Wednesday, July 13, 2016
More Must Be Done: The Worldwide Refugee Crisis and the US
On June 2o, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. Congress came as close as it ever has to critiquing US human rights policy and, perhaps, responding to the anti-immigrant rhetoric of some presidential candidates. On World Refugee Day, the Commission co-chairs, Congressmen James McGovern and Joseph Pitts, noted that the US has accepted more refugees for resettlement than any other country -- 65,000. But, they observed, that number pales in comparison to the need, with tens of millions of refugees worldwide, including 2.5 million residing in Turkey and 1.1 in Lebanon. The co-chairs concluded that:
“The international community, including the United States, must re-double its efforts to bring to an end the political and armed conflicts that are forcing so many people to abandon their homes and livelihoods. As much as we are contributing to humanitarian assistance and resettlement, more must be done. And we must help our fellow citizens remember the great contributions that refugees have made to our own country, from Albert Einstein to Raphael Lemkin to Madeline Albright. As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said, ‘what we are seeing today is not a crisis of numbers, but a crisis of solidarity. We all must do more.’”
Read the full statement here.
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/human_rights/2016/07/more-must-be-done-the-worldwide-refugee-crisis-and-the-us.html