Flight from despair

Abstract

One out of every 113 people in the world is either an asylum seeker, a refugee, or internally displaced, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The war in Syria, now in its sixth year, is a major driver of these numbers and the acute distress of those immediately affected by the conflict—an estimated 6·5 million internally displaced, 5 million Syrian refugees in host countries in the region, and about 1 million seeking refuge in Europe and elsewhere. Yet in the past 5 years millions of other people have also been leaving home to improve their chances of survival, driving the total numbers beyond the 50 million found after World War 2 in Europe (long considered the historical high mark) to more than 65 million in 2017. The trends now, as compared with post-war Europe, are much broader in terms of source countries and diversity of populations, and much more varied in terms of impetus for flight. New understandings, analyses, and remediating polices are sorely needed.