Dr Jeff Crisp, RSC Research Associate and Associate Fellow at Chatham House, has written this week on US President Donald Trump’s suspension of the entire US refugee resettlement programme. At a time when “[t]he international community's response to the global refugee crisis was already inadequate,” he writes, “President Trump is now putting even the small steps achieved so far in doubt.”
Crisp focuses in particular on the fate of the New York Declaration, the main outcome of the September 2016 UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants. The Declaration, he says, “includes commitments to improve the delivery of assistance to refugee populations; to support those countries that receive and host the largest number of exiles; to find new homes for all refugees who need them by means of resettlement to other countries; and to condemn and combat xenophobia.”
Such lofty, and non-binding, commitments were met with scepticism from many at the time, including Crisp himself and the RSC Director, Alexander Betts. As Crisp writes, “The events of the past week have given added weight to such scepticism.”
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