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There are times when I feel

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really quite ashamed

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to be a European.

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In the last year,

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more than a million people
arrived in Europe in need of our help,

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and our response, frankly,
has been pathetic.

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There are just so many contradictions.

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We mourn the tragic death

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of two-year old Alan Kurdi,

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and yet since then, more than 200 children

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have subsequently drowned
in the Mediterranean.

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We have international treaties
that recognize that refugees

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are a shared responsibility,

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and yet we accept that tiny Lebanon

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hosts more Syrians
than the whole of Europe combined.

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We lament the existence
of human smugglers,

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and yet we make that the only viable route

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to seek asylum in Europe.

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We have labor shortages,
and yet we exclude people who fit

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our economic and demographic needs

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from coming to Europe.

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We proclaim our liberal values
in opposition to fundamentalist Islam,

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and yet we have repressive policies

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that detain child asylum seekers,

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that separate children
from their families,

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and that seize property from refugees.

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What are we doing?

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How has the situation come to this,

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that we've adopted such an inhumane
response to a humanitarian crisis?

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I don't believe it's because
people don't care,

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or at least I don't want to believe
it's because people don't care.

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I believe it's because
our politicians lack a vision,

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a vision for how to adapt
an international refugee system

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created over 50 years ago

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for a changing and globalized world.

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And so what I want to do
is take a step back

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and ask two really fundamental questions,

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the two questions we all need to ask.

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First, why is the current system
not working?

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And second, what can we do to fix it?

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So the modern refugee regime

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was created in the aftermath
of the Second World War by these guys.

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Its basic aim is to ensure

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that when a state fails,
or worse, turns against its own people,

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people have somewhere to go,

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to live in safety and dignity
until they can go home.

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It was created precisely for situations
like the situation we see in Syria today.

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Through an international convention
signed by 147 governments,

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the 1951 Convention
on the Status of Refugees,

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and an international organization, UNHCR,

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states committed to reciprocally
admit people onto their territory

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who flee conflict and persecution.

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But today, that system is failing.

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In theory, refugees have a right
to seek asylum.

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In practice, our immigration policies
block the path to safety.

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In theory, refugees have a right
to a pathway to integration,

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or return to the country
they've come from.

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But in practice, they get stuck
in almost indefinite limbo.

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In theory, refugees
are a shared global responsibility.

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In practice, geography means
that countries proximate the conflict

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take the overwhelming majority
of the world's refugees.

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The system isn't broken
because the rules are wrong.

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It's that we're not applying them
adequately to a changing world,

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and that's what we need to reconsider.

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So I want to explain to you a little bit
about how the current system works.

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How does the refugee regime actually work?

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But not from a top-down
institutional perspective,

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rather from the perspective of a refugee.

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So imagine a Syrian woman.

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Let's call her Amira.

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And Amira to me represents
many of the people I've met in the region.

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Amira, like around 25 percent
of the world's refugees,

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is a woman with children,

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and she can't go home
because she comes from this city

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that you see before you, Homs,

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a once beautiful and historic city

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now under rubble.

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And so Amira can't go back there.

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But Amira also has no hope
of resettlement to a third country,

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because that's a lottery ticket
only available to less than one percent

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of the world's refugees.

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So Amira and her family

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face an almost impossible choice.

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They have three basic options.

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The first option is that Amira
can take her family to a camp.

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In the camp, she might get assistance,

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but there are very few prospects
for Amira and her family.

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Camps are in bleak, arid locations,

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often in the desert.

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In the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan,

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you can hear the shells
across the border in Syria at nighttime.

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There's restricted economic activity.

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Education is often of poor quality.

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And around the world,

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some 80 percent of refugees
who are in camps

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have to stay for at least five years.

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It's a miserable existence,

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and that's probably why, in reality,

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only nine percent of Syrians
choose that option.

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Alternatively, Amira can head
to an urban area

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in a neighboring country,
like Amman or Beirut.

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That's an option that about 75 percent
of Syrian refugees have taken.

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But there, there's
great difficulty as well.

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Refugees in such urban areas
don't usually have the right to work.

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They don't usually get
significant access to assistance,

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and so when Amira and her family
have used up their basic savings,

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they're left with very little
and likely to face urban destitution.

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So there's a third alternative,

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and it's one that increasing
numbers of Syrians are taking.

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Amira can seek some hope for her family

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by risking their lives
on a dangerous and perilous journey

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to another country,

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and it's that which we're seeing
in Europe today.

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Around the world, we present refugees
with an almost impossible choice

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between three options:

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encampment, urban destitution,
and dangerous journeys.

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For refugees, that choice is
the global refugee regime today.

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But I think it's a false choice.

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I think we can reconsider that choice.

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The reason why we limit those options

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is because we think

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that those are the only options

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that are available to refugees,
and they're not.

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Politicians frame the issue
as a zero-sum issue,

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that if we benefit refugees,
we're imposing costs on citizens.

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We tend to have a collective assumption

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that refugees are an inevitable cost
or burden to society.

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But they don't have to.
They can contribute.

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So what I want to argue
is are there are ways

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in which we can expand that choice set

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and still benefit everyone else:

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the host states and communities,

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our societies, and refugees themselves.

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And I want to suggest four ways

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we can transform the paradigm
of how we think about refugees.

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All four ways have one thing in common:

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they're all ways in which we take
the opportunities of globalization,

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mobility, and markets,

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and update the way we think
about the refugee issue.

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The first one I want to think about

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is the idea of enabling environments,

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and it starts from
a very basic recognition

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that refugees are human beings
like everyone else,

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but they're just in
extraordinary circumstances.

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Together with my colleagues in Oxford,

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we've embarked on
a research project in Uganda

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looking at the economic lives of refugees.

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We chose Uganda not because
it's representative of all host countries.

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It's not. It's exceptional.

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Unlike most host countries
around the world,

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what Uganda has done

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is give refugees economic opportunity.

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It gives them the right to work.
It gives them freedom of movement.

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And the results of that are extraordinary

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both for refugees and the host community.

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In the capital city Kampala,

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we found that 21 percent of refugees
own a business that employs other people,

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and 40 percent of those employees

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are nationals of the host country.

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In other words, refugees are making jobs

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for citizens of the host country.

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Even in the camps, we found
extraordinary examples

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of vibrant, flourishing,
and entrepreneurial businesses.

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For example,
in a settlement called Nakivale,

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we found examples of Congolese refugees

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running digital music exchange businesses.

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We found a Rwandan
who runs a business that's available

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to allow the youth to play computer games

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on recycled game consoles
and recycled televisions.

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Against the odds of extreme constraint,

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refugees are innovating,

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and the gentlemen you see before you
is a Congolese guy called Demuke.

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Demuke arrived in the settlement
with very little,

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but he wanted to be a filmmaker,

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so with friends and colleagues,
he started a community radio station,

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he rented a video camera,

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and he's now making films.

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He made two documentary films

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with and for our team,

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and he's making a successful business
out of very little.

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It's those kinds of examples

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that should guide
our response to refugees.

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Rather than seeing refugees
as inevitably dependent

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upon humanitarian assistance,

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we need to provide them with opportunities
for human flourishing.

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Yes, clothes, blankets, shelter, food
are all important in the emergency phase,

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but we need to also look beyond that.

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We need to provide opportunities
to connectivity, electricity,

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education, the right to work,

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access to capital and banking.

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All the ways in which we take for granted
that we are plugged in

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to the global economy

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can and should apply to refugees.

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The second idea I want to discuss
is economic zones.

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Unfortunately, not every
host country in the world

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takes the approach Uganda has taken.

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Most host countries don't open up their
economies to refugees in the same way.

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But there are still pragmatic
alternative options that we can use.

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Last April, I traveled to Jordan
with my colleague,

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the development economist Paul Collier,

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and we brainstormed an idea
while we were there

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with the international community
and the government,

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an idea to bring jobs to Syrians

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while supporting Jordan's
national development strategy.

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The idea is for an economic zone,

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one in which we could potentially
integrate the employment of refugees

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alongside the employment
of Jordanian host nationals.

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And just 15 minutes away
from the Zaatari Refugee Camp,

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home to 83,000 refugees,

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is an existing economic zone

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called the King Hussein
Bin Talal Development Area.

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The government has spent
over a hundred million dollars

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connecting it to the electricity grid,
connecting it to the road network,

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but it lacked two things:

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access to labor and inward investment.

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So what if refugees
were able to work there

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rather than being stuck in camps,

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able to support their families and develop
skills through vocational training

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before they go back to Syria?

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We recognized that
that could benefit Jordan,

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whose development strategy
requires it to make the leap

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as a middle income country
to manufacturing.

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It could benefit refugees,
but it could also contribute

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to the post-conflict
reconstruction of Syria

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by recognizing that we need
to incubate refugees

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as the best source
of eventually rebuilding Syria.

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We published the idea
in the journal Foreign Affairs.

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King Abdullah has picked up on the idea.

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It was announced at the London
Syria conference two weeks ago,

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and a pilot will begin in the summer.

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(Applause)

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The third idea that I want to put to you

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is preference matching
between states and refugees

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to lead to the kinds of happy outcomes
you see here in the selfie

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featuring Angela Merkel
and a Syrian refugee.

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What we rarely do is ask refugees
what they want, where they want to go,

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but I'd argue we can do that

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and still make everyone better off.

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The economist Alvin Roth has developed
the idea of matching markets,

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ways in which the preference ranking
of the parties shapes an eventual match.

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My colleagues Will Jones
and Alex Teytelboym

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have explored ways in which that idea
could be applied to refugees,

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to ask refugees to rank
their preferred destinations,

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but also allow states to rank
the types of refugees they want

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on skills criteria or language criteria

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and allow those to match.

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Now, of course you'd need to build in
quotas on things like diversity

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and vulnerability,

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but it's a way of increasing
the possibilities of matching.

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The matching idea
has been successfully used

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to match, for instance, students
with university places,

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to match kidney donors with patients,

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and it underlines the kind of algorithms
that exist on dating websites.

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So why not apply that
to give refugees greater choice?

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It could also be used
at the national level,

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where one of the great challenges we face

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is to persuade local communities
to accept refugees.

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And at the moment,
in my country, for instance,

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we often send engineers to rural areas
and farmers to the cities,

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which makes no sense at all.

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So matching markets offer a potential way
to bring those preferences together

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and listen to the needs and demands
of the populations that host

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and the refugees themselves.

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The fourth idea I want to put to you
is of humanitarian visas.

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Much of the tragedy and chaos
we've seen in Europe

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was entirely avoidable.

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It stems from a fundamental contradiction
in Europe's asylum policy,

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which is the following:

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that in order to seek asylum in Europe,

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you have to arrive spontaneously
by embarking on those dangerous journeys

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that I described.

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But why should those journeys be necessary
in an era of the budget airline

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and modern consular capabilities?

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They're completely unnecessary journeys,

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and last year, they led to the deaths
of over 3,000 people

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on Europe's borders
and within European territory.

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If refugees were simply allowed
to travel directly

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and seek asylum in Europe,
we would avoid that,

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and there's a way of doing that

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through something called
a humanitarian visa,

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that allows people to collect a visa
at an embassy

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or a consulate in a neighboring country

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and then simply pay their own way

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through a ferry or a flight to Europe.

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It costs around a thousand Euros
to take a smuggler

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from Turkey to the Greek islands.

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It costs 200 Euros to take a budget
airline from Bodrum to Frankfurt.

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If we allowed refugees to do that,
it would have major advantages.

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It would save lives,

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it would undercut
the entire market for smugglers,

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and it would remove the chaos
we see from Europe's front line

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in areas like the Greek islands.

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It's politics that prevents us doing that
rather than a rational solution.

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And this is an idea that has been applied.

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Brazil has adopted a pioneering approach
where over 2,000 Syrians

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have been able to get humanitarian visas,

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enter Brazil, and claim refugee status
on arrival in Brazil,

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and in that scheme, every Syrian
who has gone through it

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has received refugee status
and been recognized as a genuine refugee.

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There is a historical precedent
for it as well.

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Between 1922 and 1942,

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these Nansen passports were used
as travel documents

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00:16:16,143 --> 00:16:21,645
to allow 450,000 Assyrians,
Turks, and Chechens

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to travel across Europe
and claim refugee status

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00:16:24,966 --> 00:16:26,614
elsewhere in Europe,

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and the Nansen
International Refugee Office

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received the Nobel Peace Prize

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in recognition of this
being a viable strategy.

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So all four of these ideas
that I've presented you

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are ways in which we can expand
Amira's choice set.

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They're ways in which we can have
greater choice for refugees

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beyond those basic
impossible three options

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I explained to you,

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and still leave others better off.

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In conclusion, we really need
a new vision,

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a vision that enlarges
the choices of refugees

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but recognizes that they don't
have to be a burden.

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There's nothing inevitable
about refugees being a cost.

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Yes, they are
a humanitarian responsibility,

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but they're human beings with skills,
talents, aspirations,

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with the ability to make contributions
if we let them.

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In the new world,

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migration is not going to go away.

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What we've seen in Europe
will be with us for many years.

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People will continue to travel,

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they'll continue to be displaced,

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and we need to find rational,
realistic ways of managing this,

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not based on the old logics
of humanitarian assistance,

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not based on logics of charity,

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but building on the opportunities
offered by globalization,

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markets, and mobility.

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I'd urge you all to wake up
and urge our politicians

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to wake up to this challenge.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)