In a recent Foreign Affairs essay, Alexander Betts argues that now is the time for Europe to reset how it treats refugees in the wake of the exodus of Ukrainians fleeing their country after Russia’s invasion.

“The discrepancy in the treatment of refugee populations is contrary to the spirit of international refugee law, which upholds the right of refugees to seek asylum anywhere in the world without discrimination,” writes Betts.

Forced displacement “will be a defining challenge of the twenty-first century everywhere. That reality has profound implications for how Europe aids refugees,” writes Betts, who is a s Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs at the University of Oxford and author of The Wealth of Refugees: How Displaced People Can Build Economies.

“The continent can no longer act just as a distant donor of humanitarian and development aid; now, it must develop the capacity to welcome large numbers of refugees, no matter where they are from.”

Click here for his column.

The number of people fleeing the war in Ukraine has exceeded four million, the United Nations said Wednesday, “surpassing the refugee count the organization predicted for the entire war in just under five weeks,” the Wall Street Journal reported on March 30.

“That number exceeds the worst-case predictions made at the start of the war,” wrote Bassam Hatoum and Jamey Keaten of the Associated Press.

Half of the refugees from Ukraine are children, according to UNHCR and the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, they reported.

“The exodus, staggering in its scale and speed, has turned into the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II,” noted Ellen Francis of the Washington Post.

President Biden on March 26 met with Ukrainian refugees “who have fled to Poland in recent weeks, getting a firsthand look at the humanitarian crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” the Hill reported.

Biden “held hands with parents and gave them hugs during the stop at a soccer stadium where refugees go to obtain a Polish identification number that gives them access to social services such as health care and schools,” the Associated Press noted.

Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times

“I’ve been to an awful lot of places like this with a lot of refugee camps in my life. And what I — what I never — I’m always surprised by is the depth and strength of the human spirit. I mean it sincerely. And it’s incredible. It’s incredible,” the President said after meeting with the refugees.

The White House on March 24 said that it would welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainians and others “fleeing Russia’s aggression through the full range of legal pathways, including the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.”

The White House said in a fact sheet that in particular, “we are working to expand and develop new programs with a focus on welcoming Ukrainians who have family members in the United States. The United States and the European Union are also coordinating closely to ensure that these efforts, and other forms of humanitarian admission or transfers, are complementary and provide much-needed support to Ukraine’s neighbors.”

“While most displaced Ukrainians want to stay in Europe, the U.S. government expects to use its refugee admission program as well as the parole system and immigrant and non-immigrant visas to bring in Ukrainians,” NPR reported, citing a senior Biden Administration official.

Along with accepting the up to 100,000 refugees, the White House also said that Thursday that it would donate $1 billion to help European countries handle a surge of migrants fleeing Russia’s invasion, the New York Times reported.

“The announcement comes as countries facing an exodus of some three million refugees have sought assistance from the United States, which has been engaged in its own struggle to absorb thousands of refugees from the war in Afghanistan,: wrote New York Times reporters Miriam Jordan and Michael Shear.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in the fastest growing refugee crisis since World War II, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on March 6. Over the last 10 days, 1.5 million people have fled the conflict.

The UNHCR has set up a webpage for donations to provide assistance to the refugees. Click here for additional details.

In a Q&A with Forbes, Sloane Davidson, founder of the refugee support group Hello Neighbor, reflects on the five year anniversary of the organization’s founding.

“The nonprofit marks several huge milestones this year with their five year anniversary, a federal government contract that enables them to directly resettle refugees upon arrival into the U.S., and securing over a million dollars in funding,” writes Amy Shoental of Forbes.

Davidson highlighted Hello Neighbor’s focus on storytelling for refugees.

“We have found really impactful ways to tell positive stories through our core values: a refugee first mindset, dignified storytelling and cultivating community,” she said in the interview.

Additional information about Hello Neighbor is available here.

By November 2021, more than 84 million people had been forced from their homes, according to data from the UNHCR, the refugee agency of the United Nations. This figure is an increase from 2020 and 2019, both of which were record-breaking years in terms of the numbers forcibly displaced around the world.

This rise was coupled with a drop in global mobility overall due to stricter travel rules, prompting the Director General of the UN migration agency, António Vitorino, to declare that the world was “witnessing a paradox not seen before in human history.”

“While billions of people have been effectively grounded by COVID-19, tens of millions of others have been displaced within their own countries,” he said, at the launch of the agency’s latest World Migration Report.

The young are at the forefront of the global migration currently underway, reports Patrick McDonnell and Nabih Bulos in the Los Angeles Times.

“They are converging on the U.S. border and on multiple entry points to Europe, from the English Channel to the Mediterranean to the continent’s eastern flanks. Many hail from regions with predominantly youthful populations, median ages typically in the low 20s, well below those in Western Europe and the United States,” the story notes.

Almost 80% of more than 5.5 million first-time asylum seekers in Europe since 2014 were 34 or younger, according to Eurostat, the statistical branch of the European Union. Close to one-third were under 18, the story notes.

A recent article published in the New Yorker sheds light on the inhumane conditions that migrants from Africa are facing in Libyan prisons.

“In the past six years, the European Union, weary of the financial and political costs of receiving migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, has created a shadow immigration system that stops them before they reach Europe,” writes Ian Urbina.

International aid agencies have documented an array of abuses,Urbina reports, including detainees tortured with electric shocks, families extorted for ransom and men and women sold into forced labor.

“The E.U. did something they carefully considered and planned for many years,” Salah Marghani, Libya’s Minister of Justice from 2012 to 2014, told Urbina. “Create a hellhole in Libya, with the idea of deterring people from heading to Europe.”

Pope Francis marked his 85th birthday on Dec. 17 by meeting with 10 refugees who arrived in Italy from Cyprus on Dec. 16, the National Catholic Reporter notes in an article.

A communique from the Holy See Press Office said the migrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Somalia and Syria will be supported directly by Francis. The international Community of Sant’Egidio will be responsible for their integration program, which will take a year.