committee and it starts life thursday at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span3.

>> last month ucla looked at the refugee crisis in europe. we will hear from two academics who spoke on international migration and later german diplomat to the united states will talk about how refugees are assimilating. together they are about two hours and 45 minutes. >> okay, good afternoon everybody. i am roger walsinger a professor of sociology and that direct their of the center for the study of migration on behalf of a different center, the center for european congressional studies. i would like to welcome you to today's events on the refugee crisis perspectives on europe and beyond. as it happens this year the very first event organized by the center for the study of international migration was on this very topic. we had our first talk on september 25 and unbeknownst to

us at that time september was the penultimate month in which the refugee flows to europe would rise and since then the flow has steadily diminished and at this point the point that it's begun to disappear from the headlines of the u.s. and western press. what we are not seeing is that the flow is continuing and the same interval the flow to the west has diminished the number of refugees that have been registered in syria has grown by 800,000. so the refugee crisis unfortunately is very much alive and well and so to provide insight into that crisis and what might be done about it is that goal of today's session. i'm going to turn it over to asli bali is the director of the center for your pain studies who will introduce our speakers.

>> thank you very much roger. first i would like to thank our co-sponsor the center for international relations, the center for near eastern studies in the center for the study of international migration. i would like to make two announcements. please turn off your cell phone and second for for the q&a session we would like people to come on stage at this microphone this one, sorry, this one and please ask your question and please keep it precise in order to let everybody participate. it is my pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker gregory maniatis who is this senior fellow overseas. excuse me, have the wrong paper. gregory maniatis served since

2006 a senior adviser to peter southerland the u.n. special representative for migration. he's also a senior adviser at the migration policy institute in washington and a codirector of columbia universities global policy initiative. over the past 15 years mr. maniatis has worked closely with the european commission state government european parliament and international organizations and civil society groups on all aspects of migration policy. he will comment on the european union, greece, russia migration and other topics and has been in many publications including "the new york times," the "washington post," "the wall street journal" and "new york magazine." earlier in his career gregory maniatis was a policy advisers to several governments and was a founder and publisher of odyssey

magazine. he is a graduate of princeton university and is a member of the council on foreign relations. i will also introduce our discussants who is director of the ucla center for near eastern studies and professor laure murat where she teaches in the law program. recent work includes -- lessons from religiously divided societies and negotiating non-corporation international law and mitigation in the iranian nuclear crisis. she currently serves as a editor

and chair as the visor committee for human rights watch. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you for the invitation and to all of you for coming out to discuss what i think is a critical topic. it's not just about migration, it is about the state of europe and really i think the state of our democracy so if you don't mind i'm going to start off with a handful of points that i would like to really emphasize and then give you the state of play at the international level and at the european level in terms of what is happening and then suggest some ideas for how the european crisis could be less of

a crisis and how the world could pull together to help the europeans and to help those who are in need, the 20 million plus refugees who are in the world today. i want to make sure leave you with three points that you will remember. if you only remember three points it would be -- first the crisis started off the year ago as a humanitarian crisis. it evolved over the course of last summer into a political crisis in europe that have significantly undermined the european union, some of the fundamental tenets of the eu no longer hold the idea of open borders for instance that it has become even more than that. i characterize it as a generational threat to the post-world war ii liberal democratic order. so, for me what that says is

addressing the refugee crisis in europe is not just a humanitarian issue, it's a strategic priorities for the united states and all that care about that post-world war ii liberal doma credit order. why is that? i think that is because the anti-migrant sentiment which has risen with veer off city in europe is the cheap fuel that is propelling the authoritarian right, and the nationalistic right in europe. you saw today a very close call in austria but the far right candidate barely losing the presidency. that is not going to be an exception over the course of the coming years. you will see contested elections , contested by the far right in many european countries and you are also seeing the evaporation of the mainstream

center which is the center that is held together the liberal democratic order over the past 65 years. and if that weren't enough you are seeing not only the decline of that center but you are seeing the rise of ideologies that challenge the liberal order so you have in your ideologies that are not only native but that are foreign fueled. the obvious and important ones to keep in mind are wahhabism and -- where char present in europe. in the austrian election to give an example the far right freedom party advocates for adequate system for austria and europe between the u.s. and russia no longer the transatlantic alliance and in terms of wahhabism there have been billions in duck did in the european support of movements

that preach a radical form of islam. there was an excellent piece yesterday in "the new york times" about the rise of wahhabism and isis in kosovo that is worth reading. if that weren't enough the millennials are another problem. it's hard to say that in this room but if you just based on the polling data that we have, the dedication or the commitment of the millennial to the idea of democracy as compared to their parents and grandparents it has diminished significantly so post-world war ii and surveys you see that generation saying that seven in 10 of them say that democracy is essential. today at the millennial generation poles around 30% of the millennials say that

democracy is essential. all those combined are very dangerous trends and that is why it is that the topic of this conversation but that is why migration is so important and the refugee crisis is so important. the second i would make is even though this crisis everyone is looking west looking at the european union and saying why can't the european union get its act together? the syrian crisis is a global crisis. there's nothing in the geneva convention is as europe or turkey or lebanon or jordan should carry the weight of the burden of the displaced from the syrian crisis, 4.5 million refugees. it's an international crisis and unfortunately the community has been largely absent from this crisis.

clearly the u.s. which has long been the back under that international refugee protection system has been absent too. the obama administration in the course of the past nine months during which it had promised to take in 10,000 syrian refugees from the beginning of october through the end of september the commitment was 10,000 refugees managed to process only a thousand refugees from syria. during that same period the canadians lost 25,000 syrian refugees using the same standard that applies in the united states. they actually were cross-referencing the syrian refugee applications with u.s. databases there was no reason the u.s. has been absent. the question we have to ask is how do you muster a constituency of actors, states and other

stakeholders who believe the refugee protections are actually important in the 21st century and that is i think a key policy and political challenge. so the third to remember is that in my view the way to counter the populace far right is obviously through political action but principally through grassroots actions. you have had a lot of extraordinary action by individuals, ngo's church groups and others and on the island over the course of the past year there have been over 50,000 volunteers that have come to help those refugees who came to shore there. for the first time in my work on migration basically of 16 years actually showed the private

sector does not involve itself but it's been there. companies from linked in to ikea to the banks have weighed in today think it's because they saw that the crisis was destabilizing the political system and business above all one stable political system in which opry. it's our -- if there was a single goal to happen that action i would argue is to educate refugees. you mentioned the decrease in the flows to europe. they haven't really decrease that much relative to last year. they have decreased relative to last fall however something has increased which is the number of children. the number of children arriving, the proportion of children the flow to greece have been 38%

significantly higher than last year to 22% have been women so 60% are women and children arriving in greece and is worth keeping in mind that having large numbers of uneducated children in the middle east and europe the threat to america's national security interests. so, those are my three points and i will give you a quick sense of what the picture looks like. for those of you who are not fully immersed in the refugee crisis at the moment to tell you what the numbers are like out in the world. so today we have about 21 million refugees in the world official figure in 2014, it was 20 million is now closer to 21 million. i'm not going to bombard your data but i will give you food points that are interesting to

the situation. in 2010 there were roughly 10,000 people who were displaced every day from their homes around the world. in 2012 the number increased to 23,000 people displaced every day on average from their homes. in 2014 the number doubled again to over 40,000 people being displaced from their home so you can see the magnitude of the problem is growing and there's not a lot of science that that's going to decrease. i mentioned the importance of children and their education. half of the refugees, half of those being displaced today our children and half of these children who are displaced are not in school and they go for a long periods of time not getting an education and in fact in the retracted the refugee situation in the camps places like kenya

there is nothing beyond primary education, if that. there are a host of new players in the world of refugees as well the number one new player is turkey which now hosts more refugees than any other country. lebanon is the biggest per-capita host of refugees. has 232 refugees for every 1000 residents. you don't hear much about lebanon in terms of lyrical agitation. by comparison hungary has seven refugees are 1000 hungarians. numbers don't matter in that respect. 97% of the refugees in lebanon but below the poverty line to give you a sense of how it is they are making do their and 87% in jordan also lived to love the poverty line. i mentioned earlier there are

20 million refugees so there are 60 million plus displaced. most of those are internally displaced. of the 20 million that were refugees in 2014150000 will return home, 150,000. something on the order of 70,000 were taken kind from countries of first asylum which are typically developing countries that typically in urban areas. 70,000 were able to resettle in countries that were wealthier like the united states or canada or europe. basically you are talking about 20 million refugees of whom may be 200,000 every year are able to really start rebuilding their lives in security, so 1%. in europe to give you a sense of proportion here there were 219,000 refugees, sorry 219,000

asylum seekers across the mediterranean to reach her up in 2014. last year that number went to a million. as of today the mother of those who cross the mediterranean, is still fairly early in the season is almost up to that number from 2014, 219 been in about 200 now. 1100 people were saved in the last 24 hours crossing the mediterranean 300 off the shore off the coast of italy so the numbers continue to rise daily. previously the historic highs from the crossing across the mediterranean was 70,000. you are talking about a major increase and sure the numbers have fallen for now because of a deal between the eu and turkey but they will exceed by far the numbers of 2014.

i should also point out the nature of -- there are lots of things that are different today than when the european convention agreed in 1951. you can talk about technology and climate change demographics and all those things are different today but i would suggest maybe the most important differences that in 1951 and since world war ii, government locks their dissidents into their country. those countries from which produce refugees generally were countries that didn't want those refugees to leave. today the countries from which refugees originate want them to leave and not only do they want them to leave for political reasons to get rather their political opponents but many groups like isis are profiting from human mobility and profiting from smuggling.

the numbers in europe last year conservatively are estimated to be about $6 billion generated from smuggling refugees and migrants into europe. they are a big part i would suggest they go to those in power. let's put it that way. that's the big picture. i should have mentioned to put europe into perspective which is that 86% of refugees are in the developing world, not the developed world so that developed world is a tiny fraction of refugees and when it's given more as it was last year it kicks and screams. it's hard to understand if you are here or anywhere really how

what went wrong last year in europe. there was a cascade of and confidence in political -- frankly that led to what should have been a fairly manageable crisis yet there were 547 or at peak times 8000 people arriving on the greek island every day. like -- why couldn't the european nations feed the people and take care of them? you have to i think ask yourself that question. it's clearly not because they are not capable of it. if there were an earthquake you would have had a massive response from the international community. you can take care of half a million people displaced by natural disaster to have the political will. why didn't europe have the political will? i would suggest that europe over the past 10 years has been greatly weakened by three crises

come the first one which you all know which was the 2008 financial crisis which took the strongest expression which is still with us today being negotiated. so that was the first sign that agreement wasn't going to be her reached amongst the 28 eu members. the second crisis that has strained relations amongst the eu states was the 2014 invasion by russia of ukraine and that was preceded by the russian invasion of georgia. those two invasions divided their opinion and then comes along the refugee crisis and again states aren't able to come together and have a solution that is a common european solution. those three crises express i think the fundamental weakness of the eu today so until those

crises came about the eu was more or less able to continually pull together closer and closer. they produced reams of regulations and agreements which for the most part were not controversial for the european public trading comes the financial crisis and the issue of sharing your financial future together and that caused tension. along comes russia subsequently and you have to have a common foreign-policy which the eu is not particularly good at and the russia tensions underscored as i mentioned earlier the far right in europe close to the kremlin and argues for acquiescence between the u.s. and russia. that is a challenge i think of the u.s. and others and we need to think hard about how is it that the far right in the far left have strong relationships with the kremlin and?

and third is the refugee crisis the migration crisis and that strikes at the core issue of identity. in fact the refugee crisis is more important than the other two crises because while there were some question of debate around the european dinner tables that they were corrupt or lazy it didn't inflame passions except between greece and germany. the refugee crisis absolutely inflamed passions at every dinner table in europe and i would like to just explained one basic tractable i have about understanding immigration public opinion and that is that you shouldn't divide people into pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant or pro-refugee and anti-refugee. i think that's misleading a pretty one -- pretty much anyone has the potential to be pro-and anti-and that is what causes

sharp swings in public opinion. fairly easy especially to swing in one direction or the other and we have seen that in the united states. you have to be very sensitive to a broad range of opinions when it comes to immigration. that gives you a sense of the backdrop of why was so hard to generate agreement within the eu on the refugee crisis and then you also had another factor which was that solutions kept being proposed that were not comprehensive. they were silver bullet solutions. a year ago if we had been gathered here we would have been talking about the mediterranean military mission in the central solidity or was the problem and the eu high commissioner proposed to the u.n. that there should be, the u.n. doors military mission to disrupt the business model of the smugglers.

a month later that planet dissipated because in fact the flows had switched from bolivia to turkey to greece and the whole premise of that was that libya was a failed state in that's why we at the refugee crisis that evaporate. turkey was not a failed state and it was a major source of refugee flows for the rest of the year. then we have another big grand plan which involves relocating that asylum-seekers from italy to the rest of the european union and the rest the european union was kicking and screaming about the plan but they agreed last summer to relitigate 120,000 asylum-seekers from greece to the west of year. in work so well. there were a few hundred who were relocated into march of this year but then the eu reed doubled its commitment and in

mid-march said they were going to relocate 20,000 that asylum-seekers from greece to the rest of europe by the middle of may. that was in march and out the -- 3000 -- have been moved at that time but it's funny because it is exactly those kinds of failures, the chaos you saw last summer on the greek island that announced grand plans out of major deals, major agreements that don't get delivered that people look around and say why should we believe you anymore? why should we believe the mainstream parties can do anything and that is the legacy and the backdrop against which you are going to see elections unfold over the coming year. i think the first one obviously will hopefully not go on an anti-eu's direction but there are several that will go on an anti-eu direction.

by way of reminder there was also in africa summit eu africa summit in november you might recall. it was supposed to also address the problem and then the big one was the deal that the eu cut with turkey on march 18. that was to take affect effect on march 20. we can talk about that in due course. that has not gone as planned either on many levels. there was ice's attempt to come up with a big deal that would solve the problem and in fact the problem is much more complex and requires action in the universal front. so what would those funds look like? it's actually not such a difficult challenge and the first question we have to ask is why did not europe and the international community do what would have prevented the crisis last year which is to support the countries where the refugees were living. just to give you a sense of

comparison last year the eu individually and collectively in individual countries in the eu spent between 30 and 40 euros to deal with the crisis once it reached the shore. had the eu i would propose spent 10 billion at the beginning of leicester on turkey lebanon and jordan they would not have been a crisis. to give you another point of reference the german government alone has budgeted now $106 billion to integrate the refugees that it expects, that it has today and will come to see her next year so germany alone will spend something in order the order of $120 billion and yet this wouldn't have happened, at least not anywhere near the scale which it did have the international community in europe supported turkey and lebanon and jordan. that's one of your answers, is to actually support the

countries in which refugees find themselves. we are nowhere near that today. it will not come up on generating significant amounts of funding for refugees. so the second i think that europe has to accept in the rest of the world has to accept is essential to take refugees from the frontline countries to the wealthier countries in the world. i would imagine there were 70,000 refugees resettled on average over the past two years. the number needs to go higher. needs to go up to half a million in order to have a reasonable and fair share of responsibility for refugees and the european could have taken half a million refugees last year in an orderly way from turkey jordan and lebanon doing health securities and security screenings and other screenings and i think the

american public would have accepted that. maybe it would have been 300,000 reported thousandth at what they didn't accept was a chaotic scene of people coming onto the shores potentially isis terrorists but certainly not in any way that befits a 20th century developed continent. in fact i will mention something that was said friday in an eu meeting of ministers where representative from luxembourg ascending europe now of their sickest and weakest and least useful syrian refugees and that's really the position which the europeans have gotten themselves into. so that is the third thing that we should be able to process refuse to be -- refugees outside of developed countries. when 65 years since the refugee convention was signed. there is still no international

capacity for processing an application. every country has to do it itself. that is a very odd thing to hear but it's true. canada when the treau government came in on october 4 is that it was going to bring 25,000 refugees in four months. had to bring 500 of its own staff principally to jordan in order to set up operations that could screen refugees and bring them to canada. there is no international capacity to do that. so i will not go into any new details except to say that clearly things that europe could have done last year, pointed out that all of those were european solutions to the problem. really those are the same things at the international could and should do.

they should be a reasonable fare cost to sustain refugees in the countries they find themselves in. we now raise probably something on the order of $4 per refugee per year. that number has been the order of three or 4000, 10 times what we pay and if we don't do that they will do what they did lester which is to go across the mediterranean and costs 10 times as much as it would be for at least five times as much as it would be in the country where they were first given refuge. not to mention the political costs that have been incurred over the past year in the form of divide of the far right and the economic cost of closing the borders. they are a countries in europe that of close borders. that system of burden sharing of responsibility sharing for refugees which i think most people would presume exists, doesn't exist and that challenge

of developing a system by which the international community selectively takes response ability and before a crisis strikes or before a crisis spirals out of control develop a plan to address the crisis i think is the biggest challenge we have internationally right now. thank you. [applause] >> those were just a fascinating set of reflections and i think our two axes on which one may proceed on asking questions. one story you told us about the european union and what's been happening in the european union and the other side is migration and the way those two things converge. i thought i would start by asking couple questions about just how you assess that liberal democratic commitment in post-world war ii order because you give us an account was the

last 10 years of represent a crisis that crisis has been driven by financial crises and aggression on the russian part and this minor crisis which leads to unraveling. you also tell us that the numbers and the scale of migration that came to european shores was highly manageable. had there have been a the political will and had there have been the resources even if you didn't say that that's something one could reasonably argue. with the economy that collectively the european union has one could imagine a rational way of addressing something like that without treating it as another crisis in the way that was treated and without having to panic projection. it seems to me there might via deeper set of explanations for the crisis that europe is facing that go beyond the one to you mentioned or we could add to your list. i just want to debut a couple

questions around that. first european expansion. around the same time you are tracking you also have not just the extension that preceded the crisis but its full implications and terms of consensus-based decision-making that one could argue a greater challenge is russia's aggression towards ukraine in crimea but the community committee was able to weather that crisis more rationally with stewardship and leadership at the center of the community was different at that time literally in the geographic map that are represented and similarly you mentioned the kremlin has an appeal to the far right in europe. i wonder if that is correct across the board and cynically true for the ride in the uk in austria or the closer you are to the relevant zone of expansion. [inaudible question] wonder how that impacts whether there is a deeper set of questions here and i will add one thing to that. the question says the crisis of

liberalism seems like it might be deeper than the three elements that you describe but the flipside of your story is what is the price of which that commitment can be maintained with an order for europe to remain in the -- a certain strategy is required either by paying money or directing funds outside of libya in turkey and other places. the flipside is was europe's commitment shallow or deep in what made them premised upon a certain capacity to keep at bay crises that have been plaguing the world well before 2015 the syrian crisis alone in the five-year civil war. it wasn't framed that way. people have moved in a particular way but the price of pushing problems out maybe the flipside of maintaining that liberalism in which case is that

of an indictment of liberalism we are speaking of them that may stop there? >> is that it? >> not it actually. >> let me see if i can go deeper than that even. i think that you have to or several major factors. one is in equality and inequality within the eu but inequality between the eu and neighboring regions. obviously between germany and greece that have tremendous tensions. sorry, is this on? the same inequality is a major force. the question of europe's capacity to defend itself is another major factor post-world war ii. you see now i think finally emerging over the course of this past year or two is the sense that europe has to have its own born defense and when we say

europe this context we mean germany. that is slowly changing in d.c. germany being willing to weigh in militarily and on the foreign-policy stage even two years ago i would challenge was not foreseeable. so expansion, 20 countries 20 people 28 anything around the table trying to agree on anything but especially thinks are important is very hard. those are a think the deeper forces that are challenging europe. the question is could you have solved any of these? you mentioned syria. i think bikers ago we knew that this is going to happen. five years ago we had a really good sense that syrian refugees would end up in europe. the proximity would for one lead to that conclusion but there a lot of family relationships between syria so we knew in 2011

that syria could reduce a large number of refugees for europe. but the question of whether the european union was able with united states to do something about this obviously turkey has been a big factor here as well. so i think there are certainly deeper tectonic forces at play but even still i think that with as you say the political will is a term i find distressing. i don't know where you find the political will. i believe you constantly hear political leadership because that's ultimately -- the leadership doesn't come from people is from prince and spring is not going to come from politicians exposed to public opinion so that political leadership in the context of

this crisis will have to come from everyone but politicians are you just keep that thought in mind and it has. that's extraordinary thing that hasn't enabled us much as it could have. i will give an example. it's not just volunteers that i mentioned earlier in greece but mayors of cities. if you look at where the action is right now in europe in terms of problems that set the municipal level. in fact i think the mayor of athens to start to negotiate with mayors of other cities barcelona which has been proactive on this issue has been talking and taking refugees directly from athens to barcelona and if you generate political bill as an example you can even do a turkey. if you generate the political will at the municipal level to share refugees portugal is a country that has come up and is willing to take more of its fair share of refugees the national government will have a hard time saying know. ..

>> migration is the messier side of globalization. it is incomplete because it creates such a tremendous reaction domestically when it is not managed well. i would contest but i think the european union which takes -- there's 3,000,000 migrants in the e.u. in an average year, half of half of those come from outside the e.u. those are not refugees, those

are just people moving in and out with visas, temporary workers, students, and others. those are manageable numbers, one and a half --3 million. if you added another half-million refugees a year you could handle them. why didn't it happen is the question? >> amongst your proposal is the notion of shifting resources to the places that are already housing many the refugees. of course that is partly part of the e.u. turkey deal. it illustrates some illustrates some of the challenges of contemplating thanks the idea that for billion-dollar euro to turkey would help offset some of the cost of refugees. it would take it temporally dollars for one year if you're to take those countries you named it turkey, lebanon and -- combined and 4 billion itself has been controversial. that is a challenge. buys sort of way of responding

to that you said if germany is planning to spend 160 billion to accommodate those that is now coming in or in order to assimilate them then asserted disproportion between the two investments is lost. but one might respond to that by saying that his money germany is injecting into its own economy and indeed the refugees are projected by the european union to increase the gdp of the general matter. the political logic of building will around spending money at home even if it is to house refugees as opposed to spending money outside i think it is something one has to puzzle through and thinking about the solution. on the flipside it sort of returns me to the question of outsourcing of problems. if the idea is let's just send money to the places that are frontline at some level, i i wonder how greece and italy would respond to that approach by the e.u. periods of the e.u. were to say we're going to transfer a lot of funds but

these prisons cannot travel beyond greece and italy they must stay in greece and italy, but we'll fund them, whether not the public in that country would be excited to embrace that deal and why turkey, lebanon or jordan would think differently. witnessing a moment in the same week that the european union called upon greece to do a much more effective job of managing its borders or face mandatory closure by the european union while at the same time calling on turkey to open its border syria because of incredible crisis that they are facing it is a moment of real difference finally because you're asking one country to taken tens of thousand, hundreds of thousands of people on principal ground while you are instructing the country within your own community to raise up its wall as high as possible, precisely for fear that those ways of people may continue into europe. against that backdrop want to press the idea that financial solution is one that would actually help us address the challenge that we're facing in system today. >> so i think if you asked those

refugees in turkey, jordan and lebanon and financial support would make a difference to them i think their answer would be be us and they would not really engage in an debate. they would say you can have a normative debate and give us that money for healthcare, schooling so we can get jobs. so there is no question financial support to those countries on the frontline is appreciated most above all those who is going to receive it in the end. whether it is sufficient is another question. in greece right now you're seeing the situation i just spent a week there ten days ago, the situation where the rest of the e.u. has said we are not opening up our borders to refugees in greece and we are not giving financial support that you need in order to deal with them. so you have neither of those that you need which is a borders and financial support or more open borders. but look, there is a logic when

people move that the first-order business is to get them out of harm's way. so it is not equivalent to say well turkey has its border closed or were asking turkey to open its borders even though our borders are closed it's not the same thing because turkey as you know considers itself correctly as a fairly welcoming place for refugees, to an an half-million refugees. but by closing its border to syrian they are putting the syrians into harm's way. your post in the port is to turkey are having some controls there to not put refugees into the same kind of harm that you and create by closing the turkish borders, fair enough to say, right question? the second point is that there is a reason apart why refugees staying countries it with border conflict zones because they're more comfortable there. typically if you're leaving syria and are in jordan and lebanon you have a fairly common culture.

so it is much easier reach than going to portugal, hungary, poland. so there is a logic to not going evenly out into the world to be clustered near complex owns. the question i think that you have to ask is what is a reasonable level of support so that those refugees in those complex owns can have a chance at a decent life there while the conflict unfolds? or until the conflict and so they can return home. we have not provided that first level of support, that level of support that says to jordan, here is the funding you need to include these refugees in your communities and in your schools, in your healthcare system and in your labor market. once you do that you'll get a sense of how many people are unsatisfied with that and how many, how much support is needed by the countries that are hosting them. you mentioned germany prefers to

spend money in germany on refugees then perhaps send it out. i'm i'm not sure i agree with you. it is a difference of logic, the cost of the past year for germany and the lives of the aft and that cost of border closures in that general reputation costs for europe, i do not think is less than i think it was less than 6 billion that they offered turkey, i think it's lesson that clearly it would've been a decent proposition to supply the funding to turkey and another series of reasons why those funds have not gone over there yet. by that same logic is it even better if you or jordan to get 10,000,000,000 dollars from the international community to spend locally in order to double the infrastructure that you need in jordan. it's a very complex formula as you know. there's a lot of political

logic, there's a lot of political logic to dealing with the situation more locally. >> i'm going to ask one last question that will open up to the q&a. my last question is returning to the idea that this represents more of a normative crisis to the system than to just the idea that it can be addressed through including processing and some so on. the idea that the model of refugee was at the end of world war ii and what we're talking about now in terms of preparation displacement certainly these are populations extremely vulnerable that face near certainty of harm and potentially torturing the the countries they are fleeing. but the numbers that profile and so on begins to blur the line between refugee and migrant. in ways that at least somewhat argue required number to every thinking of whether or not we have to commit ourselves to the very narrow way of thinking of refugees or whether viewing the impending changes that you talked about and the fact of state failure, the unraveling of

a system that held together sort of appellation controls combined with globalization, whether all of this is priming us for a time to rethink the way we manage migration as a whole. obviously you're situated very well to think about these kind of questions and to try to offer some answers to these. i believe you know better than i that the court has found that the mechanism that u.s. put in place for processing increase fails to meet the basic requirement of the 1951 convention in part because the court finds that turkey doesn't represent the same country that nearly opened its border and enabled the people to be saved, there are many other pressures on the way in which this convention intersects with this a particular crisis in this crisis is just one of many others, get as you noted 60 bone people not all of them are from syria, and indeed major crisis that go far less attended to in africa or on the great lakes it, vic kenya

and the turkey deal and so on suggest that there's possibly an argument here for a broader rethink and i wonder what your thoughts are on that question. >> it's a good question, 51 convention has been contested by at least two european leaders and the da'esh prime minister had openly question whether it should be applied today. it is not a static document size you know what was originally defined as a refugee, those fleeing a well-founded fear of persecution has been expanded by the courts over the course of the past few decades. and that allows of her as was syria at this point, syrians venturing in jordan for instance are not adjudicated individually to have a well-founded fear persecution there given a basically blanket protection because they are fleeing conflict and dangers to their

life which is not a well-founded fear persecution. effective 51 agreements on that convention and that definition look very different today than it did back then. the question is whether or not there is political and public support for an expanded definition of who deserves protection of some say have gone too far and that the refugees are too many and they do not fit the original definition. there are others who argue that the whole new category of fleeing gang violence in central america or economic destitution that threatens their lives or natural disaster who should fall under the refugee convention. there are some courts here there that take up these issues. if we let the courts decide that is going to give fodder to those who say there should be a democratic or popularly decided issue. so i i think the real

deficit is political at this point as it is normative so why are people fearing persecution and fleeing economic destitution. why is it in our interest in the international community to offer them kind of protection whether it is permanent protection or a different time. i think we need to go back to that question. try to answer that question from the perspective of 2016 from the perspective of individual. in order to rebuild support from scratch for something that feels this and many contacts. what was relevant back in post-world war ii era with millions of jews who had just died and others who had died with millions of people still essentially homeless around europe in the late 40s and 50s. there is a need to settle that problem. the problem looks very different from that problem too many people at least.

you go back to political argument and see what you have to's the same to publics around the world in defending the need for protection for those fleeing different contacts. >> so that will go to questions. >> so if you go to the microphone. >> the countries where europe would be theoretically spending money to create the structure that could accommodate refugees

and also right now in lebanon people are paying $200 a month [inaudible question] and there's a lot of the same kind of problems. people in jordan are in camps and they don't want to be there. they don't wanna live and basically these refugee camps turns out more like concentration camps. and there really is a lot of people who are trying to find anyway to make a a living and don't have any resources at all. but their route through lebanon cannot collect this garbage. some just questioning to what extent all of this infrastructure is going to develop even if you dropped billions of dollars in there, where will it go.

so meanwhile while that is developing you have all these millions of refugees and i will stop there. [inaudible] [inaudible] >> i think the most important development has been that we have reevaluated in the past two years the international protection system and the way in which we take care of for a quote refugees and the care and maintenance model of taking refugees and sticking them in camps.

where their last 15 or 20 years with children and grandchildren being born. i think that we are seeing a consensus move away from that. i think that is but one of the results of the past year. this model is no longer seems to be valid and we are moving toward a model including refugees in society which means they're going to be living in cities, towns and villages. now that the camps for the most part. that's turkey has only about 10% of refugees in turkey are in camps at the moment. that is one good thing that is happen. you don't need to -- on another level there is a parallel conversion to humanitarian and development communities the humanitarian system is meant to address refugees, refugees tend to fall into crisis category and so you don't really look at refugees as a long-term issue,

but long-term issues tend to be taken and addressed by development community and development agencies, the development money in the world is something like ten times the amount of the humanitarian money. i think what we are seeing now is at least the beginning of the conversation that says we should no longer look at refugees is just people who need immediate relief and care packages and to be fed, they need to be the target of development aid to. we need to think about them in the context of national plans that the community supports and they need to be part of labor markets and educational training more generally. i think that is a good thing. >> this question of what would we do with the money coming from lebanon and i think it's a very

legitimate one. it is what i hear typically in response to whatever i say we should've spent the multiple of money in those countries. but. but isn't that what the international humanitarian development systems are meant to address? they don't. so the question is why have after decades of development work why are we unable to effectively and efficiently dispense the eight insignificant of a significant scale. sometimes it's domestic and i think there should be a much more robust international effort to be able to take a country like lebanon and be able to help lift it up. if if we can to that in lebanon or jordan or turkey, what is the point of sustainable development goals and the object of trying to address what we call the root causes of migration and refugees. we cannot do it in the countries that are an acute crisis where we have the greatest interest, were not going to be able to do it elsewhere for a lot of immigration flows are now originating.

>> i was wondering if it is possible to broaden the geographical base of what we are thinking of and think outside the box. has international community are the people that are bearing this brunt thought of engaging the oil-rich countries of qatar, buttering, saudi arabia for example, the possibility to solve the whole crisis of the population. if it's not done why not? >> so that is another good question. the saudi say that they are host to over 600,000 syrians right now. right now. they do not call them refugees because the saudi's are not with the refugee convention nor what they give you them refugee protections. but they would give them something better which is inclusion in their labor market. some of those syrians are for the outbreak of conflict, many

of them hundreds of thousands reportedly came after we have no way of really knowing, other countries in the gulf have given significant amounts of money to syrian relief refugee and internally programs but you're right, they don't don't typically take letter refugees. that is a challenge in the gulf countries more generally they don't want to see essentially arab refugees because there is the risk for them of trying to integrate over the long-term and that is not to the liking of most of the gulf governments. they want want migrant workers who will not have any claims permanently on their sovereignty. >> historically refugees have never been resettled instantaneously or miraculously. because our president is in vietnam at the moment i will use

vietnam as an example. the war in vietnam was over in the mid- 70s, 1975 in the early '90s i was in the outer islands of the philippines they have a lot of unsettled that or just likes suspects were not think they so 1992 i was i gave differently where there is vietnamese refugees and i was made to understand that indonesia had the same that the seven years after the war and you have also mentioned the post-world war ii europe, most

people waited approximately five years only kilometers away from the car, only a few kilometers away from nonoaud, host host countries have always taken the prerogative to cherry pick to bring ms. into the present day why do we expect instantaneous resolution to refugee issues that are not just the syrians could i just say that if we could just have the questions that are the point without long practices going forward. >> so it's a good point but post-world war ii europe was devastated, economies were in

shambles, today we are far wealthier, where far wealthier that are in the context of the well but even back in 1956 just to take one example 200,000 hungarians displacing their resettled all over the world in a few months. throughout much of europe and other places. one of the obvious driving forces of that was the ideological battle between the west and the soviet union. there's a will will to try to address those who i think the vietnam example is another good one because the peril between vietnam today back then there displacer many years but today syrians have been displaced as i

mentioned there hundreds of thousands of kids and searching for a solution also often takes a lot of time. the the difference in vietnam as there was a international response and effort with 17 countries if i'm not mistaken who over the course of years developed a calm prehensile plan of action. today, after the searing conflict for a half-million refugees, there's no international plan. there is not even a table at which the stakeholders are sitting to say syria is an international problem and the refugee problem that comes from syria is a national problem what solve it. there is obviously been peace talks but there has never been, since 2,011,011 a single meeting of a major international actor which you think the u.s.

administration might call her the un might call for someone will call to say let's figure out what we do this for a half-million refugees. we did it with vietnam, we didn't do it with syria. >> some questions require some context, others don't, mine doesn't, thank you. so my question is, i keep on reading the word children and hearing that from you today too. i have not yet heard the definition of who decides at what age is a child and what age is not. it is very confusing. thank you. >> that's is very confusing. thank you. >> that's a good point. i could give you some i don't have in front of me the breakdowns but i can assure you that we are not talking about 17-year-olds alone. >> what are we talking about? >> were talking about the range of kids from zero to 18. that's what you're talking about her were not talking about 18

-year-olds. >> were talking zero to 18, 18 is a cut off. >> correct. >> and the majority are 18, 1716, five and six? >> i would not want to make a claim, but the numbers are over that spectrum. in jordan at any given point i think there's 600,000 searing refugees at any given moment there's 15000 women who are pregnant. so the numbers being born fill out the lower years but the kids region, the searing children are reaching europe are fairly evenly spread across the spectrum. the afghan unaccompanied minors reaching europe tend to be older and tend to be in the 12-18-year-old bracket. that is definitely the case.

for some reason they have a tendency to go to sweden. the sweden has something like 30,000 unaccompanied minors, they have to contend with that. the majority of that is afghan. >> warmer question, who decides what the age range is? who decides it's 18? >> so that's a question if they say they're 18 of 18 is that what you saying? >> know about the age range, wise it 18 instead of 16. >> so why hasn't the un actually created an international speakers organization and how much would it cost? >> why hasn't the un? there is the un refugee agency which was created along with the 51 convention to address the european problem. but it sits and relies on individual countries actually having their own capacity to

determine who is in a silent seeker and to have their own capacity to actually address the needs of protection who needs -- it has grown a lot over the years, today's about 3,000,000,000 dollars. that is money that goes principally to help countries that do not have the means himself to undertake the process of adjudicating asylum claims and then supporting refugees in those countries. not all countries except, they don't allow its work to do in turkey because turkey has its own. but you can make the case that there be a much bigger effort to have an international set of standards that are more rigorously applied with respect to the application and then also

standards when somebody receives protection in a country there should be common standards that are implemented with access to schools and access to education, want to go in that direction it becomes a much costlier proposition than keeping them in camps for 20 years. we have not funded that. >> i agree with you that there are certain factors that come into play, finances, the politics politics of the e.u., and giving up sovereignty or decisions that have to be made in groups, but isn't for this particular crisis maybe overriding issue or very important one that really has not been addressed specifically is that it is a muslim population that most politicians today, governments today around the world u.s. not easily assimilating into their general

population and if it was a million canadians trying to get into europe it could be handled in a far different way. >> that is so true on some levels, it is absolutely clear that there is a cultural difference. you could've said the same thing with jews pre-world war ii. i'm not quite sure. [inaudible] >> there is no question that the it is more difficult to integrate muslims into europe, that's a contention that has helped fuel the support for the

post justice and for the freedom party, the notion that muslims are fundamentally incompatible. there's 2 pounds of that. one is that they are already a very large muslim community in europe so europe has to have a way to figure out how to coexist with a pluralistic system. that accepts ethnic and religious difference. but the second point and i heard this in greece throughout the 90s, there is hundreds of thousands of albanian immigrants in greece. if you handle it with some degree of equanimity, the children of those albanian migrants in greece who are muslim have integrated beautifully for the most part into greek society. if you invest in integration as opposed to marginalizing those communities i think the united states is pretty good evidence that you can pull it off without the kind of division and rancor

and political polarization that europe experiencing. it has taking a while for europe to accept the fact that it has large native muslim populations. it has not been handled well in the prospect of yet more muslims coming in to which european countries have not had a really good answer in terms of integration is intimidating and it should be. bringing in any culture but a significantly different or any communities that are different takes work. but that work if you do it well ultimately is beneficial to everyone. >> i'm sorry we'll have a few more minutes and their three people behind you. >> i find very interesting how you explained that these crisis undermines the european union but also the international refugee regime. i think to ask what has been the role given these conversations into the european union and

turkey we can agree on actually contributing international convention on some national legislation, so what was the role of un hcr in those conversations? that is a really good question, it is one that i'll answer very carefully. think unhcr has a very difficult job. it is an agency that has done tremendously good work over the course of decades. it has a particularly difficult context in which to operate when it is asked to do work in europe. its major funders come from europe. it is is hard to go against the will of your funders. the e.u. should of said this earlier, what was so striking in

the e.u. response additionally to the crisis was that the e.u. did not want international help. the first reason why there was not an international response quite honestly was because the european union did not go to the united nations and asked for help, it did not want outside interference because potentially it did not want to be told, i think there's different logics to this and i can give me different reasons why they may not have wanted it but one reason is they do not want the un to tell it what to do. but when the e.u. failed itself to address the problem it got the rest of the world off the hook because it said we can manage it, we could not manage it, the rest of the world looks at the e.u. and says it is your problem, i think that was the posture perhaps for the refugee agency certainly owes the posture of the russians who looked at it and said wait, this is the west problem. they sorta say that openly. and you broke the middle east so you should deal with the fallout

from breaking the middle east. and this is is not an international problem, there is many countries that are not refugee hosting states or refugee producing states. only 20 countries that accept any refugees through the resettlement program. most of the 193 members care more about migration, we have not talked about that very much. they came about migration. they care more about migration and having an international system of migration that works better than the current one than they do about refugee issues. >> unfortunately this is going to be the last question. >> thank you so much for the interesting talk. >> reporter: question is twofold but i will keep it short. what in your opinion is the role of the u.s. in this crisis and what should the u.s. be doing, what could they be doing better? what would would your advice be to activists and people living in the.s