- Relocating refugees to another developed country (not Libya, not Turkey, maybe Greece)
Refugees fleeing the war in Syria – let's agree they had the right to go somewhere safe, and the rest of the world had a duty to provide them with somewhere safe to go – but does a refugee have a right to refuge in a developed country in particular? Especially when the country from which they came wasn't, prior to the start of the war/conflict, generally counted as "developed"?
The idea that refugees from a conflict should primarily be hosted by neighbouring countries, who are likely to have much greater cultural/linguistic similarity, rather than by substantially more distant countries with far less cultural commonality, doesn't seem unreasonable. If a country is developing/middle income, and so are most of its neighbours – you can understand why refugees might greatly prefer to seek refuge in a much richer country much further away, rather than its economically more similar immediate neighbours – but are we obliged to honour that preference?
Given the majority of Syrian refugees were Muslim – why didn't the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation take the lead in resettling them in Muslim-majority countries? Or similarly – given Syria is part of the Arab world, why didn't the Arab League resettle them in other Arab states?
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Refugees fleeing the war in Syria – let's agree they had the right to go somewhere safe, and the rest of the world had a duty to provide them with somewhere safe to go – but does a refugee have a right to refuge in a developed country in particular? Especially when the country from which they came wasn't, prior to the start of the war/conflict, generally counted as "developed"?
The idea that refugees from a conflict should primarily be hosted by neighbouring countries, who are likely to have much greater cultural/linguistic similarity, rather than by substantially more distant countries with far less cultural commonality, doesn't seem unreasonable. If a country is developing/middle income, and so are most of its neighbours – you can understand why refugees might greatly prefer to seek refuge in a much richer country much further away, rather than its economically more similar immediate neighbours – but are we obliged to honour that preference?
Given the majority of Syrian refugees were Muslim – why didn't the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation take the lead in resettling them in Muslim-majority countries? Or similarly – given Syria is part of the Arab world, why didn't the Arab League resettle them in other Arab states?