Podcast: UNHCR's Filippo Grandi: How the pandemic has upended the lives of refugees

TRANSCRIPT: UNHCR's Filippo Grandi: How the pandemic has upended the lives of refugees

Filippo Grandi:

These people are escaping, they're not choosing to move. And therefore, if you start putting quotas and limits, you are already managing it in a manner that limits the right of refugees to seek asylum where it is safest.

Ian Bremmer :

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World podcast, where you'll find extended versions of interviews from my show on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we're taking a look at how a pandemic on the move is forcing refugees to stand still, making bad situations even worse. While nightmare scenarios of massive outbreaks in camps and settlements thankfully haven't played out, at least not yet, coronavirus has taken a huge toll in other ways. And I'm talking to a man who's devoted his career to helping the world's most vulnerable. That's UN high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi. Let's get to it.

Announcer:

This GZERO World podcast is brought to you by Walmart. At Walmart we appreciate the trust our customers put in us to provide access to healthier, affordable food for their families, to make their lives easier by serving them when and how they want, and by investing in the communities where we operate. Learn more at corporate.walmart.com.

Ian Bremmer :

Filippo Grandi, high commissioner for refugees at the United Nations. So good to be with you, sir.

Filippo Grandi:

Thank you. Same here.

Ian Bremmer :

So maybe start with some good news. I was worried, and I think many of us were, many international organizations, were at the early stages of this pandemic that coronavirus was going to rip through refugee populations and it would be a humanitarian disaster. So far, haven't heard very much about that at all. Why do you think that is?

Filippo Grandi:

So there's a lot of pros and cons in this situation, but yes, the health impact has been less catastrophic than we thought. Refugees are all over the world. Refugees, displaced people, there's about 80 million of them. They're in all five continents, all situations. And I think that they have been impacted health-wise by the coronavirus, just like the populations they live with. Usually they're host populations. So you have many Venezuelans in Latin America really testing positive wherever testing exists and is available.

But you have in other parts of the world, less impact. And I have to say one thing, which is difficult almost to explain, we've been campaigning very much in the last five years against ghettoizing refugees, against closed refugee camps, against places where they're confined. However, since many of those places still exist, it was easier to control the pandemic there for obvious reasons, but at a cost that is not sustainable, at the cost of everything, their livelihoods, their ability to move and so forth. So there's a lot of pros and cons in this situation, but yes, the health impact has been less catastrophic than we thought.

Ian Bremmer :

We know how much political opposition there has been to the accepting of refugees well before coronavirus. How has this created significant additional changes or were borders sufficiently closed to most refugees beforehand, especially in the advanced industrial economies that frankly, the pandemic didn't have much additional impact on movement?

Filippo Grandi:

I would say three things, the health responses so far, we are not yet in the vaccine world, which will be completely different, but up to now, we have not seen discrimination because I think every government, even the most reluctant to accept refugees, and there are many, is aware that if you exclude the whole group of people from treatment, prevention, etc, you put everybody at risk. So there was inclusion there. There was quite a rise in border closures, which of course, to an extent we understood, borders were close for everybody, not just for refugees. So we made pleas, we work with governments to ensure that people fleeing for their lives, the most urgent cases could still be admitted to asylum procedures. And this, we are slowly getting out of that, but we're worried that some governments will use the excuse to keep borders shut for refugees and asylum seekers.

My main worry is the longer-term impact of the pandemic that we all know worldwide will be on the economies, on people's livelihoods and refugees, displaced, stateless people are very vulnerable because most of them depend on the jobs that are the first ones to disappear in lockdowns. So that's where I'm worried. And I'm also worried that when these big rescue packages for the economies are put in place and implemented, then political considerations will prevail and maybe refugees will be excluded. Same for vaccine distribution to ensure that we have almost some stockpiles ready for refugees, because exclusion becomes more political at that stage.

Ian Bremmer :

When you talk about vaccines and treatment, how are you going to break through an environment where most countries are really taking a more nationalist, a more my country first approach to this?

Filippo Grandi:

Well, this is not new for us, unfortunately. Now, the pandemic has brought this problem to the fore for everybody. But unfortunately in the sphere of refugees, asylum, migration, this "my country first" approach has started many years ago. Perhaps the first country who adopted it very strongly was Australia many years ago. And it has now become quite commonplace. I mean, certainly the US has also adopted some of those policies in respect of refugees, many European countries. This is something that we have of course tried to argue against, because at the same time, these are countries that lament that irregular movement of people is unmanageable. So we argue back that managing that country by country will not manage it at all, may give the temporary illusion that it's closed because you build a wall or you push back at sea. The reality is that the phenomenon continues and you haven't resolved, whilst working together, I know it sounds almost idealistic, but in fact it's very pragmatic. Working together can produce the shared solutions that is the only way to address migration refugees, but also the pandemic. So there's a lot of parallelism, not to mention climate emergency and all that. All these are global issues that require global responses.

Ian Bremmer :

So Filippo, I mean, you gave us the basic numbers, over 80 million refugees, forcibly displaced. Those are the largest numbers of our lifetimes, and it seems that there's no reduction in sight. What are the principle drivers of that expansion right now?

Filippo Grandi:

Conflict, discrimination, persecution, I would add in a language that was not used at the time of the convention, bad governance are very important drivers. And the traditional one, the complication of the last, what, 10, 20 years, is the combination of this with other factors that are less traditional, like economic factors, inequality, poverty, the demographic factor combined with poverty that makes richer countries more attractive and increased mobility that allows people to move on sometimes using asylum channels even if they're not really refugees, but everybody's moving because of some sort of vulnerability.

And now, in the background of all that, or on top of all that literally or around all that, you have the climate emergency that is also likely to compel people to move. So unfortunately, I am not optimistic on numbers. I've been in this job for five years. We've seen every year an increase. We estimate that in the past 10 years, this number, the 80 million has doubled. So I think that unless there is real action on conflict resolution and being serious about climate action, unless this happens and the likelihood of this happening is not very high, although we all hope it will, I think the numbers will continue to grow.

Ian Bremmer :

If many of these people can expect to have a lifetime of displacement, if many of them can expect that their children are going to live in the same environment, are we at least seeing with new technologies with distance learning and education, that there is more potential for as you were upward mobility within refugee populations? In other words, to what extent are all displacements created equal?

Filippo Grandi:

Yeah, you're so right in this, because of course we already have people spending a lifetime in displacement. Can I say unfortunately, we have generations now already. Second, third, look at the Afghans, look at the Somalis. I don't even want to mention the very vexed question of the Palestinians. So you have many, many refugees that stay for decades in exile and what to do about that, because at the same time, as you noted earlier, the politics of the world is reluctant to integrate people in countries where they find themselves. In many countries that are already overburdened by many other problems. I'm not talking about the rich countries, 80%, 90% of those 80 million are in poor countries. Those are the countries facing the challenge. And asking them to integrate millions is unfair almost.

So we need to find a kind of until is needed approach, maximizing the opportunities that we give them through education, through employment inclusion, at least for the time that is needed in national services, national economic policies and so forth. This is extremely difficult in the current politics, in the current political environment, but this is what the famous global compact on refugees really proposes in a very articulate and practical manner. And sorry, Ian, you made a very good point. Connectivity and distant learning. I've just been talking about these things in the context of the GA (General Assembly) week, this is also important. We estimate that if you take refugees, displaced people, their access, their connectivity capacity is about 50% of that, of people in average that are not refugees. So there's a digital gap even among the poor, between who is on the move and who isn't. So that is something we need to pay a lot of attention to.

Ian Bremmer :

And one of the places that you really see that gap play out between poorer countries that take on lots of refugees and wealthier countries that are more reluctant is in Europe, the Middle East, of course, North Africa, so many trying to get in, Turkey among the poorest countries on the continent, taking on millions of refugees and wealthier countries basically saying, "Let's find a way to pay these guys off, so they'll keep them and we don't have to deal with them." How sustainable is that? Is that compact? That's not, it's a European compact that's not a global compact, but it's real. And it's Merkel. It's Macron. I mean, it's all of the European leaders of the wealthier countries that have domestic populations that very strongly resist any more people coming in and Turkey with millions and effectively refugee cities on their property.

Filippo Grandi:

Yeah. I think the answer is implied in your question. It is not sustainable. It has so many flaws, it has served a purpose to stabilize the situation in 2016 on the part of the Europeans in particular. Because, at that point that huge flow of cataract of people coming into Europe was really destabilizing many governments. So it fulfilled the purpose, but first of all, it has to be implemented more seriously. Countries like Turkey, and it's not just Turkey, you see, it's the whole chain upstream that needs to be reinforced. There's a lot of other countries hosting refugees even before they get to Turkey. Take the Afghans for example. They cross Iran. Now, complicated issue of course politically, but Iran hosts millions. So support should be given, not just to Turkey, that takes the Afghans that move on from Iran, but also to Iran that hosts a lot of refugees.

My point here being that there's nothing wrong with reinforcing countries hosting a lot of refugees who may be outside the rich world, not so much to prevent people from coming to the rich world, but because frankly, people do not want to embark on long journeys if they can get support closer to their homes. There will be always people trying to get to the rich countries for better opportunities. But the majority of refugees, we know it by long experience want to return to their country once they can, and therefore they like to be closer where culture may be easier, language may be easier, and so forth. So this, we call it externalization has some legitimate aspect. Let's reinforce all refugee hosting countries, but this can never be at the expense of keeping the borders of rich countries open for those that may wish to go and seek asylum there.

Because, if rich countries do that, and I hear this all the time in the US, in Europe, in Australia, if they do that, then we are in trouble because then the very institution of asylum is jeopardized for everybody because then how can I go then to a poor country and say, "You have to keep a million." They will tell me, "But look at Europe. They're shutting their doors to a few thousands." So there is an injustice no matter how much money you put in the poor country. It's a complex issue, but it needs to be handled with together with a bit more strategy and a bit more equity.

Ian Bremmer :

What you say, of course, is happening. I mean the three largest economies in the world, the United States, China and Japan take virtually no refugees. What do you think those economies should actually be willing to accept? Not how much they're willing to pay, but how much they should be willing to accept in terms of this 80 million we're talking about?

Filippo Grandi:

Yeah, I think Ian, it's not healthy or good or even possible to determine quotas in this way. Actually, many governments have proposed, let's go for quotas. This is risky. This is risky because you can apply quota to migration, to economic migration. You see what I mean? Economic migration is not a right. Economic migration is a different dynamic, legitimate but different. There you can apply quota like Canada has a quota, I can't remember, 300,000 a year. Some European countries have a quota. Refugees have to accept that there is in refugee movements, an irregularity that is part of the nature of the phenomenon. These people are escaping, they're not choosing to move. And therefore, if you start putting quotas and limits, you are already managing it in a manner that limits the right of refugees to seek asylum where it is safest. Now, of course, you have to avoid abuses.

You have to avoid abuses of those that are not refugees at all, that are using asylum as a way to get into certain countries. That has to be addressed more quickly and efficiently than governments do. And you have to also avoid what used to be called in the old days, asylum shopping. I choose where to go depending on other factors. No, there has to be an element of you go where it's possible in a way. Final point on this quota and system. The European countries have been discussing this quite a lot, because there may be some scope for a discussion like this, because of course, all refugees, all people arrive through a few country, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, a few others, Spain maybe. So the discussion between European Union members says is, "How do we share the burden? Should we do it on quotas or should we do it otherwise?" It has been difficult, even for them, it has been difficult. So I think that we need to look at other ways to share the burden more.

Ian Bremmer :

Is the United States, I mean, I know you said that most refugees still want to be close to their homeland, but for those that are trying to come to wealthier economies, for those for whom economic matters more, is the United States still as attractive a destination as it has been over the past decades?

Filippo Grandi:

I think so. There's different ways to get into the United States. One, is through the Mexican border, and that we know how this is now managed a more tight way in the last few months. On that one, our comment has always been, yes, better management. The backlog of asylum claims in the US, it's astronomical. It's by far the biggest in the world, because it's not an efficient system. But efficiency should not translate into pushing back people that have valid claims for asylum or before those claims are verified. And this is happening as well. And this is something that we have been discussing constructively, I would say, but in a way that worries us. And then there is another way to get, for refugees, at least to get in the US and that's called resettlement. Resettlement is not refugees coming by themselves, it's refugees being selected from other countries where they are hosted as refugees, say Lebanon, for example, or Kenya, and moved to the United States according to certain criteria and after a very tight selection process.

And now this administration has vastly reduced that number. The last administration had reached almost 100,000 per year, and we're now down to a few thousand. Now, this is not an obligation of any state to do that, but it is something that states can offer to do voluntarily as part of this burden sharing that we were talking about. And this is a choice that any administration can make. We were not happy with that choice. We have discussed it many times with them, but for the time being, there's been no change. But I can tell you, Ian, that so many refugees that wanted to go to the United States through the resettlement program, which is perfectly legitimate, perfectly regular, perfectly screened, now have no other option, and other states have increased, but have not compensated for this big loss of channels.

Ian Bremmer :

I mean, we're talking about human beings just like Americans, just like Europeans who are being rejected, who are being treated inhumanely. And I wonder, five years in working on this job, devoting your life to it, and the situation is only getting worse. What makes you angry? What's the piece of this that is most sort of internally unmanageable for you as a human being?

Filippo Grandi:

I have to tell you, I've worked with refugees all my life, all my professional life, well over three decades. And we, refugee workers, if I may say, are quite used to dealing with messy political situation. Refugees are not your standard sweet, nice humanitarian issue. Refugees are always literally physically and figuratively on borderlines, in complicated situations. So we're used to dealing with nasty politics and with brutal situations.

Ian Bremmer :

Yeah, it's where legitimacy is contested. It's already sort of in between.

Filippo Grandi:

But what makes me upset is that we know that all over the industrialized world, the refugee issue has been manipulated for political reasons, because it has become popular to say, "Let's get rid of them. Let's send them away. Let's not rescue them at sea as here in Europe. Let them die." I've seen horrible things being said, because it's the refugees, it's the migrants that bring insecurity, distort our values and steal our jobs. These are the three levers of fear that some politicians have used and abused. That makes me upset, because it is not only profoundly wrong, morally and otherwise, but it is also completely inefficient. These are not the real issues. The real issue is we have a huge mobility that carries refugees and others, and we need to manage it well, seriously with facts, statistics, strategies. None of this is done by those that are called here in Europe, populist, that are using this purely to win the next election. This is what makes me really upset.

Ian Bremmer :

Is there backlash against that? I mean, especially in Europe, I look at how the pandemic has brought Europe together to a degree. I look at the redistribution and the support for taking a lot of money from the wealthy north and bringing it to the south and the east. Is that helping at all with the refugee situation, or is it too early to say that?

Filippo Grandi:

No, I think it is helping, because I think actually on the 23rd of September, the European Commission is going to publish a new migration and asylum pact. It's actually a very good approach. It's maybe a little bit more shy than we would've liked on certain issues, but it's good. And I think it is the result of a lot of reasonable reflection around this issue. It touches on all the points that we have been speaking about. So I think that there's still positive forces, there's still leaders in the world who think in the right way, but everything is on balance. It's very 50/50, and the political attraction of pushbacks and denial of rights is unfortunately still very strong.

Ian Bremmer :

If we wanted to end on a positive note, when you look at the conflicts around the world, are there any that you think we are close to resolving, so that refugees in large numbers around that issue would be able to return soon?

Filippo Grandi:

I have some hope very, how can I say, moderate hopes, because one after 30 years learns to be a little bit prudent in these matters, as you know very well. But I think perhaps in Sudan and in South Sudan, these are two countries that have generated millions of refugees and still living all over East Africa. And some of them actually, especially Sudanese, are part of those trying to cross into Europe. So the last change in government in Sudan has now put in place is a number of people, of leaders, or ministers that are all very determined to address this issue.

And I hope that the South Sudan peace process, which is still quite shaky, will also produce the same situation. I've actually launched the idea with both governments that we sit together even with regional states and institutions, and we look at strategies to resolve this big displacement that that would be fantastic, because it's millions of people that we would knock off from the 80 million. And it doesn't mean that everybody returns home. I hope many will if peace prevails, but some may become residents wherever they are. And maybe at that point, Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, maybe even Japan, will take some as a gesture of burden sharing to show that these solutions are in the interest of the whole world.

Ian Bremmer :

God's speed on that and to you. I really appreciate the work that you're doing. I know we all do. Thanks for your time today.

Filippo Grandi:

Thanks, Ian. Thanks very much.

Ian Bremmer :

Shortly after this interview, high commissioner Grandi tested positive for COVID-19. He says his symptoms so far are mild, we wish him well.

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World podcast. Like what you've heard? Come check us out at gzeromedia.com and sign up for our newsletter signal.

Announcer:

This GZERO World podcast is brought to you by Walmart. At Walmart, we appreciate the trust our customers put in us, to provide access to healthier, affordable food for their families, to make their lives easier by serving them when and how they want, and by investing in the communities where we operate. Learn more at corporate.walmart.com.

Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.