Podcasts about Refugees International

00:08 — Khury Petersen-Smith, Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he researches U.S. empire, borders, and migration. 00:33 — Yael Schacher, director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International. 00:50 — Griselda Chavez, is an Infant Development Specialist at the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland and has worked there for fourteen years. The post US, Israel, Iran and the War They All Claim Victory Over; Plus, Trump Administration's Refugee Resettlement Ban and Supreme Court Ruling Allowing Third Country Deportations; Plus, Children's Hospital Oakland Strike Over Union Contract appeared first on KPFA.

After the U.S. attacked three Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend, Israel launched wide-ranging strikes on Tehran and Iran fired missiles at the largest American military installation in the Middle East. And according to President Donald Trump, Israel and Iran have agreed to a cease-fire.MPR News host Angela Davis and her guests talk about the latest developments in the conflict between Iran, Israel and the United States.Guests:Shaherzad Ahmadi is an associate professor of history at the University of St. Thomas. Her research has focused on the history of the Iran-Iraq War that began in 1980. She is also the author of “Bordering on War.” Eric Schwartz is a professor and chair of the global policy area and former dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He is a former president of Refugees International and served as assistant secretary of state under President Barack Obama.Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation. 

Why does Donald Trump seem to be fixated by foreign nationals? He's barred citizens from a number of countries from entering the United States. He says he wants to keep the country safe. But what are the implications of these new measures? And are his concerns justified? In this episode: Yael Schacher, Director, Refugees International. Steven Heller, US immigration lawyer. Johanna Leblance, US foreign policy specialist. Host: Mohammed Jamjoom Connect with us:@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook

0:08 — Yael Schacher, director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International. 0:33 — David Dayen, executive editor of the American Prospect. His latest book is “Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.” The post SCOTUS Revokes Biden Era Parole Status for Migrants; the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Explained appeared first on KPFA.

00:08 — Abdullahi Halakhe is Senior Advocate for East and Southern Africa at Refugees International. 00:33 — Charlie Eaton is Associate Professor of Sociology at UC Merced. His latest book is Bankers in the Ivory Tower: The Troubling Rise of Financiers in US Higher Education. He is also the author of the Progressive Disclosure newsletter on Substack. The post Two Years of War in Sudan; Plus, Harvard Stands up to the Trump Administration appeared first on KPFA.

What are the long-term, intended and unintended consequences of the USAID funding freeze? How the suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule, and other executive orders from the new Trump Administration related to the US-Mexico border and the End of the Sensitive Zones Policy will impact the rights, safety, and lives of refugee women and girls in the U.S. and worldwide? In this interview with Devon Cone, Senior Advocate for Women and Girls at Refugees International, we explored the factors behind the growing disinterest in the protection of migrants' human rights and we examined how these measures will disproportionately affect women and girls fleeing violent conflict in Afghanistan, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mexico, and countries in the Northern Triangle of Central America. Join us in this exploration and⁠⁠⁠ subscribe to our podcast newsletter community here.⁠⁠⁠Listen to related episodes:  91. Dr. Paul Slovic & Dr. Scott Slovic on the Science Behind the Limits of Compassion112. Devon Cone on COVID-19 Impact on Migration & Humanitarian Crises179. Marta Saiz on Human Rights Journalism & Foreign Affairs190. Dr. William T. Armaline on The Crisis of Human Rights in the Age of Global CapitalismRecommended links to this episode:Refugees International Official WebsiteWhat Do President Trump's Week One Actions Mean for Refugees International's Global Advocacy?No Model of Refuge: Sudanese Refugees in EgyptThe Nuba Mountains: A Window into the Sudan CrisisGaza Dispatches: Hunger and Siege“They Left Us Without Any Support”: Afghans in Pakistan Waiting for SolutionsIn Apparent Quid Pro Quo Deal, Panama and Costa Rica Facilitating U.S.-Sponsored Human Rights Violations of Asylum Seekers Tell Your Member of Congress: Save USAID, Save Lives

During President Donald Trump's first week of his second term, he signed an executive order that paused the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Later, the White House froze all federal funding that goes to organizations who welcome and support refugees coming into the U.S.  But last week, a federal judge in Seattle blocked Trump's efforts to suspend the system for resettling refugees. The judge ruled that while the president has broad authority over who comes into the country, he cannot cancel the law Congress passed to establish the program. However, the Justice Department said it would consider a quick appeal, saying Trump's actions are well within his authority. MPR News host Angela Davis and her guests talk about the federal refugee program and how the Trump administration directives are affecting refugee resettlement efforts in Minnesota.Guests:Micaela Schuneman is the senior director of immigration and refugee services for the International Institute of Minnesota — a social service agency that offers refugee, immigration and citizenship services.Eric Schwartz is a professor and chair of the global policy area and former dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He is the former president of Refugees International. And as Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration during President Obama's administration, he was responsible for the U.S. refugee resettlement program. 

Fighting is intensifying in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The Rwanda-backed M23 group is making further territorial advances. So with diplomacy having failed, what are the risks the conflict may escalate into another regional war? In this Episode: Kambale Musavuli, Researcher at the Center for Research on the Congo. Angela Muvumba Sellström, Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute. Abdullahi Halakhe, peace and policy analyst and Senior Advocate at Refugees International. Host: James Bays Connect with us:@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook At Al Jazeera Podcasts, we want to hear from you, our listeners. So, please head to https://www.aljazeera.com/survey and tell us your thoughts about this show and other Al Jazeera podcasts. It only takes a few minutes!

So much has happened in the past few weeks. And we've seen a speed game of sorts being played by the Trump administration to try to act as rapidly as possible to rework the administrative state of the government. One example of that is the attempts to end the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The letters have even been taken off of the building. But is any of this even legal and what are the implications of gutting USAID? Jeremy Konyndk is the president at Refugees International. He served as a senior official at USAID in the Obama and Biden administrations.  Konyndk joins WITHpod to discuss progress that has already been undone, diplomatic repercussions, the effects on American soft power and the uncertain future of USAID. 

President Trump on Friday called for the closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development, America's main humanitarian and development agency. The administration has already been dismantling USAID, over the last few weeks, forcing employees out and cutting off billions of dollars in foreign aid. Under the plan, the agency is to be left with less than 600 staff out of about 10,000. Critics, like former USAID official Jeremy Konyndyk say the closure will “put millions of lives at risk” and could undermine US foreign policy. We'll look at what feeding USAID into the “woodchipper,” as Elon Musk has pledged, means for those who rely on its services, which include HIV treatment, disaster relief, and children's health. Guests: Jeremy Konyndyk, president, Refugees International. He also led USAID offices during previous administrations. Joia Mukherjee, chief medical officer, Partners In Health Elissa Miolene, reporter covering USAID and the U.S. government, Devex

Its funding pulled, and its staff sent home. The world's largest international humanitarian donor, USAID, is under assault. If the Trump administration doesn't restore the flow of aid who will fill the void? And what does it mean for global US influence? In this Episode: Hardin Lang, Vice president for programs and policy at Refugees International. Natasha Lindstaedt, US foreign policy specialist and a professor of government at the University of Essex. Alan Boswell, International Crisis Group's project director for the Horn of Africa. Host: Elizabeth Puranam Connect with us:@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook At Al Jazeera Podcasts, we want to hear from you, our listeners. So, please head to https://www.aljazeera.com/survey and tell us your thoughts about this show and other Al Jazeera podcasts. It only takes a few minutes!

On Day One, Donald Trump froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid. On Day Eight, the State Department issued a stop-work order for USAID. This is causing massive ripple effects around the world. USAID staff and contractors are being laid off in droves. HIV patients in several African countries are being turned away from clinics where they had long received crucial medicines. Humanitarian and development non-profits in the United States and across the globe that depend on contracts from USAID and the U.S. government are now wondering if they'll be able to continue their work. Joining me to discuss the impact of this sudden curtailing of nearly all U.S. foreign assistance is Jeremy Konyndyk. He is a veteran humanitarian affairs official who led USAID's response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa during the Obama administration. Now, he leads Refugees International, an advocacy group. He is in a unique position to speak freely on this topic because the NGO he currently leads does not receive government funding—whereas other NGO leaders fear retribution if they speak out. https://www.globaldispatches.org/

An explosive diplomatic row between the US and Colombia over the deportation of unauthorised immigrants on military planes. It's been quickly defused for now, but threats of further action are being made. What does this signal about the new Donald Trump presidency? In this Episode: Niall Stanage, White House Columnist, The Hill newspaper. Sergio Guzman, Director, Colombia Risk Analysis. Rachel Schmidtke, Senior Advocate, Latin America, Refugees International in the US. Host: Elizabeth Puranam Connect with us:@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook At Al Jazeera Podcasts, we want to hear from you, our listeners. So, please head to https://www.aljazeera.com/survey and tell us your thoughts about this show and other Al Jazeera podcasts. It only takes a few minutes!

This is the second episode of a mini-series exploring the connection between the climate crisis, migration and human rights. This time, Dr Oluwatoyin Adejonwo and Jocelyn Perry help us get to the bottom of how climate change drives displacement and enhances other crises, such as poverty, loss of livelihood, and tensions relating to dwindling resources. We, then, also discuss what is being done in terms of advocacy, litigation, and policy responses to mitigate these effects.   Dr Oluwatoyin Adejonwo is the founding and executive director of the Center for Climate Change and Sustainable Development (3CSD), a senior lecturer in the Department of Public Law at University of Lagos, Nigeria, and a solicitor and advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. She holds a PhD in International environmental law.   Jocelyn Perry is the senior advocate and program manager of the climate displacement program at Refugees International. She is also completing a Doctorate in Public Policy at the University of Oxford focusing on stakeholder involvement in climate adaptation planning across the United States.   Sources: 'Climate change is the defining crisis of our time and it particularly impacts the displaced' | UNHCR Climate change and displacement: the myths and the facts - World | ReliefWeb Enhancing protection and empowerment of migrants and communities affected by climate change and disasters in the Pacific region (Kiribati, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji) | International Labour Organization Global Compact on Refugees – booklet | UNHCR Advisory Board Members | The Global Compact on Refugees | UNHCR ETR-2024-web.pdf How Climate Migration Will Reshape America - The New York Times  

00:08 — Abdullahi Halakhe is Senior Advocate for East and Southern Africa at Refugees International. 00:33 — Will Oremus is a Technology news analysis reporter for the Washington Post. The post State Department Declares Genocide in Sudan; Plus, Meta Ends Factchecking Programs appeared first on KPFA.

Can power truly shift in a sector whose origins are rooted in colonialism? If not, what lies beyond the international aid system as we know it? On the sidelines of UNGA 2024, The New Humanitarian, the Center for Transformational Change, and Refugees International convened a panel to examine the systemic limitations of the current global aid architecture, whether it can evolve for the better, and what comes next. SPEAKERS Lina Srivastava, founder of the Center for Transformational Change (moderator) Hanin Ahmed, Emergency Response Room volunteer and Sudanese activist Alex Gray, Director, International Funds at The Center for Disaster Philanthropy Aarathi Krishnan, Founder of Raksha Intelligence Futures and former Head of Strategic Foresight at UNDP Asia-Pacific Nadine Saba, Co-founder and director of Akkar Network for Development-AND; Grand Bargain Sherpa * This panel was part of a doubleheader event on Navigating the Limits and Evolving Role of Humanitarian Aid held on 27 September, 2024.  ____ Got a question or feedback? Email podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org or have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism.  ____  SHOW NOTES From Gaza to Sudan: The limits and future of humanitarian aid

Jeremy Konyndyk is president of Refugees International. A committed humanitarian advocate and seasoned emergency operator, he has served in senior appointments in two U.S. administrations and in a range of U.S. and overseas NGO leadership positions. His talk, “Refuge At Risk: Can Humanitarian Law Survive 21st Century Geopolitics?” was recorded for broadcast on October 15, 2024.

US immigration policy has become one of the most contentious issues in American politics, but there is one point on which most of us agree: our immigration policy is broken. And while the sheer number of interests involved mean that an easy fix is unlikely, the best place to start is with a sound understanding of how we got the immigration system we have today. As a historian of immigration who currently serves as Director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, Yael Schacher has a particularly well informed perspective on this issue. In this episode, Yael walks us through the history of immigration policy in the US and shares what she sees as the major challenges that stand in the way of reforming our current immigration system. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.

Join Ocean House owner, actor, and bestselling author Deborah Goodrich Royce for a conversation with New York Times bestselling authors and mother/son duo Elliott Ackerman and Joanna Leedom-Ackerman. They discuss their books: Joanne Leedom-Ackerman's The Far Side of the Desert and Elliott Ackerman's 2054. About the Authors:  Elliot Ackerman is the author of the novels Halcyon, Red Dress in Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, Green on Blue, and the memoirs The Fifth Act and Places and Names. His books have been nominated for numerous awards, including the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in fiction and nonfiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a Marine veteran, having served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. About 2054: From the acclaimed authors of the runaway New York Times bestseller 2034 comes another explosive work of speculative fiction set twenty years further in the future, at a moment when a radical leap forward in artificial intelligence combines with America's violent partisan divide to create an existential threat to the country, and the world It is twenty years after the catastrophic war between the United States and China that brought down the old American political order. A new party has emerged in the US, holding power for over a decade. Efforts to cement its grip have resulted in mounting violent resistance. The American president has control of the media but is beginning to lose control of the streets. Many fear he'll stop at nothing to remain in the White House. Suddenly, he collapses in the middle of an address to the nation. After an initial flurry of misinformation, the administration reluctantly announces his death. A cover-up ensues, conspiracy theories abound, and the country descends into a new type of civil war. A handful of elite actors from the worlds of computer science, intelligence, and business have a fairly good idea of what happened. All signs point to a profound breakthrough in AI, of which the remote assassination of an American president is hardly the most game-changing ramification. The trail leads to an outpost in the Amazon rainforest, the last known whereabouts of the tech visionary who predicted this breakthrough. As some of the world's great powers, old and new, state and nonstate alike, struggle to outmaneuver one another in this new Great Game of scientific discovery, the outcome becomes entangled with the fate of American democracy. Combining a deep understanding of AI, biotech, and the possibility of a coming Singularity, along with their signature geopolitical sophistication, Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis have once again written a visionary work. 2054 is a novel that reads like a thriller, even as it demands that we consider the trajectory of our society and its potentially calamitous destination. Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Her works of fiction include Burning Distance, The Dark Path to the River, and No Marble Angels. She has published PEN Journeys: Memoir of Literature on the Line and was the editor for The Journey of Liu Xiaobo: From Dark Horse to Nobel Laureate. Former International Secretary of PEN International, she is a Vice President of PEN International and a former board member and Vice President of PEN American Center. She serves on the boards of Refugees International, the International Center for Journalists, the American Writers Museum, and Words Without Borders and is an emeritus director of Poets and Writers, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and Human Rights Watch and an emeritus trustee of Brown University and Johns Hopkins University. Joanne is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Texas Institute of Letters. A former The Christian Science Monitor reporter, Joanne has taught writing at New York University, City University of New York, Occidental College, and the University of California at Los Angeles extension. About The Far Side of the Desert: A terrorist attack—a kidnapping—the ultimate vacation gone wrong Sisters Samantha and Monte Waters are vacationing together in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, enjoying a festival and planning to meet with their brother, Cal—but the idyllic plans are short-lived. When terrorists' attacks rock the city around them, Monte, a U.S. foreign service officer, and Samantha, an international television correspondent, are separated, and one of them is whisked away in the frenzy. The family mobilizes, using all their contacts to try to find their missing sister, but to no avail. She has vanished. As time presses on, the outlook darkens. Can she be found, or is she a lost cause? And, even if she returns, will the damage to her and those around her be irreparable? Moving from Spain to Washington to Morocco to Gibraltar to the Sahara Desert, The Far Side of the Desert is a family drama and political thriller that explores links of terrorism, crime, and financial manipulation, revealing the grace that ultimately foils destruction.  

0:08 — Basav Sen is Director of the Climate Justice Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. 0:33 — Maureen Tkacik is investigations editor at the American Prospect and a senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project. 0:45 — Yael Schacher is the director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International. The post Narendra Modi Wins Third Term in India Elections; DOJ Files Civil Antitrust Lawsuit Against Live Nation-Ticketmaster; Plus, Biden Executive Order Restricts Asylum Seeking Across US Border appeared first on KPFA.

For humanitarian professionals, people whose job it is to deliver aid in conflict and disaster zones, Gaza is unique. Unlike other crises that suffer from lack of attention, the situation in Gaza is a top priority for governments around the world. Accordingly, there is no shortage of aid available to stem the crisis, which in some parts of Gaza has crossed the famine threshold. Rather, it is distributing the aid that has become the challenge, both in terms of getting the aid through Israeli inspections and, once in Gaza, getting the aid to where people need it most. My guest today, Jeremy Konyndyke, is the President of Refugees International and a veteran humanitarian professional who served as head of USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance from 2013-2017. We kick off discussing why humanitarian groups, the United Nations, and the Biden administration are so concerned about a full-scale Israeli assault on Rafah in southern Gaza. We then discuss the propriety of a humanitarian pier the US is constructing off the coast of Gaza and why the crisis in Gaza is so different from other humanitarian crises around the world. We conclude our conversation with an important discussion of the crisis in Darfur, and specifically the complicity of the United Arab Emirates in supporting a genocidal paramilitary.

Hamas on Monday announced it had agreed to a proposal for a ceasefire deal, renewing hopes a truce with Israel could be reached. Israeli officials said while the proposal didn't meet all of its demands, it would send a delegation to Cairo to continue talks in hopes of reaching a deal. The movement on a possible ceasefire came as Israeli officials also ordered more than 100,000 Palestinians to evacuate parts of eastern Rafah. In this city, more than a million people are sheltering. Jeremy Konyndyk, president of the humanitarian group Refugees International, explains how an Israeli invasion of Rafah could further destabilize Gaza.And in headlines: The New York judge overseeing Donald Trump's criminal hush-money trial fined the former president another $1,000 for violating a gag order, Indiana holds its primary election today, and Conde Nast reached a tentative labor agreement with its unionized workers.Show Notes:What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

Hello and welcome again to yet another episode of the Migration & Diaspora Podcast, where we showcase projects and people from the field of migration and diaspora engagement. I'm your host Loksan Harley from Homelands Advisory, your independent migration and diaspora agency.  Now, it's been a while since we talked about Latin America on this podcast, so I'm very excited to present to you a conversation with Mara Tissera Luna, one of the region's preeminent experts on migration and especially children on the move in displacement situations, which is precisely the topic of the day.  About Mara Mara is an international consultant focusing on displacement and protection responses in Latin America and the Caribbean. She's a fellow at the Collaborative on Global Children's Issues at Georgetown University and has provided technical advice and applied research to UNICEF, the University of Edinburgh, Refugees International, and International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) in 14 countries, contributing to 25+ reports, handbooks, and short articles. What we talk about In today's episode, we talk all about the rather harrowing protection issues faced by children in situations of displacement in Latin America, including:  The state of play of forced displacement in the region.  Specific trends in the displacement of children. Solutions to address these very pressing needs. Mara draws both from her recent research on very young children in Guatemala, as well wider research on the topic. We've included some links to some of these sources in the show notes as there is a lot to know and we couldn't cover anything in a 45-minute podcast.  Anyway, without further ado, I'd like to thank you again for tuning in and we hope you enjoy the show. Links Connect with Mara: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maratisseraluna/ Mara's website and newsletter sign-up:  https://latinamerica.website/maratisseraluna Georgetown University's programme "Promoting Early Childhood Development for Young Children on the Move in Northern Central America,": https://globalchildren.georgetown.edu/posts/innovations-to-support-early-childhood-development-and-protection-for-young-displaced-children-in-guatemala  Mini-guide "Research for Advocacy & Systemic Change: A Ridiculously Simplified Guide to Intersectional & Decolonial Research + examples.": https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FK-wuDhJ3bHsvb85U_crh-M5Y51l66-O/view  Background Paper "Protecting Children in Escalating Conflict and Crises: Armed Violence, Climate Shocks, and Displacement", Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action: https://alliancecpha.org/en/annual-meeting-2024/background-paper  ODI and UNICEF's “Children on the move in Latin America and the Caribbean: Review of evidence”: https://www.unicef.org/lac/en/reports/children-on-the-move-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean  An in-depth, graphical overview of what's happening at the U.S.-Mexico border right now, from the Washington Office on Latin America's Adam Isacson: https://vimeo.com/918977850 The world's most neglected displacement crises in 2022: https://www.nrc.no/resources/reports/the-worlds-most-neglected-displacement-crises-in-2022/ The MDPcast Ep22: Latin America's migration mega-trends: https://www.homelandsadvisory.com/podcast/episode/2790db1d/episode-22-latin-americas-migration-mega-trends-with-felipe-munoz-from-the-inter-american-development-bank  The MPDcast Ep5: Chlidren on the move in West and Central Africa: https://www.homelandsadvisory.com/podcast/episode/20c80d46/episode-5-children-on-the-move-in-west-and-central-africa-context-vulnerabilities-and-protection-needs 

Why is Pakistan expelling Afghan refugees? Afghanistan says the move is illegal. Pakistan insists it's for security reasons. Is this politically motivated? And how will Taliban officials deal with it? In this episode: Nilofer Afridi Qazi, Social Worker by Trade.  Faiz Zaland, Professor, Political Science, Kabul University.  Devon Cone, Senior Advocate, Women and Girls, Refugees International. Host: James Bays Connect with us:@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and YouTube

Almost the entire population of Gaza needs aid, but only a fraction of what's needed is entering the besieged strip. For more on the current humanitarian crisis there, Geoff Bennett spoke with Jeremy Konyndyk. He's the president of Refugees International, a global humanitarian organization, and previously served in the Biden and Obama administrations. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Almost the entire population of Gaza needs aid, but only a fraction of what's needed is entering the besieged strip. For more on the current humanitarian crisis there, Geoff Bennett spoke with Jeremy Konyndyk. He's the president of Refugees International, a global humanitarian organization, and previously served in the Biden and Obama administrations. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Jeremy Konyndynk is the President of Refugees International. In this conversation with Lars Peter Nissen he discusses how we can reform the humanitarian sector and how far we have come.

Refugees International, The New Humanitarian, and Asylum Access hosted an event on the sidelines of the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva for a candid conversation about how to truly include refugees in the policy decisions that shape their lives. SPEAKERS Sana Mustafa, Asylum Access CEO (moderator) Ana Maria Diez, President of Coalición por Venezuela and Fellow at Refugees International Matai Muon, South Sudanese refugee and graduate student Mohammed Naeem, Deputy Director of Strategy and Partnerships at American Immigration Council, and Advisor on the U.S. Refugee Advisory Board Farhad Shamo Roto, Founder of Voice of Ezidis and Fellow at Refugees International Hafsar Tameesuddin, Co-Secretary General, Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN)  ____ Got a question or feedback? Email podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org or have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism.  ____  SHOW NOTES Flipping the Narrative The roots of the refugee protection system are colonial and racist by Sana Mustafa Let refugees be economic contributors by Matai Muon

Rick Neal is a well-known progressive advocate in Central Ohio, but his political conscience has long been driven by his passion for and professional experience in humanitarian relief, especially in Asia and Africa. On Episode 137, taking a few weeks off from challenges here in Ohio, Dan Skinner talks with Rick about his experience as a humanitarian relief worker with Peace Corps, Oxfam, and Refugees International. Topics include the challenges of securing adequate funding, geopolitical complexities, and how to ensure Ohioans don't forget the serious crises that exist around the world, even as we tend to our own challenges here at home. Listen, as well, as Rick explains why medical and public health professionals in Ohio might consider jumping in to do this important work. Show notes and stream at prognosisohio.com/episodes/neal

With over 10,000 deaths in just over a month of fighting, Gaza is in crisis. Yet the situation may get worse before it gets better. The president of Refugees International, Jeremy Konyndyk, joins Kori Schake and David Rothkopf to warn of how this humanitarian crisis could spin further out of control. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With over 10,000 deaths in just over a month of fighting, Gaza is in crisis. Yet the situation may get worse before it gets better. The president of Refugees International, Jeremy Konyndyk, joins Kori Schake and David Rothkopf to warn of how this humanitarian crisis could spin further out of control. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is ten years long or short in the life of a writer? Fiction writer and journalist Joanne Leedom-Ackerman shows us how her perspective on this has shifted. She offers us a prompt via Rainer Maria Rilke to get us thinking about our own writing lives and to get us to build narrative with what she describes as concentric circles in this Inspiration Takeover, a series of mini-episodes with different writers who offer us a little dose of inspiration. Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Her works of fiction include upcoming novel The Far Side of the Desert and also Burning Distance, The Dark Path to the River, and No Marble Angels. Her nonfiction book PEN Journeys: Memoir of Literature on the Line was recently published, and she is the senior editor and contributor to The Journey of Liu Xiaobo: From Dark Horse to Nobel Laureate. She has also published fiction and essays in books and anthologies, including Short Stories of the Civil Rights Movement; Remembering Arthur Miller; Snakes: An Anthology of Serpent Tales, Fiction and Poetry by Texas Women, the Bicentennial Collection of Texas Short Stories and Beyond Literacy. A reporter for The Christian Science Monitor early in her career, Joanne has won awards for her nonfiction and published articles in newspapers and magazines, including World Literature Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The Los Angeles Times, GlobalPost, and others. Joanne is a Vice President of PEN International and the former International Secretary of PEN International and former Chair of International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee. She also serves on the boards of the International Center for Journalists, Refugees International, the American Writers Museum and Words Without Borders and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Edward R. Murrow Center at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the ICRW Leadership Council. She is a former board member and Vice President of PEN American Center and past President of PEN Center USA. She is an Emeritus Director of Poets and Writers, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and Human Rights Watch, where she served as Chair of the Asia Advisory Committee. She is an Emeritus Trustee of Johns Hopkins University and Brown University and has served on the Board of Trustees of Save the Children and the International Crisis Group.

0:08 — Dean Baker is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. 0:33 — Yael Schacher, is the director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International. The post Federal Interest Rates; Plus, Another Migrant Boat Sinking off the European Coast appeared first on KPFA.

Jeremy Konyndyk, President of Refugees International, is a humanitarian leader, emergency operator, and policy innovator. He joins us to share his thoughts on diverse crises. During the Turkey/Syria earthquake, donors failed to surge resources to Syrian civil groups, something that is indefensible a decade plus into Syria's war. U.S. policy on the southern border is narrowly understood to be law enforcement versus protection of rights of individuals in flight, a disappointment not expected of the Biden administration. USAID has struggled to overcome its internal divisions to begin building an enduring emergency health security response capability. American opponents of public health and science are winning the battle for opinion and influence, with little political leadership pushing back from the opposing side. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many low- and middle-income countries rejected the West's appeals for solidarity. The West had shown “zero solidarity” for their needs during the pandemic. With Ukraine, those countries are now responding “in kind.”

The Rohingya people have suffered decades of persecution in Myanmar, most recently in 2017 when the country's security forces launched a major crackdown on the minority group—causing more than a million Rohingya to flee the country. While the vast majority of Rohingya sought refuge in neighboring Bangladesh, India has been home to tens of thousands Rohingya refugees.A new report by The Azadi Project and Refugees International—A Shadow of Refuge: Rohingya Refugees in India—sheds light on the plight of Rohingya in India, drawing from field visits in Delhi and Hyderabad. The authors of this new report are Daniel Sullivan and Priyali Sur and they join Milan on the show this week to talk more about their report.The trio discuss the absence of an Indian law on refugees and asylum seekers, the Rohingya's living conditions in India, and the shrinking number of vocal advocates for their cause. Plus, the three discuss the foreign policy implications of the refugees and what role the United States might play. Episode notes:[VIDEO] “Displaced and Detained: Rohingya in India,” The Azadi Project, May 16, 2024.Khushboo Sandhu and Meryl Sebastian, “Rohingya and CAA: What is India's refugee policy?” BBC, August 19, 2022.Refugees International, “The Situation of the Rohingya and Deadly Sea Crossings,” March 1, 2023.

On May 11th a pandemic-era policy, known as Title 42, will expire. This was a Trump administration policy which used public health concerns as a pretext expel migrants from the United States before they could claim asylum under US and international law. Title 42 has continued under the Biden administration but is set to expire. American officials are bracing for a massive increase in the number of people seeking asylum at the southern US border.  This is shaping up to be a humanitarian crisis and bureaucratic crisis rolled up into one.  Joining me to help explain recent migration patterns in the Americas and the Biden administration's approach to migration at the southern US border is Yael Schacher, director for America's and Europe and Refugees International. We kick off discussing one key node in an increasing number of migrants journeys known as the Darien Gap. We then have a broad discussion about the patchwork of US policies intended to handle asylum claims and offer a legal pathway to entry to the USA. 

Episode #161: Dan Sullivan, the Director of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East at Refugees International, joins this episode to discuss the challenges facing the Rohingya community. Most of the world began to pay attention to the Rohingya crisis in 2017, when over 700,000 people fled a genocidal campaign against them, creating the largest refugee settlement in the world in Bangladesh. Sullivan led an effort pressuring the United States to recognize the anti-Rohingya campaign for what it was: his campaign was termed, “Call It A Genocide!”The Rohingya have face so many challenges in Burma because of their Muslim faith, which puts them at odds with the majority Bamar, and even with the native Rakhine who are their regional neighbors and who themselves have historically been at odds with the Bamar majority. Although the Rohingya have been on their land for at least a century, their citizenship continues to be challenged. They have been cast as scapegoats through the hateful rhetoric of Bamar Buddhist nationalists, and victims of violence and assault at the hands of the Burmese military.While the Rohingya are finally settling more comfortably into their camps in Bangladesh, under the surface, there is a growing sense of desperation. This has led thousands of Rohingya to flee and seek a better life elsewhere, often by boat. Some are turned away by any neighboring countries they manage to get to, many others drown, and others get returned to the Burmese military.Sullivan says that many Rohingya currently look at the work of the National Unity Government (NUG) with hope. This is in contrast to the betrayal that many felt when the NLD, and Aung San Suu Kyi in particular, defended the military's actions against the Rohingya at The Hague. Even so, should the NUG ultimately prevail, there remains much concern as to how they would translate sympathetic and inclusive statements about the Rohingya into a viable and realistic repatriation plan.

Today we're kicking off a new collaboration with the Refugee Advocacy Lab, and the Refugee Storytellers Collective – The Women of Refuge Podcast Series!Over the course of the year, we will bring you personalized, first-hand accounts from resilient women who have powerful and inspiring stories.  Our goal is to introduce you to your refugee neighbors and build bridges, and community while combatting false narratives about refugees.As we begin this journey, today's guests are Basma Alawee, National Campaign Director for “We Are All America”, and Executive Director of Weavetales – and Kate Brick, the Director of the Refugee Advocacy Lab at Refugees International.After introducing you to these two phenomenal Daughters of Change, we will discuss what their organizations do individually and collectively, why we are doing this series, the power of personalized stories - and how they foster healing and community.Links to Check Out:Refugee Storytellers Collective websiteRefugee Storytellers Collective nomination form (we accept nominations year-round!)Refugee Advocacy Lab WebsiteRefugee Advocacy Lab on Twitter: @RefugeeAdvcyLabRefugee Advocacy Lab on Instagram: @refugeeadvocacylabRefugee Advocacy Lab on Facebook - The Refugee Advocacy LabRefugee Advocacy Lab LinkedInEmail the Refugee Advocacy Lab - @Kate Brick & @Sarah ShefferFollow Daughters of Change:Website:Facebook:InstagramLinkedInMarie's LinkedIn:Daughters of Change Podcast Producer:  Sarah StaceySarah's LinkedIn Profile 

Host Jamie McGoldrick speaks with Jeremy Konyndyk, President of Refugees International. They go over a variety of issues in the humanitarian space. Jeremy discusses major changes he would like to see in the system, arguing local groups need a bigger seat at the table with how donor dollars are used. Jamie and Jeremy talk about current crises, including Ukraine and Yemen, and how crises today are lasting longer than crises several decades ago. Jeremy explains why humanitarians have to navigate politics, saying aid workers receive blame for political mistakes made by states. Also, Jeremy lays out his goals for Refugees International which include giving a voice to those who are being neglected.

Since I've joined the board of Action Against Hunger, I've been on a learning journey. How big of a deal is the global food crisis? Why hasn't it been solved? What can we do about global hunger? Of course, my preferred way to learn is to call up experts and together explore tough questions on the podcast. THE IMPACT. - Cathryn Dhanatya, PhD, works at the intersection of health and research and advocacy, and sits on the Advisory Board of Action Against Hunger. She leads Growing Good, was the Chief Scientific Administrative Officer for Stand Up To Cancer, and held leadership research positions at UCLA and USC. - Michelle Brown has a career in advocacy and development. After many years as the UN representative for Refugees International, she is now the Associate Director of Advocacy for Action Against Hunger. - Get more information on the work of Action Against Hunger and support via my fundraising page. THE JOURNEY. In our conversation, we explore: - Influences: what led both Cathryn and Michelle to work in international development and advocacy - Listening to communities: getting close means learning as much as helping - Hunger: there isn't a lack of food; there is a lack of distribution that's fair and equitable - Proximity: understanding hunger close to home and around the world, and how all of it affects us - Beyond hunger: not just about food, it's about access to health, clean water, education, livelihoods and income - The climate crisis: and how it is inextricably linked to the hunger crisis - Systemic change: transferring power to local communities

In this week's episode, we discuss the Biden administration's new parole program for Venezuelans – the details of the program and who qualifies, the reasoning behind the program, how the dynamics at the border affect this program and possible future programs modeled after it, and how the program might inform the future of the resettlement regime. Yael Schacher, Director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, Matthew La Corte, Government Affairs Manager for Immigration Policy at the Niskanen Center, and Theresa Brown, This Week in Immigration regular, join to discuss.   This podcast can also be found on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Want to listen to more podcasts focused on immigration? You can find all episodes here.

As Iran enters its fourth week of protests, Roya Hakakian joins Uriel Epshtein for a conversation on Iran and its place in the global battle between tyranny and freedom. They discuss the murder of Mahsa Amini, the irrationality of Iran's morality police, and how the situations in Ukraine and Iran are connected. Roya Hakakian is a writer, journalist, poet, and political activist. She was a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center and is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Roya has served on the board of Refugees International, a non-profit dedicated to human rights and the relocation of refugees, and as a fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University. Her writing appears in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and NPR's All Things Considered.The Winter is Here podcast and the newsletter The Democracy Brief will be running on alternating Thursdays. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit renewdemocracy.substack.com

Annie Duke is a renown public speaker and decision strategist. For two decades, she was one of the top poker players in the world, including winning a World Series of Poker bracelet and the $2 million winner-take-all WSOP Tournament of Champions. Her study of the science of smart decision-making began with a National Science Foundation Fellowship, which she used study Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.  Among her charity work and television appearances, Annie was a runner-up to Joan Rivers on Celebrity Apprentice, during which she raised $700,000 for Refugees International. She is a natural teacher and storyteller with an active mind that constantly searches for accurate truth. I highly recommend Annie's new book, Thinking in Bets, which comes out this week. In her life after poker, she is a featured speaker, writes a newsletter and a blog, and advises companies on improving their decision-making process. Have a look at her website, annieduke.com, for more information. Our conversation discusses Annie's path from an Ivy League education to professional poker, the nature of a bet, how we form beliefs, why we make bad decisions, and what we can do to improve our decision-making process. Towards the end, we also talk about bankroll management, poker faces, and advice she would give the President on how to make better decisions. Learn More  Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn  Subscribe to the mailing list  Access Transcript with Premium Membership 

Estados Unidos es el destino de miles de personas que son objeto de trata. Según las Naciones Unidas, más del 60% de las víctimas son mujeres y niñas. La mayor parte de las víctimas son traídas por tratantes mexicanos con fines de explotación sexual.Para tratar de entender esta situación y su alcance, hoy vamos a platicar con Rachel Schmidtke, quien es defensora para América Latina en Refugees International. Schmidtke nos va a aclarar quién opera las redes de tráfico humano, cómo influyen las políticas migratorias y qué pasa con estas mujeres, una vez que pasan la frontera hacia Estados Unidos.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has prompted a flood of refugees seeking safety in Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere. As president of Refugees International, Eric Schwartz *85 has had an eye on the situation, and on refugee crises in places that aren't receiving as much attention. Schwartz spoke to PAW in mid-March about what he saw in Ukraine during a trip there early in the invasion, and about the policy solutions that are needed not only for Ukrainian refugees, but others around the world. At the time, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) thought 4 million refugees would flee Ukraine; by this podcast's publication in late April, that prediction had climbed to 8.3 million.

Anne C. Richard, distinguished fellow and Afghanistan coordination lead at Freedom House, will lead a conversation on refugees and global migration. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to the final session of the Winter/Spring 2022 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today's discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Anne Richard with us today to talk about refugees and global migration. Ms. Richard is a distinguished fellow and Afghanistan coordination lead at Freedom House. She has taught at several universities including Georgetown, University of Virginia, Hamilton College, and the University of Pennsylvania. From 2012 to 2017, Ms. Richard served as an assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration, and before joining the Obama administration she served as vice president of government relations and advocacy for the International Rescue Committee. She has also worked at the Peace Corps headquarters and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and is a member of CFR. So, Anne, thank you very much for being with us today. With your background and experience, it would be great if you could talk from your vantage point—give us an overview of the current refugee trends you are—we are seeing around the world, especially vis-à-vis the war in Ukraine, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, et cetera. RICHARD: Thank you so much, Irina, for inviting me today and for always welcoming me back to the Council. And thank you to your team for putting this together. I'm very happy to speak about the global refugee situation, which, unfortunately, has, once again, grown yet larger in a way that is sort of stumping the international community in terms of what can well-meaning governments do, what can foundations and charitable efforts and the United Nations (UN) do to help displaced people. I thought we could start off talking a little bit about definitions and data, and the idea is that I only speak about ten minutes at this beginning part so that we can get to your questions all the more quickly. But for all of us to be on the same wavelength, let's recall that refugees, as a group, have an organization that is supposed to look out for them. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees is the title of the number-one person in the organization, but the entire organization is known by that name, UNHCR, or the UN Refugee Agency. It also has a convention—the 1951 Refugee Convention—that came about after World War II and was very focused on not allowing to happen again what had happened during World War II where victims of the Nazis and, as time went on, people fleeing fascism, people fleeing communism, couldn't get out of their countries and were persecuted because of this. And there's a legal definition that comes out of the convention that different countries have, and the U.S. legal definition matches very much the convention's, which is that refugees have crossed an international border—they're not in their home country anymore—and once they've crossed an international border the sense is that they are depending on the international community to help them and that they're fleeing for specific purposes—their race, their religion, their ethnicity, their membership in a particular social group such as being LGBTQ, or political thought. And if you think back to the Cold War, these were some of the refugees coming out of the former Soviet Union, coming out of Eastern Europe, were people who had spoken out and were in trouble and so had to flee their home countries. So what are the numbers then? And I'm going to refer you to a very useful page on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees website, which is their “Figures at a Glance” presentation, and we're going to reference some of the numbers that are up there now. But those numbers change every year. They change on June 20, which is World Refugee Day. And so every year it hits the headlines that the numbers have gone up, unfortunately, and you can anticipate this if you think in terms of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. It's usually June 20, 21, 22. So June 20, that first possible day, is every year World Refugee Day. So if you're working on behalf of refugees it's good sometimes to schedule events or anticipate newspaper articles and conversations about refugees ticking up in—at the end of June. So if you were paying attention last June for World Refugee Day, UNHCR would have unveiled a number of 82.4 million refugees around the world, and so this upcoming June what do we anticipate? Well, we anticipate the numbers will go up again and, in fact, yesterday the high commissioner was in Washington, met with Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and they met the press and Filippo Grandi, the current high commissioner, said that he thinks the number is closer to ninety-five to ninety-six million refugees. So, clearly, a couple things have happened since last June. One is that so many people are trying to flee Afghanistan and another is so many people have fled Ukraine. So if we went back to that $82.4 million figure that we know we have details on, we would find that this is the figure of people who are displaced because of conflict or persecution around the world. The ones that count as refugees who have actually crossed an international border is a smaller number. It's 20.7 million people that UNHCR is concerned about and then another close to six million people who are Palestinians in the Middle East whose displacement goes back to 1948, the creation of the statehood of Israel, and upheaval in the Middle East region as Palestinians were shifted to live elsewhere. And so—and they are provided assistance by a different UN agency, UNRWA—UN Relief Works Administration in the Near East—and so if you see a number or you see two sets of numbers for refugees and they're off by about five or six million people, the difference is the Palestinian, that number—whether it's being counted in, which is for worldwide numbers, or out because UNHCR cares for most refugees on Earth but did not have the responsibility for the Palestinians since UNRWA was set up with that specific responsibility. So what's the big difference then between the eighty-two million, now growing to ninety-five million, and this smaller number of refugees? It's internally displaced persons (IDPs). These are people who are displaced by conflict or are displaced by persecution, are running for their lives, but they haven't left their own countries yet. So think of Syrians who, perhaps, are displaced by war and they have crossed their own countries and gone to a safer place within their own country but they haven't crossed that border yet. Others who have crossed into Lebanon or Turkey or Jordan or Iraq or have gone further afield to Egypt, those would be considered refugees. Who's responsible for the IDPs then? Well, legally, their own countries are supposed to take care of them. But in my Syria example, the problem is Syria was bombing its own people in certain areas of the country, and so they were not protecting their own people as they should be. People can be displaced by things other than war and conflict and persecution, of course. More and more we talk about climate displacement, and this is a hot issue that we can talk about later. But who's responsible then when people are displaced by changing climactic conditions and it's their own governments who are supposed to help them? But more and more questions have been raised about, well, should the international community come together and do more for this group of people—for internally displaced persons—especially when their own governments are unwilling or unable to do so? What about migrants? Who are the migrants? Migrants is a much broader term. Everyone I've talked about so far who's crossed a border counts as a migrant. Migrants are just people on the go, and the International Organization for Migration estimates there's about 281 million migrants on Earth today—about 3.6 percent of the world population—and one of the big issues I've pushed is to not see migrants as a dirty word. Unfortunately, it often is described that way—that migratory flows are bad, when, in fact, lots of people are migrants. Students who travel to the U.S. to take classes are migrants to our country. The secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres, who was himself for eleven years the high commissioner for refugees, he says, I am a migrant, because he's a Portuguese person working in New York City. People hired by Silicon Valley from around the world to work in high-paid jobs, legally in the United States, they are migrants. More concerning are vulnerable migrants, people who are displaced and don't have the wherewithal to, necessarily, protect themselves, take care of themselves, on the march or where they end up, or also if they're seen as traveling without papers, not welcome in the places where they're going, that can be a very, very dangerous situation for them. So be aware that migrants is a really broad all-encompassing term that can include travelers, businesspeople, as well as vulnerable and very poor people who are economic migrants. Finally, immigrants are people who set out and migrate because they intend to live somewhere else, and when we were talking about the Trump administration's policies to reduce the number of refugees coming to the U.S. we also see that immigration to the U.S. also was decreased during that administration as well. So both the refugee program and a lot of the immigration pathways to the U.S. are now being examined and trying to be not just fixed, because a lot of them have needed care for quite some time, but also put back on a growth trajectory. And then asylum seekers are people who get to a country on their own, either they have traveled to a border or they pop up inside a country because they have gotten in legally through some other means such as a visitor visa or business visa, and then they say, I can't go home again. It's too dangerous for me to go home again. Please, may I have asylum? May I be allowed to stay here and be protected in your country? So that's a lot of different terminology. But the more you work on it, the more these terms—you get more familiar using them and understand the differences between them that experts or legal experts use. So ninety-five to ninety-six million people, as we see another eleven million people fleeing Ukraine and of that four million, at least, have crossed the borders into neighboring countries and another seven million are internally displaced, still inside Ukraine but they've gone someplace that they feel is safer than where they were before. When we looked at the eighty million refugees and displaced people, we knew that two-thirds of that number came from just five countries, and one of the important points about that is it shows you what could happen, the good that could be done, if we were able to push through peace negotiations or resolutions of conflict and persecution, if we could just convince good governance and protection of people—minorities, people with different political thought, different religious backgrounds—inside countries. So the number-one country still remains Syria that has lost 6.7 million people to neighboring countries, primarily. Secondly was Venezuela, four million. Third was Afghanistan. The old number from before last August was 2.6 million and some hundreds of thousands have fled since. And the only reason there aren't more fleeing is that they have a really hard time getting out of their country, and we can talk more about that in a moment. The fourth are Rohingya refugees fleeing from Burma, or Myanmar. That's 1.1 million, and the fifth was Southern Sudanese, 2.2 million, who have fled unrest and violence in that country. So we know that we have not enough peace, not enough solutions, and we have too much poverty, too, and dangers. In addition to the Venezuelans, another group that has approached the U.S. from the southern border that were in the paper, especially around election times, is from the Northern Triangle of Central America, so El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. These are people who could be fleeing because of economic situations and could also be fleeing from criminal violence, gangs, warfare, narcotraffickers. And so if they are fleeing for their lives and approaching our southern border, we are supposed to give them a hearing and consider whether they have a case for asylum, and the—unfortunately, that is not well understood, especially not by folks working at our borders. The Customs and Border Protection folks are more and more focused on, since 9/11, ensuring that bad guys don't come across, that terrorists don't come across, that criminals don't come across. And we heard in the Trump administration conversations about Mexicans as rapists, gang warfare being imported into the U.S. from Central America when, in fact, some of it had been originally exported, and this sense that people from the Middle East were terrorists. And so really harsh language about the types of people who were trying to make it to the U.S. and to get in. Some final thoughts so that we can get to the question and answer. The U.S. government has traditionally been the top donor to refugee and humanitarian efforts around the world. The bureau at the State Department I used to run, the Population, Refugees, and Migration Bureau, was a major donor to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees—UNRWA—the International Committee of the Red Cross, and also the International Organization for Migration, which used to be an independent organization and is now part of the UN since 2016. We were also the number-one resettlement location, the formal program for bringing refugees to the United States, and when I was assistant secretary we brought seventy thousand refugees per year to the United States, invited them to come through a program that took eighteen months to twenty-four months, on average, to get them in because they had to be vetted for security reasons. They had to pass medical tests. Their backgrounds had to be investigated to see that they were who they said they were. And that number went higher in the last year of the Obama administration to eighty-five thousand refugees and, in fact, the Obama administration proposed some very strong additional measures to help refugees. But the Trump administration threw that all into reverse with a completely different set of policies. So the numbers then became reduced every year—fifty-three thousand in the first year of the Trump administration, 22,500 the next year, thirty thousand in 2019, 11,814 in 2020, a similar number in 2021, and slow numbers coming today, this despite bringing so many Afghans through an evacuation exercise last summer. Many of the people who were evacuated were American citizens or green card holders. Afghans who had worked for the U.S. but did not have their formal paperwork yet were brought in under what's called humanitarian parole, and the problem with that program is that it's no guarantee for a longer-term stay in the United States. So there's a bill in Congress right now to address that. A lot of the people who worked on that, especially within the U.S. government, are proud that they've scrambled and brought so many people so quickly—120,000 people brought from Afghanistan. At the same time, those of us who are advocates for refugees would say too many people were left behind and the evacuation should continue, and that's a real concern. In terms of resettlement in the U.S., it's a program run—public-private partnership—and we've never seen so many volunteers and people helping as there are right now, and initiatives to help welcome people to the United States, which is fantastic. I would say the program should be one of humanity, efficiency, and generosity, and that generosity part has been tough to achieve because the government piece of it is kind of stingy. It's kind of a tough love welcome to the United States where the refugees are expected to get jobs and the kids to go to school and the families to support themselves. So let me stop there because I've been just talking too long, I know, and take questions. FASKIANOS: It's fantastic, and thank you for really clarifying the definitions and the numbers. Just a quick question. You said the U.S. government is the top donor. What is the percentage of DVP? I mean, it's pretty— RICHARD: Tiny. Yeah. FASKIANOS: —tiny, right? I think there's this lack of understanding that it may seem like a big number but in our overall budget it's minuscule. So if you could just give us a— RICHARD: Yeah. It's grown in the last few years because of all these crises around the world to ten to twelve million—I mean, ten billion dollars to twelve billion (dollars) between the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department, which was bigger. It was around seven or eight billion (dollars) when I was the assistant secretary five, six years ago. But the important part of it was it provided the whole backbone to the international humanitarian system. Governments, some of them, saw Americans sometimes as headaches in terms of we, Americans, telling them what to do or we, Americans, having our own ideas of how to do things or we, Americans, demanding always budget cuts and efficiencies. But the fact is the whole humanitarian enterprise around the world is based on American generosity, especially the big operating agencies like World Food Programme, UNHCR, UNICEF, UN Development Program. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. So now we're going to go to all you for your questions. Hands are already up and Q&A written questions. So I'll try to get to everybody as much as I can. I'm going to go—the first question from Rey Koslowski, and if you can unmute yourself and give us your institution that would be fantastic. RICHARD: Hi, Rey. Q: All right. Rey Koslowski, University at Albany. Hi, Anne. Good to see you. I'd like to pick up on the use of humanitarian parole. So, as I understand it, it's being utilized for Afghan evacuees, Afghans, who you mentioned, who didn't—weren't able to get on the flights and were left behind, but also for Ukrainians. You know, President Biden announced a hundred thousand Ukrainians. I mean, a very—we're using other channels but we've had, I believe, three thousand at the U.S.-Mexican border and, I believe, they're being paroled for the most part, right. As I understand it, we're—one DHS letter that I saw said that there were forty-one thousand requests for humanitarian parole for Afghan nationals. But I'm wondering about capacity of the USCIS to handle this, to process this, because, you know, normally, I think, maybe two thousand or so, a couple thousand, are processed, maybe a couple of people who do this, and also in conjunction with the challenges for processing all of the asylum applications. So, as I understand it, back in the fall there was some discussion of hiring a thousand asylum officers—additional asylum officers. I was wondering, what are your thoughts about our capacity to process all of the—the U.S. government's capacity to process the humanitarian parole applications and the asylum applications, and if you have any insights on new hires and how many— RICHARD: Well, you know, Rey, at Freedom House now I'm working on a project to help Afghan human rights defenders and— Q: Right. RICHARD: —the idea is that they can restart their work if we can find a way for them to be safe inside Afghanistan, which is very hard with the Taliban in charge right now, or if in exile they can restart their work. And so we're watching to see where Afghans are allowed to go in the world as they seek sanctuary and the answer is they don't get very far. It's very hard to get out of the country. If they get to Pakistan or Iran, they don't feel safe. They have short-term visas to stay there, and the programs that might bring them further along like resettlement of refugees are—take a much longer time to qualify for and then to spring into action, and so they're stuck. You know, they're afraid of being pushed back into Afghanistan. They're afraid of becoming undocumented and running out of money wherever they are, and so they're in great need of help. The humanitarian parole program sort of—for bringing Afghans into the U.S. sort of understood that our eighteen- to twenty-four-month refugee resettlement program was a life-saving program but it wasn't an emergency program. It didn't work on an urgent basis. It didn't scoop people up and move them overnight, and that's, really, what was called for last August was getting people—large numbers of people—out of harm's way. And so when I was assistant secretary, if we knew someone was in imminent danger we might work with another government. I remember that the Scandinavians were seen as people who were more—who were less risk averse and would take people who hadn't had this vast vetting done but would take small numbers and bring them to safety, whereas the U.S. did things in very large numbers but very slowly. And so this lack of emergency program has really been what's held us back in providing the kind of assistance, I think, people were looking for the Afghans. I was surprised we even brought them into the United States. I thought after 9/11 we'd never see that kind of program of bringing people in with so little time spent on checking. But what they did was they moved up them to the front of the line and checked them very quickly while they were on the move. So it was safe to do but it was unusual, and I think part of that was because the military—the U.S. military—was so supportive of it and U.S. veterans were so supportive of it and we had, for the first time in a while, both the right and the left of the political spectrum supporting this. So the problem with humanitarian parole is I remember it being used, for example, for Haitians who had been injured in the Haitian earthquake and they needed specialized health care—let's say, all their bones were crushed in their legs or something. They could be paroled into the U.S., get that health care that they needed, and then sent home again. So we've not used it for large numbers of people coming in at once. So what refugee advocates are seeking right now from Congress is the passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would give people a more permanent legal status. They would be treated as if they were—had come through the refugee resettlement program and they'd get to stay. So you're right that the numbers being granted humanitarian parole at one time is just not the normal way of doing things. You're also right that the—this is a lot of extra work on people who weren't anticipating it, and more can continue with the hundred thousand Ukrainians who the president has said we will take in. And so the thing is when we have these kind of challenges in the United States one way to deal with it is to spend more money and do a better job, and that seems to be an option for certain challenges we face but not for all challenges we face. With these more humanitarian things, we tend to have tried to do it on the cheap and to also use the charity and partner with charities and churches more than if this were sort of a more business-oriented program. So we need all of the above. We need more government funding for the people who are working the borders and are welcoming people in or are reviewing their backgrounds. We need more assistance from the public, from the private sector, from foundations, because the times demand it. And it's very interesting to me to see Welcome US created last year with three former U.S. presidents—President Bush, President Clinton, President Obama—speaking up about it, saying, please support this, and people from across the political aisle supporting it. I wish that had existed in 2015 when we were grappling with these issues at the time of candidate Trump. So the needs are greater. Absolutely. But that doesn't mean we have to just suffer through and struggle through and have long backups like we do right now. We could be trying to put more resources behind it. FASKIANOS: I'm going to take the next written question from Haley Manigold, who's an IR undergrad student at University of North Florida. We know that the war in Ukraine is going to affect grain and food supplies for the MENA countries. Is there any way you would recommend for Europe and other neighboring regions to manage the refugee flows? RICHARD: The first part of that was about the food issue but then you said— FASKIANOS: Correct, and then this is a pivot to manage the refugee flows. So— RICHARD: Well, the Europeans are treating the Ukrainians unlike any other flow of people that we've seen lately. It goes a little bit back and reminiscent to people fleeing the Balkans during the 1990s. But we saw that with a million people in 2015 walking into Europe from Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan—mix of economic migrants and real refugees—that Europe, at first, under Angela Merkel's leadership were welcoming to these folks showing up, and then there was a backlash and the walls came up on that route from the Balkans to Germany and to Sweden. And so in the last few years, Europeans have not been seen as champions in allowing—rescuing people who are trying to get to Europe on their own. You know, especially the Mediterranean has been a pretty dismal place where we see Africans from sub-Saharan Africa working their way up to North Africa and trying to get from Libya across the Mediterranean to Europe. These are mostly economic migrants but not solely economic migrants, and they deserve to have a hearing and, instead, they have been terribly mistreated. They get stopped by the Libyan coast guard, the Europeans push boats back, and they are offloaded back into Libya and they are practically imprisoned and mistreated in North Africa. So that's a terribly inhumane way to treat people who are trying to rescue themselves, their families, and find a better life. And another point to the Europeans has been, couldn't you use these young people taking initiative trying to have a better life and work hard and get on with their lives, and the answer is yes. Europe has this sort of aging demographic and could definitely use an infusion of younger workers and talented people coming in. But, instead, they have really pushed to keep people out. So what's happened with Ukrainians? They're seen as a different category. They're seen as neighbors. There's a part of it that is positive, which is a sense that the countries right next door have to help them. Poland, Moldova, other countries, are taking in the Ukrainians. The borders are open. If they get to Poland they can get free train fare to Germany. Germany will take them in, and that's a beautiful thing. And the upsetting thing is the sense that there is undertones of racism, also anti-Islam, where darker-skinned people were not at all welcome and people who are not Christian were not welcome. And so it's probably a mix of all the above, the good and the bad, and it's potentially an opportunity to teach more people about “refugeehood” and why we care and why it affects all of us and what we should do about it and that we should do more. FASKIANOS: Thank you. All right, I'm going to take the next question from Kazi Sazid, who has also raised their hand, so if you could just ask your question yourself and identify yourself. Q: Hello. So I'm Kazi. I'm a student at CUNY Hunter College and I happen to be writing a research paper on Central American and Iraq war refugee crises and how international law hasn't changed the behavior of a state helping them. So my question is, how does confusion and ignorance of migration and refugee terminology by state leaders and the general populace impact the legally ordained rights of refugees such as having identity documents, having the right to education, refoulement, which is not being sent back to a country where they are danger? One example is like Central Americans are termed as illegal immigrants by the right wing but the reality is they are asylum seekers who are worthy of refugee status because gang violence and corruption has destabilized their country and the judicial systems. I think femicide in El Salvador and Honduras is among the highest and—so yeah. RICHARD: Yeah. Thank you for asking the question, and I have a soft spot in my heart for Hunter College. Only one of my grandparents went to college and it was my mother's mother who went to Hunter College and graduated in the late 1920s, and as we know, it's right down the street from the Harold Pratt House, the home of the Council on Foreign Relations. So I think a lot of what you—I agree with a lot of what you've said about—for me it's describing these people who offer so much potential as threats, just because they are trying to help themselves. And instead of feeling that we should support these folks, there's a sense of—even if we don't allow them in our country we could still do things to ease their way and help them find better solutions, but they're described as these waves of people coming this way, headed this way, scary, scary. And if you follow the debates in the United States, I was very alarmed before and during the Trump administration that journalists did not establish that they had a right to make a claim for asylum at the border. Instead, they talked about it as if it were two political policies duking it out, where some people felt we should take more and some people felt we should take less. Well, the issue that was missed, I felt, in a lot of the coverage of the Southern border was the right to asylum, that they had a right to make a claim, that we had signed onto this as the United States and that there was a very good reason that we had signed onto that and it was to make sure people fleeing for their lives get an opportunity to be saved if they're innocent people and not criminals, but innocent people who are threatened, that we'd give them a place of safety. So I agree with you that the lack of understanding about these basic principles, agreements, conventions is something that is not well understood by our society, and certainly the society was not being informed of that by a lot of the messengers describing the situation over the past few years. FASKIANOS: Thank you. So I'm going to take the next question from Lindsey McCormack who is an undergrad at Baruch—oh, sorry, a graduate student at Baruch College. My apologies. Do you see any possibility of the U.S. adopting a protocol for vetting and accepting climate refugees? Have other countries moved in that direction? And maybe you can give us the definition of a climate refugee and what we will in fact be seeing as we see climate change affecting all of us. RICHARD: I don't have a lot to say on this, so I hate to disappoint you, but I will say a couple things because, one, I was on a task force at Refugees International, which is a very good NGO that writes about and reports on refugee situations around the world and shines a light on them. I was part of a task force that came out with a report for the Biden administration on the need to do more for climate migrants, and so that report is available at the Refugees International site and it was being submitted to the Biden administration because the Biden administration had put out an executive order on refugees that included a piece that said we want to do a better job, we want to come up with new, fresh ideas on climate migrants. So I don't know where that stands right now, but I think the other piece of information that I often give out while doing public speaking, especially to students, about this issue is that I feel not enough work has been done on it, and so if a student is very interested in staying in academia and studying deeper into some of these issues, I think climate migration is a field that is ripe for further work. It's timely, it's urgent, and it hasn't been over-covered in the past. I admire several people, several friends who are working on these issues; one is Professor Beth Ferris at Georgetown University who was, in fact, on the secretary general's High Level Panel on Internal Displacement and she made sure that some of these climate issues are raised in very high-level meetings. She was also part of this task force from Refugees International. Another smart person working on this is Amali Tower, a former International Rescue Committee colleague who started a group called Climate Refugees and she's also trying to bring more attention to this; she's kind of very entrepreneurial in trying to do more on that. Not everybody would agree that the term should be climate refugees since “refugees” has so much legal definitions attached to it and the people displaced by climate don't have those kind of protections or understandings built around them yet. But I think it's an area that there definitely needs to be more work done. So I think the basic question was, did I think something good was going to happen anytime soon related to this, and I can't tell because these crazy situations around the world, the war in Ukraine and Taliban in charge in Afghanistan—I mean, that just completely derails the types of exercises that the world needs of thinking through very logically good governance, people coming together making decisions, building something constructive instead of reacting to bad things. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from raised hand Ali Tarokh. And unmute your—thank you. Q: Yes. OK, I am Ali Tarokh from Northeastern University. I came here in the United States ten years ago as a refugee. And I was in Turkey—I flew Iran to Turkey. I stayed there fourteen, sixteen months. So this is part of—my question is part of my lived experience in Turkey. So one part is humanitarian services, helping refugees move into the third country, OK? The one issue I—it's my personal experience is the UNHCR system, there is many corruptions. This corruption makes lines, OK, produce refugees—because some countries such as Iran and Turkey, they are producing refugees and there is no solution for it, or sometimes they use it as—they use refugees as a weapon. They say, OK, if you don't work with me—Turkey sent a message to EU: If you don't work with me, I open the borders. I open the borders and send the flow of refugees to EU. Even some—even Iran's government. So my question is, how can we in the very base on the ground—the level of the ground—how can we prevent all these corruption or how can we work out with this kind of government, countries that are—I named them the refugee producers. And by the time there is two sides of the refugees—one is just humanitarian services, which is our responsibility, United States playing globally there; and other side it seems refugees issue became like industry. In Turkey, the UNHCR staff, some lawyers/attorneys, they take money from people, they make fake cases for them. Even they ask them: Hey, what country—which country would you like to go, United States, Canada, Scandinavian countries? So what is our strategy? What is our solution to help real refugees or prevent produce refugees? RICHARD: Well, there's several things that are raised by your question. Turkey and, now we see, Russia have both been countries where we have seen instances where they can turn on the flow of refugees and turn it off. And Turkey was watching people walk through Turkey, cross the Mediterranean is very scary, dangerous trip between Turkey and Greece in these rubber boats in 2015, 2016, and then they would make their way onward, and then, because of this big EU-Turkey deal that involved 3 billion euros at the time, all of a sudden, the flow stopped. And then in further negotiations going on and on, Turkey would say things that seemed like it came right from a Godfather movie, like, gee, I'd hate to see that flow start up again; that would be a real shame. And so it was clear it was sort of a threat that if you didn't cooperate it could play this very disruptive role on the edges of Europe and deploying people, as you said, which is so cruel not just to the people who are receiving them but to the individuals themselves that they're not being seen as people who need care but instead as a problem to be deployed in different directions. And we saw that also with Belarus and Poland and now also it may have been part of the thinking of Vladimir Putin that by attacking Ukraine, by going to war with Ukraine that there would be exactly what is happening now, people scattering from Ukraine into Europe and that that would be a way to drive a wedge between European countries and cause a lot of not just heartache but also animosity between these countries. So what the Russians didn't seem to appreciate this time was that there would be so much solidarity to help the Ukrainians, and that has been a bit of a surprise. So you've also talked about corruption, though, and corruption is a problem all over the world for lots of different reasons, in business and it's embedded in some societies in a way that sometimes people make cultural excuses for, but in reality we know it doesn't have to be that way. But it is very hard to uproot and get rid of. So I find this work, the anti-corruption work going on around the world, really interesting and groups like Transparency International are just sort of fascinating as they try to really change the standards and the expectations from—the degree to which corruption is part of societies around the world. So UNHCR has to take great care to not hire people who are going to shake down and victimize refugees, and it's not—there's never a perfect situation, but I know that a lot of work is done to keep an eye on these kinds of programs so that the aid goes to the people who need it and it's not sidetracked to go to bad guys. And the way I've seen it is, for example, if I travel overseas and I go to someplace where refugees are being resettled to the U.S. or they're being interviewed for that, or I go to UNHCR office, there will be big signs up that will say the resettlement program does not cost money. If someone asks you for money, don't pay it; you know, report this. And from time to time, there are mini scandals, but overall, it's remarkable how much corruption is kept out of some of these programs. But it's a never-ending fight. I agree with you in your analysis that this is a problem and in some countries more than others. FASKIANOS: So I'm going to take the next question from Pamela Waldron-Moore, who's the chair of the political science department at Xavier University in New Orleans. There are reports in some news feeds that African refugees from Ukraine are being disallowed entry to some states accepting refugees. I think you did allude to this. Is there evidence of this, and if so, can the UN stop it or alleviate that situation? RICHARD: We saw before the Taliban took over in Afghanistan that some European countries were saying it was time for Afghans to go home again, and the idea that during this war it was safe for Afghans to go back—and especially for Afghans who are discriminated against even in the best of times in Afghanistan, like the Hazara minority. It's just—I found that sort of unbelievable that some countries thought this was the right time to send people back to Afghanistan. And so at the moment there's a weird situation in Afghanistan because it's safer in some ways for the bulk of the people because the active fighting has—in large parts of the country—stopped. But it's deadly dangerous for human rights defenders, women leaders, LBGTQ folks—anyone who tries to stand up to the Taliban—you know, scholars, thinkers, journalists. And so those are the folks that, in smaller numbers, we need to find some kind of way to rescue them and get them to safety while they are still inside Afghanistan or if that's outside Afghanistan and in the region. The borders—the border situations change from time to time. For a while they were saying only people with passports could come out, and for most Afghan families, nobody had a passport or, if they did, it was a head of household had a passport for business or trade. But you wouldn't have had passports for the spouse and the children. And so this has been a real dilemma. We also see a whole series of barriers to people getting out; so first you need a passport, then you need a visa to where you're going, and then you might need a transit visa for a country that you are crossing. And what has come to pass is that people who are trying to help evacuate people from Afghanistan—a smaller and smaller number as the months go on; people are trying to make this happen because it's so hard—that they will only take people out of the country if they feel that their onward travel is already figured out and that they have their visas for their final-destination country. So the actual number that's getting out are tiny. And the people who have gotten out who are in either Pakistan or Iraq are very worried. And they're afraid to be pushed back. They're afraid they will run out of money. They are afraid—I think said this during my talk before—they're afraid that there are people in Pakistan who will turn them in to the Taliban. And so it's always hard to be a refugee, but right now it's really frightening for people who are just trying to get to a safe place. FASKIANOS: And in terms of the discrimination that you referenced for refugees leaving the Ukraine, I mean, there have been some reports of EU—discrimination in European countries not accepting— RICHARD: Well, like African students who are studying in Ukraine— FASKIANOS: Yes. RICHARD: —who were not treated as if they were fleeing a country at war— FASKIANOS: Correct. RICHARD: —but instead were put in a different category and said, you know, go back, go home. FASKIANOS: Yes. RICHARD: Yeah, that's—that is quite blatant— FASKIANOS: And there's— RICHARD: And that was happening at the borders. FASKIANOS: Is there anything the UN can do about that, or is that really at the discretion of the countries—the accepting countries? RICHARD: Well, the—yeah, the UNHCR has these reception centers that they've set up, including between the border of Poland and Ukraine, and I think the other neighboring countries. And so if one can get to the reception center, one could potentially get additional help or be screened into—for special attention for needing some help that maybe a white Christian Ukrainian who spoke more than one language of the region would not need. FASKIANOS: Great. So let's go to Susan Knott, who also wrote her question, but has raised her hand. So Susan, why don't you just ask your question? And please unmute and identify yourself. KNOTT: OK, am I unmuted? FASKIANOS: Yes. KNOTT: OK. I am Susan Knott, University of Utah, Educational Policy and Leadership doctoral program. I am also a practicum intern at ASU, and I'm also a refugee services collaborator. And I'm engaged in a research project creating college and university pathways for refugees to resettle. I'm just wondering what your feel is about the current administration efforts in seeking to establish the pathway model similar to ASU's Education for Humanity Initiative with Bard, and is there helping lead the Refugee Higher Education Access program that serves learners who require additional university-level preparation in order to transition into certificate and degree programs. And I just—I'm not just—and all of this buzz that's going on since all of terrible crises are occurring, I'm not seeing a whole lot that—based on my own experience working with refugee education and training centers at colleges—on the college level, and learning about the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Ed and Immigration. I'm just wondering—and they're saying let's have this be more of a privately funded or partnerships with the university scholarships and private entities. What about a federally-funded university sponsorship program for refugee students given that the numbers or the data is showing that that age group is the largest number of just about every refugee population? RICHARD: That's a really fascinating set of issues. I'm not the expert on them, so I'm going to disappoint you. but I appreciate that you took a little extra time in how you stated your intervention to add a lot of information for this group, which should very much care about this. I get a lot of questions every week about university programs that Afghan students could take advantage of. I don't have a good handle on it, and I'm trying to do that with—I'm overdue for a conversation with Scholars at Risk in New York. Robert Quinn is the executive director of that, I believe. And so I'm glad you raised this and I'm not going to have a lot of extra to say about it. FASKIANOS: Anne, are there—is there—there's a question in the chat in the Q&A about sources for data on U.S. initiatives toward refugees. Where would you direct people to go to get updates on the latest programs, et cetera? RICHARD: Sometimes I'm embarrassed to say the best summaries are done by not-for-profits outside the government than by the government. The best source for data on resettlement of refugees to the U.S. is a website that is funded by the U.S. government called WRAPSNET.org—WRAPS spelled W-R-A-P-S-N-E-T dot-O-R-G. And in double-checking some of the things last summer, I felt that DHS had better descriptions of some of the programs than the State Department did, and that's my bureau that I used to—run, so—but they are responsible for determining who is in and who is out of these different programs, so maybe that's why they do. So there's a lot on the DHS website that's interesting if you are looking for more information. And one of the things the Council does, it has done a number of these special web presentations: one on refugees that I got to help on a couple of years ago, and I think there's one up now on Ukrainians. And this is the type of public education function that the Council does so well I think because they fact-check everything, and so it's very reliable. FASKIANOS: Thank you for that plug. You can find it all on CFR.org—lots of backgrounders, and timelines, and things like that. So we don't have that much time left, so I'm going to roll up two questions—one in the Q&A box and one because of your vast experience. So what role do NGOs play in refugee crises and migration initiatives, particularly in resettlement? And just from your perspective, Anne, you have been in academia, you've worked in the government, you worked at IRC, and now are at Freedom House. And so just—again, what would you share with the group about pursuing a career in this—government, non-government perspectives and, what students should be thinking about as they launch to their next phase in life. RICHARD: Yeah, that we could have a whole ‘nother hour on, right? That's—(laughs)— FASKIANOS: I know, I know. It's unfair to, right, do this at the very end, but— RICHARD: NGOs play really important roles in both the delivery of humanitarian assistance overseas and the help for resettlement in the United States. In the U.S. there are nine national networks of different groups; six are faith-based, three are not. They are non-sectarian, and they do amazing work on shoe-string budgets to—everything from meeting refugees at the airport, taking them to an apartment, showing them how the lights work and the toilet flushes, and coming back the next day, making sure they have an appropriate meal to have, and that the kids get in school, that people who need health care get it, and that adults who are able-bodied get jobs so they can support themselves. The other type of NGO are the human rights NGOs that now I'm doing more with, and I guess if you are thinking about careers in these, you have to ask yourself, you know, are you more of a pragmatic person where the most important thing is to save a life, or are you an idealist where you want to put out standards that are very high and push people to live up to them. Both types of organizations definitely help, but they just have very different ways of working. Another question for students is do you want high job security of a career in the U.S. government—say, as a Foreign Service Officer or as a civil servant where maybe you won't move up very quickly, but you might have great sense of satisfaction that the things you were working on were making a difference because they were being decisively carried out by the U.S. or another government. Or do you prefer the relatively lean, flatter organizations of the NGO world where, as a young person, you can still have a lot of authority, and your views can be seen—can be heard by top layers because you're not that far away from them. And so, NGOs are seen as more nimble, more fast moving, less job security. Having done both I think it really depends on your personality. Working in the government, you have to figure out a way to keep going even when people tell you no. You have figure out—or that it's hard, or that it's too complicated. You have to figure out ways to find the people who are creative, and can make thing happen, and can open doors, and can cut through red tape. In NGOs you can have a lot of influence. I was so surprised first time I was out of the State Department working for the International Rescue Committee one of my colleagues was telling me she just picks up the phone and calls the key guy on Capitol Hill and tells him what the law should be. That would never happen with a junior person in the U.S. government. You have to go through so many layers of bureaucracy, and approvals, and clearances. So, really, it depends on the type of person you are, and how you like to work, and the atmosphere in which you like to work. I can tell you you won't get rich doing this type of work, unfortunately. But you might be able to make a decent living. I certainly have, and so I encourage students to either do this as a career or find ways to volunteer part-time, even if it's tutoring a refugee kid down the block and not in some glamorous overseas location. I think you can get real sense of purpose out of doing this type of work. Thank you, Irina. FASKIANOS: Thank you very much. And I have to say that your careful definitions of the different categories—and really, I think we all need to be more intentional about how we explain, talk about these issues because they are so complex, and there are so many dimensions, and it's easy to make gross generalizations. But the way you laid this out was really, really important for deepening the understanding of this really—the challenge and the—what we're seeing today. So thank you very much. RICHARD: Thank you. Thanks, everybody. FASKIANOS: So thanks to all—yeah, thanks to everybody for your great questions. Again, I apologize; we're three minutes over. I couldn't get to all your questions, so we will just have to continue looking at this issue. We will be announcing the fall Academic Webinar lineup in a month or so in our Academic Bulletin, so you can look for it there. Good luck with your end of the year, closing out your semester. And again, I encourage you to go to CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research analysis on global issues. And you can follow us on Twitter at @CFR_Academic. So again, thank you, Anne Richard. Good luck to you all with finals, and have a good summer. (END)

Almost 3 million people – largely women and children – have fled Ukraine in the last 19 days. As the numbers continue to rise, humanitarian organizations and advocates are warning that the conditions at Ukrainian borders could put these refugees at especially high risk for human trafficking. Plus, China tries to play both sides in Russia's war on Ukraine. Guests: Daphne Panayotatos, advocate for Europe with Refugees International and Axios' Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian. Credits: Axios Today is produced in partnership with Pushkin Industries. The team includes Niala Boodhoo, Sara Kehaulani Goo, Julia Redpath, Alexandra Botti, Nuria Marquez Martinez, Sabeena Singhani, Lydia McMullen-Laird, Alex Sugiura, and Ben O'Brien. Music is composed by Evan Viola. You can reach us at podcasts@axios.com. You can text questions, comments and story ideas to Niala as a text or voice memo to 202-918-4893. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Updated: 4 p.m. The war in Ukraine is reminding the world how quickly a normal life can turn to uncertainty, suffering and terror. As Russia expands its air attacks into the western regions of Ukraine, residents of several encircled southern cities are going without food, water and power. The U.N. refugee agency says 2.7 million people, including more than a million children, have already fled Ukraine.  Guest host Chris Farrell talks with a Ukrainian in Minnesota who is watching the war destroy his homeland and gets an update on the humanitarian crisis unfolding on Ukraine's borders from the head of a refugee advocacy organization who just returned from a trip to Poland. Plus, we'll learn how the trauma of surviving war has lingered for many Minnesotans who experienced previous conflicts.  Guests:  Taras Rafa is from Western Ukraine and an engineer with Abbot in Little Canada.  Eric Schwartz is president of Refugees International. He served previously as dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration. Jill Davidson is a social worker for the Center for Victims of Torture based in St. Paul.  Amal Hassan is a psychotherapist and education coordinator for the Center for Victims of Torture in St. Cloud. Her family escaped war in Somalia. Hear their conversation using the audio player above and read the highlights below. Taras Rafa moved to Minnesota from western Ukraine in 2005 and many of his family members are still in Ukraine. His cousin, who plays clarinet for the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra, has joined civilian defense forces. “We've been really worried about him because knowing that it's a port city, it has direct access from the sea, and it will be one of the first attacks from Russian forces, which actually happened. So he managed to take his family and drive to the Polish border, let them cross … and then he returned back, basically home, and signed up for the military service,” Rafa said. Eric Schwartz, who is the president of Refugees International, said many of the refugees who fled Ukraine have been crossing into Poland. “I met with Europeans from Germany, from Finland, from the Czech Republic, who had driven to Poland for the purpose of transporting refugees who wanted to go to other countries,” Schwartz said. He said European governments have established a directive to allow refugees from Ukraine to live and work within the European Union for up to three years. Amal Hassan, an education coordinator at the Center for Victims of Torture in St. Cloud, Minn., fled from civil war in Somalia when she was a young child — first to Kenya and then to Minnesota.  “It was very cold, right in the middle of winter,” Hassan said. “Children from refugee and immigrant and asylum backgrounds have to negotiate between two cultures. … So that was the larger challenge … trying to maintain my own identity but also adapt to American culture.” Ayan Abdinur called in to share her experience of coming to Minnesota when she was 11 years old. She, too, fled civil war in Somalia with her mother and newborn sibling. Their journey was long and dangerous, she said. “I didn't understand as a child at the time… that emotion, that trauma. But as I've grown, and looking back to these stories and remembering things, it just makes my heart feel, like, what my mom actually went through,” she said. “We have many, many people here in our Minnesota community who've gone through these things, whose family members currently are experiencing these traumatic events,” said Jill Davidson, a social worker for the Center for Victims of Torture in St. Paul. She said they are “finding ways to cope with these types of traumatic events, these types of losses, on a daily basis.”

Today we are talking with Jeff Le. Today's episode is a long one. Normally, I would break this out into two episodes, but I decided to give these critical and timely topics the respect they deserve, to release this episode in its entirety and let you listen to it at your leisure. I want to thank Jeff for joining me on the show and sharing his rich insight and experience with us today. In this episode of the SISU Journey podcast, Jeff Le talks about his incredible story of resilience in the face of discrimination. He shares just how important it is to have conversations about standing against Asian hate. Stay tuned! Here are the things to expect in this episode: People treat you based on what they think your perceived value is. Racism is not an innate thing, rather it's a learned thing that comes from somewhere. How he went from not owning a coat to working and traveling to about 85 countries. People who have the least always give the most. It's hard being in politics as an Asian American. Having a rank doesn't protect you from who you are if you are inherently treated as less there. It's important to have an engaged citizenry, which is really hard in a time where people don't talk to others and just stay in their little corners. Horrible things happen when good people decide not to do something. If you speak with clarity and honesty, people will take it seriously. What are some things we can do to support the Afghan people? And much more! - About Jeff Le: Pronouns: He/Him Jeff Le has had a career at the highest levels of public policy and politics at the state, federal and international levels. A recognized thought leader in political advocacy and representation, his analysis and opinions have been featured on MSNBC, broadcast television in 40 states, as well as in print at POLITICO Magazine, The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, FOX News, The Hill, Washingtonian, Roll Call, Bustle, Forbes, local and regional newspapers in 35 states. During the height of the #StopAsianHate movement, Jeff penned an opinion piece that received national attention in POLITICO Magazine called I Thought I Knew How to Succeed as an Asian in U.S. Politics. Boy, Was I Wrong. that highlighted his experiences in workplace discrimination in politics and racism throughout his life. Jeff is now an executive leader in technology where he is Vice President of Public Policy and External Affairs for Rhino, a fintech startup working to give renters everywhere greater financial freedom through affordable insurance options. Prior to joining Rhino, Jeff was the U.S. State and Local Public Policy Lead for VMware, a digital technology and infrastructure company, and managed the company's gubernatorial, state, county, and local relationships across all 50 states and Canada. Jeff focused on emerging technology policy, including privacy, 5G, broadband, cyber, sustainability, workforce development, diversity and inclusion, education, and IT modernization. He also sits on the Homeland Security Advisory Committee for the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services where he provides recommendations to the Governor's Homeland Security Advisor on response and policy pertaining to cyber, disasters, terrorism, drug interdiction, intelligence, and other emerging threats. Jeff has completed four 100-mile running races, qualified for the Boston Marathon, has been to every Major League Baseball ballpark, all 50 states, and 85 countries. Connect with Jeff! Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeffreydle Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Jeffrey.D.Le/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreyle/ LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/jeffreyle - Links to support the stand against AAPI hate: PBS: https://www.pbs.org/show/asian-americans/ Asian Americans Advancing Justice Training: https://advancingjustice-aajc.org/events Links for Afghanistan refugee support: Red Cross: https://www.icrc.org/en/where-we-work/asia-pacific/afghanistan International Rescue Committee: https://www.rescue.org/country/afghanistan UN Human Rights Committee: https://www.ohchr.org/en/countries/asiaregion/pages/afindex.aspx Media Support: https://www.mediasupport.org/donate/ Miles4Migrants: https://miles4migrants.org/2021/08/17/an-update-on-our-work-in-afghanistan-and-how-donations-are-used-to-support-our-ongoing-work-around-the-world/ Human Rights First: https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/resources-afghan-evacuation Refugees International: https://www.refugeesinternational.org/afghanistan LIRS: https://www.lirs.org/help-our-afghan-allies/ No One Left Behind: https://nooneleft.org/default.aspx? Save Our Allies: https://saveourallies.org/ - This episode contains a little juicy language. Please take care while listening. Thank you for listening to SISU Journey, where we are helping the world heal the curse of separateness by telling diverse stories of those whose voices have felt silenced. We are building a community here at SISU Journey, a network of healers, many of whom you have already heard from on this program. Head over to https://sisujourney.com to sign up for the community waitlist, and you will be the first to be notified as soon as we open the doors. Theme music is Syrian Rue, written and performed by the Mood Doculators. For more of their music and to listen free, visit mooddocs.com Follow us on https://www.instagram.com/sisujourney/

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