Jamie Howell
   Staff Writer

On Wednesday, Feb. 3,  Dr. Sarah Lischer gave a lecture at UNC-Greensboro titled “Overwhelmed: The Causes and Consequences of the Global Migration Crisis.” Dr. Lischer is an associate professor in the department of Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University, and her lecture focused on refugee crises in the Middle East.

According to Dr. Lischer, the United Nations’ figures put the number of refugees in the world at 19 million and the number of people who are internally displaced at 38 million.

“More than any other region in the world, the Middle East has been shaped by forced displacement and the politics surrounding these crises,” Dr. Lischer said.

According to Dr. Lischer, 11 million Syrians have been displaced from their homes during the recent crisis. She noted now that the crisis has expanded to Europe, the western world sees how big the problem refugee crises are.

“They’re saying something must be done but preferably by someone else,” Dr. Lischer said.

Dr. Lischer said that the U.S. has been able to avoid dealing with this problem for a while purely because of geography, and in the last four years, the U.S. has accepted approximately 1,500 Syrian refugees.

According to an article in the New York Times, President Obama wants to increase the number of Syrian refugees being taken in by the U.S. to 10,000 ,but an article on CNN’s website says that 31 governors in the U.S. have claimed that they oppose refugees being allowed to enter the U.S. on the grounds that they could be terrorists.

There are easier ways for terrorists to get into the U.S. than by coming in as a refugee, according to Dr. Lischer.

“It would be easier to come in on a tourist visa and overstay,” Dr. Lischer said.

Current numbers from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), according to Dr. Lischer, put the number of internally displaced Iraqis at four million. According to UNHCR, there are 664,000 refugees in Jordan, most of whom are Syrian but about 30,000 of them are Iraqi. In addition, there are about 400,000 Iraqis in Jordan who are considered migrants, not refugees, according to Dr. Lischer.

According to Dr. Lischer, UNHCR counts 1.172 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

“If the U.S. were to take in the same proportion of refugees as Lebanon has, we would be resettling 80 million Syrian refugees,” Dr. Lisher said.   

Over 4 million people have fled Syria, and 7.6 million, about half of the Syrian population have been internally displaced.

“These numbers don’t actually include the largest refugee crisis in the region which is Palestinians,” Dr. Lischer said.

This is because Palestinians have their own separate United Nations organization called the United Nations Relief and Works agency (UNRWA). In the 2010, UNRWA recorded that Jordan contained almost 2 million Palestinian refugees, and Syria and Lebanon had over 400,000.

According to Dr. Lischer, the context of the Syrian refugee crisis goes back decades and the history of the region with other refugee crises have helped make the situation what it is today.

The Palestinian refugee crisis started in 1948, according to Dr. Lischer and began with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees fleeing the 1948 war with Israel. According to Dr. Lischer over the next few decades, many political parties arose within the Palestinian refugees, namely the Palestine liberation Organization (PLO).

Dr. Lischer stated that the war with Israel in 1967 resulted in even more Palestinians fleeing to Jordan; the influx of people caused greater instability in Jordan, and in 1970, a civil war broke out. According to Dr. Lischer, the PLO was then forced to move its base to Lebanon.

In Lebanon, there was a lot of conflict between the host state and the Palestinian refugees, said Dr. Lischer, and in 1982, when Israeli tanks and some Lebanese forces came to Palestinian refugee camps and massacred thousands of them, the PLO again had to move its base.

Dr. Lischer reported that due to all the  movement and the general inability for people to go home, there are camps all over the region now and it’s become a generational issue.

“There are generations of people that are refugees from places they’ve never been,” Dr. Lischer said. “[the] crisis provides a clear example of how an unresolved and highly politicized crisis can lead to violence over time which haunts some of these host states when they think about Iraqis and Syrians staying it their country.”

Dr. Lischer explained that the Iraqi refugee crisis began in 2006 after the bombing of the Al- askari shrine. There was a cascade of violence between the Shia and Sunni in Iraq and millions of people fled the country.

Toward the end of the lecture, Dr. Lischer gave her opinion on how stabilization could be achieved in the Middle East.

First, she suggested massive amounts of humanitarian aid so that people have the option of staying home because they at least have basic necessities.

Second, she said countries should “avoid building camps” because they make it impossible for people to integrate into the local community, and if they don’t, conflict and violence can arise.

Dr. Lischer showed an image of the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, which appeared to be a vast expanse of brown desert dotted with tents where people have lived for years.

According to the UNHCR website, the Zaatari refugee camp holds 79,357 Syrian refugees. She called it a place where they were a bit safer but where they had no real prospects of moving on or sending their children to school.

Third, Dr. Lischer made it clear that countries shouldn’t force people to return home.

The fourth suggestion on her list was that there be more resettlement.

“It doesn’t make sense to me that wealthy countries can provide such a tiny tiny bit of resettlement,” Dr. Lischer said.

Lastly, Dr. Lischer stated that the international community needs to try and resolve issues in the home countries of refugees with diplomacy and political action.

According to Dr. Lischer, resettling just 4 million people won’t solve the crisis; the resolution will come only when there is a possibility that one day people will be able to go home.