World Affairs

David Miliband on Fixing the Refugee Crisis

August 22, 2018  • Aspen Ideas to Go

David Miliband leads the International Rescue Committee and believes there are solutions to today’s devastating refugee crisis. More than 65 million people around the globe are either refugees, asylum seekers, or displaced within their own countries. It’s the largest number of people forced to flee their homes since World War II. “The work of rescue isn’t just about the people we’re helping. It’s actually about us,” he says, “It’s about what we in the Western world stand for. It’s about whether the values we write in our laws and constitutions mean anything.”

At the Aspen Ideas Festival, he told The Atlantic’s Steve Clemons that countries like Uganda have promising refugee programs. Others, he continued, have fallen short. A year ago, the United States agreed to accept 45,000 refugees. That’s the lowest number, Miliband says, in the history of America’s resettlement program. “This is bad for America, bad for the refugees, and bad for the global effort to bring security and dignity to people whose lives are convulsed by war and persecution.”

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