Displacement, Resettlement, and Responding to the Global Refugee Crisis
April 20th, 2016
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), worldwide displacement is at the highest level ever recorded. One in every 122 people on our planet is either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum. More than 60 million people living in the world today have been forcibly displaced from their homes—half of these are children.
This worldwide crisis has had an unprecedented impact on Europe. Europe is experiencing its worst refugee crisis since World War II--as many as 1 million people from Africa, the Middle East and Asia will seek refuge in Europe in 2016. Evolving practices for aiding and resettling refugees are being shaped as much by discourses around human rights and humanitarian responsibilities as by concerns over domestic security, stretching social services, and maintaining cultural identities.
Join The World Affairs Council in partnership with the United Nations Association of Seattle on April 20th for a panel discussion featuring four international visitors working in refugee aid and resettlement in countries across Europe. Our international visitors include representatives from the International Red Cross and the UNHCR. These visitors are invited to the United States under the auspices of the Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program.
Panelists Include:
Sanja Pupacic, Director of the Department for the Protection of Migrants, Croatian Red Cross
Gustav Mattias Wahlstedt, Deputy Director-General of the Division for Migration and Asylum Policy, Ministry of Justice, Sweden
Andreas Lustenberger, Projector Coordinator, Young Caritas Switzerland
Professor Arzoo Osanloo, former immigration and asylum/refugee attorney and Associate Professor in the Law, Societies, and Justice Program and Director of the Middle East Center at the University of Washington, will moderate.
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Thank you to our partners, the United Nations Association of Seattle and Antioch University, and to Global Classroom’s program sponsor, The Center for Global Studies at the University of Washington.