Facing the global refugee crisis
The millions of Syrian refugees displaced by their country’s four-year civil war constitute a major tragedy — and could be a harbinger of even worse problems in the future, a group of scholars and relief workers suggested at an MIT forum on Wednesday. To cope with such scenarios, the panelists suggested, governments, international organizations and other concerned groups will likely have to take an unblinking look at both the causes of forced migrations and the system of refugee aid that leaves huge numbers of displaced persons holed up in camps and other facilities for years at a time. “This might well be the tip of the iceberg,” Jennifer Leaning, a professor and director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, said of the situation in Syria. Leaning is also a member of the Inter-University Committee on International Migration, a research group MIT hosts...