It is not surprising that the recent report by the UN Refugee Agency has labelled 2015 as the country with the highest number of refugees migrating from their homeland. A total of 63.5 mn people were refugees, asylum seekers or internally displaced by the end of 2015, an increase of 5 million from the previous year. Five million people forced to leave their homes in a single year tells us just how badly international conflict has threatened global stability.
The biggest problem in the refugee issue is how to rehabilitate those who have lost their homes, or if this is even possible before entire generations have lived their lives without a place to call home. The ideal situation would be one where the refugees could return to their normal lives after the end of conflict and threat of violence, but in the case of all major conflicts currently taking place around the globe, this would be optimism that is untethered to reality. The last option then, is of integration. The only way this can be fully achieved, is if the host nation actively pursues to make this happen.
Reactions across the world, however, make this next to impossible at the moment. In Germany after many women were harassed in a mob of suspected migrants, the welcome mat was all but taken out from under the feet of the refugees. There is raging debate across the Eurozone and in North America about the future of societies that take in too many refugees. Some of the opponents to solving what is most definitely a humanitarian crisis would do well to take a page out of Pakistan’s book, because the country, while not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, at least has the decency to accept all the refugees that cross the border, even at risk the risk of undermining national security.