onward movement as their only viable rout to opportunity.”

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“As we have seen, the geographical reality is that the overwhelming majority of the world's refugees are in countries that neighbour conflict and crisis. These 'countries of first asylum' in developing regions today host 86 per cent of all refugees, up from 72 per cent a decade ago. In consequence, it is the countries with the least capacity to host refugees that bear the greatest responsibility.”

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“But generosity of spirit is not enough: our responses must be grounded in wisdom. The headless heart may lead to outcomes little better than the heartless head. So we need to be a little more specific about what generosity of spirit implies. What shoud it mean in the context of Syria, and, by extension, what should it mean more widely in the global context of refugees?”

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“Historically, on average international wars have lasted only six months. In contrast, the average civil war has been much longer, with estimates ranging from seven to fifteen years. If a family are going to be refugees for over a decade, their priority is not emergency food and shelter. It is to re-establish the threads of normal famiy life, anchored materially by a capacity of whoever is the breadwinner to earn a living. The camps run by UNHCR met the basic material needs of refugees, but they provided few opportunities to earn a living. Consequently, they left families bereft of autonomy.”

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“One way of grounding how we should identify refugees in a changing world is through the concept of force majeure - the absence of a reasonable choice but to leave. More specifically, the threshold for refuge would be: fear of serious physical harm. And the test would be: when would a reasonable person not see her- or himself as having a choice but to flee? In other words, if you were in the same situation, what would you do?”

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“Since the Syrian refugee situation was just one of many, the approach was completely unfeasible. Financially, the only reason it did not break down earlier was itself a devastating critique: refugees overwhelmingly bypassed the camps. Since the Syrian refugee situation was just one of many, the approach was completely unfeasible. Financially, the only reason it did not break down earlier was itself a devastating critique: refugees overwhelmingly bypassed the camps.”

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“The inability of refugees to earn a living within the standard UNHCR approach was not only psychologically diminishing for the refugees, but also highlighted the lack of viability of the financing model. Paying for 4 million refugees to live without work for ten years was manifestly unsustainable. Even at a cost of only $1,000 per refugee per year, which would have implied a drastic reduction in lifestyle relative to Syrian pre-refugee conditions, the bill would have amounted to $40bn.”

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“Only those who cross the border qualify for the legal designation of 'refugee'. International agencies and the international media tend to focus mainly on those who cross borders. But those people displaced from their homes who seek sanctuary elsewhere in their country should not drop off the international agenda, and their practical needs of sanctuary often go unmet. Since mass violence occurs in states that are fragile, even though much of a country may remain safe the state is unlikley to have the capacity to cope.”

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“Today, most countries fail to comply with the 1951 Convention. Signatory states in the developed world find ever more elaborate ways to disregard or bypass the principle of non-refoulement, adopting a suite of deterrence or non-entrée policies that make it difficut and dangerous for refugees to access their territory: carrier sanctions, razor wire fences, interception en route. Signatory states in the developing world do tend to admit refugees more because of geoghraphical necessity and international pressure than law, and when they do, they still almost universally fail to implement the socio-economic rights in the Convention. And, yet, paradoxically, many of the most generous host countries in the world are not even full signatories: Jordan, Lebanon, Thailand, Nepal, and Turkey, for instance.”

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