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Refugee Crisis Quotes

Browse 94 quotes about Refugee Crisis.

Refugee Crisis Quotes

“The global refugee crisis is indeed global. It isn’t a question of whether we should respond here (in the West) or there (at the crises’ points of origin), nor if we should address immediate needs or root causes. We can and must do all of the above.”

JusticeCompassionPovertySocietyInternationalRefugeesGlobalRefugee Crisis
Book:Seeking Refuge: On the Shores of the Global Refugees Crisis
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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.”

HumanitarianRefugeRefugeeAutonomyRefugeesRefugee CrisisHumanitarian AidRefugee CampsInternational Aid
Book:Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
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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.”

FreedomRefugeRefugeeAutonomyRefugeesRefugee Crisis
Book:Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
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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.”

SocietyRefugeeRefugeesRefugee Crisis
Book:Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
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“Refugees carry culture, Colonizers carry infection. Colonizers are the virus, Refugees are civilization. Refugees are practicing healers, living testament of wounds to ointment. Colonizers are proof of darwinism, that from monkeys comes the human race.”

ImmigrantsGenocideColonialismImperialismRefugeesColonial HistoryRefugee CrisisMassacreIndigenous RightsColonizers
Book:Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations
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“Refugees & Colonizers (The Sonnet) Refugees carry culture, Colonizers carry infection. Colonizers are the virus, Refugees are civilization. Refugees live on hope, Colonizers thrive on greed. Refugees dream of acceptance, Colonizers dream supremacy. Refugees are the true free and brave, they carry within the silver lining. There's nothing brave about genocide, no matter the whitewashed thanksgiving. Refugees are practicing healers, living testament of wounds to ointment. Colonizers are proof of darwinism, that from monkeys comes the human race.”

ImmigrantsGenocideColonialismImperialismRefugeesColonial HistoryRefugee CrisisMassacreIndigenous RightsColonizers
Book:Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations
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“While many Europeans made world headlines when they rolled out the red carpet for refugees and migrants fleeing war and economic deprivation, the influx of arrivals also provided the hardline right with a renewed voice. “People coming from this war will act a certain way, so it’s not just the fault of Germans. But we aren’t animals.” Ramadan, like hundreds of thousands of others, waited eagerly to find out if his family would be able to join him. In the meantime, he spent each day waiting for his wife to call, waiting for another temporary assurance that none of his relatives had died.”

GermanyRefugeesRefugee CrisisAnti FascismSyrian Civil War
Book:Alerta! Alerta!: Snapshots of Europe's Anti-fascist Struggle
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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.”

HumanitarianRefugeRefugeeHumanitarianismRefugeesHumanitarian CrisisRefugee Crisis
Book:Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
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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.”

RefugeRefugeeRefugeesRefugee Crisis
Book:Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
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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?”

SyriaRefugeeRefugeesRefugee CrisisSyrian RefugeesSyrian Refugee QuotesSyrian Refugee
Book:Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
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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.”

WarCivil WarRefugeeUnited NationsRefugeesRefugee CrisisUnhcrInternational Warfare
Book:Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
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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?”

RefugeRefugeeRefugeesFleeingRefugee CrisisSurvival ModeRefugee ExperienceRefugee Resettlement
Book:Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
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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.”

RefugeRefugeeRefugeesRefugee CrisisRefugee Camps
Book:Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
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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.”

RefugeRefugeeRefugeesRefugee CrisisSyrian RefugeesUnhcr
Book:Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System
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“Europe, he says, is frightened that an influx of foreigners will erode European values. But what values will there to be uphold if we abandon our duty to protect those less fortunate than ourselves? Wat incentive do we give to refugees to maintain the fabric of our society if that fabric is so ragged in the first place? "If Europe is not able to show a better way of life to them, then they will think that their morality is better than ours." "They need to face some higher standards of morality, " he says. "If not, they will set their own." [Quoting Serbian priest Tibor Varga]”

RefugeesMigrantsRefugee CrisisSerbia
Book:The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe's Refugee Crisis
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“We think of agents, traffickers and facilitators as the worst abusers of refugees, but when they set out to extort from their clients, when they cheat them or dispatch them to their deaths, they are only enacting an entrepreneurial version of the disdain which refugees suffer at the hands of far more powerful enemies – those who terrorise them and those who are determined to keep them at arm’s length. Human traffickers are simply vectors of the contempt which exists at the two poles of the asylum seeker’s journey; they take their cue from the attitudes of warlords and dictators, on the one hand, and, on the other, of wealthy states whose citizens have learned to think of generosity as a vice. [from the London Review of Books Vol. 22 No. 3 · 3 February 2000]”

MigrationRefugeesHuman TraffickingConflictsRefugee CrisisDictatorsSmugglingSmugglers
Author:Jeremy Harding
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“If Syria is to rise from the ashes it needs a united Arab world which has one thing on its agenda, not the falling of a dictator for we have seen many of those fall, but the reemergence of a prosperous Arab nation, one that is not reliant on foreign aid but is self-sustained and set on its way to become powerful once again.”

Middle EastSyriaRefugeesArab WorldRefugee CrisisArab SpringForeign AidSyrian Civil WarBashar Al AssadArab Nationalism
Author:Aysha Taryam
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“The story of humanity is essentially the story of human movement. In the near future , people will move even more, particularly if, as some predict, climate change sparks mass migration on an unprecedented scale. The sooner we recognize the inevitability of this movement, the sooner we can try to manage it.”

Climate ChangeMigrationRefugeesRefugee Crisis
Book:The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe's Refugee Crisis
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