Governance

David W. Miliband, president and CEO of the International Refugee Committee, discussed the global refugee crisis with Kennedy School professor Nicholas Burns at an Institute of Politics event Thursday evening.

At the event, entitled “The Refugee Crisis and What Can Be Done About It,” Miliband and Burns, who served as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs during the Bush administration, discussed ongoing humanitarian challenges in Syria, connecting the issue to a broader “forgotten crisis” of global population displacement.

"The Middle East is in for another tumultuous year. Earlier this week, Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic ties with Iran after authorities executed a popular Shiite cleric. Anyone watching this meltdown unfold has every reason to think of worse-case scenarios, as it will only deepen the Middle East’s widening sectarian divide, intensify the region’s multiple conflicts, and set back efforts to defeat the Islamic State and end the bloodshed in Syria..."

"As 2015 comes to a close, the annual numbers of migrants smuggled to Greece and Italy and asylum claims lodged in Germany have passed a million, as well as the number of additional displacements produced this year by the conflict in Syria. Moreover, Europe’s Mediterranean shore has now the unchallenged title of the world’s most lethal border. Not only this. The migrant crisis is also putting to the test some of Europe’s most fundamental values, from the freedom of circulation within its territories, to international protection beyond..."

An audio recording of a public address by Dr. Walid Ammar, Director General, Ministry of Public Health of Lebanon; Professor, The Lebanese University; Senior Lecturer, American University of Beirut.

"Like most public political dramas across the Middle East, the current events in Lebanon revolving around uncollected garbage are really about several different issues that have merged into one."

In this installment of “Inside the Middle East: Q&A,” recorded on April 1, 2015, Dr. Philippe Fargues, Director of the Migration Policy Centre, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies European University Institute (EUI), discusses the humanitarian crisis of migrants from North Africa, the Levant, and the Sahel, crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Europe on boats.

"The debates now taking place about the IS phenomenon and threat focus on who is to blame for allowing it to develop, how widely will IS spread territorially, and how much support does IS enjoy around the region in lands where it does not control territory? All this is important, but the most terrifying aspect of the IS phenomenon is not about the extremist young men who gravitate to its call, but rather about the factors across the Arab region and beyond that allowed it to come into being in the first place — factors that continue to shape our troubled region today."

Putin's invasion of Ukraine is nearing the end of Act One. Professor Nicholas Burns expands on key points and questions as the saga continues: 1) Putin's strategy is crystal clear; 2) Europe and America are divided; 3) Obama didn't cause the problem; Putin did; 4) Power rules: Putin took Crimea because he could; 5) NATO is back; 6) The battle for a “democratic peace” in Europe has resumed; and 7) Putin is threatening great power peace with his land grab in Europe.