Name: 【TED】António Guterres: Refugees have the right to be protected (Refugees have the right to be protected | António Guterres)
Uploaded: 2016-01-21T06:49:45.000Z
Duration: 19 min 55 s
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Bruno Giussani: Commissioner, thank you for coming to TED.

During 2015, almost one million refugees and migrants arrived in Europe

of course, from Syria and Iraq, but also from Afghanistan

and Bangladesh and Eritrea and elsewhere.

And there have been reactions of two different kinds:

from the short-term and the long-term perspective.

Why has the movement of refugees spiked so fast in the last six months?

AG: Well, I think, basically, what triggered this huge increase

There has been an increased movement into Europe from Africa, from Asia,

but slowly growing, and all of a sudden we had this massive increase

The long-term ones, in relation to Syrians,

is that hope is less and less clear for people.

and they don't see much hope to go back home,

so there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

of the Syrians in the neighboring countries have been deteriorating.

We just had research with the World Bank,

which means that people are living very badly.

not only have they suffered what they have suffered,

but they are living in very, very dramatic conditions.

And then the trigger was when all of a sudden,

The World Food Programme was forced, for lack of resources,

to cut by 30 percent food support to the Syrian refugees.

so they are totally dependent on international support,

and they felt, "The world is abandoning us."

And that, in my opinion, was the trigger.

and people started to move in large numbers

and I would have been brave enough to do it,

BG: But I think what surprised many people is it's not only sudden,

The war in Syria has been happening for five years.

Millions of refugees are in camps and villages and towns around Syria.

You have yourself warned about the situation

and about the consequences of a breakdown of Libya, for example,

and yet Europe looked totally unprepared.

and when you are divided, you don't want to recognize the reality.

because you do not have the capacity to make them.

And the proof is that even when the spike occurred,

and was unable to put in place a mechanism to manage the situation.

but the population of the European Union is 550 million people,

which means we are talking about one per every 2,000 Europeans.

Now, in Lebanon, we have one refugee per three Lebanese.

And Lebanon? Struggling, of course, but it's managing.

So, the question is: is this something that could have been managed

if -- not mentioning the most important thing,

which would have been addressing the root causes,

but forgetting about root causes for now,

if Europe were able to come together in solidarity

to create an adequate reception capacity of entry points?

But for that, the countries at entry points need to be massively supported,

and then screening the people with security checks

distributing those that are coming into all European countries,

according to the possibilities of each country.

I mean, if you look at the relocation program

that was approved by the Commission, always too little too late,

or by the Council, too little too late --

AG: My country is supposed to receive four thousand.

So this is perfectly manageable if it is managed,

but in the present circumstances, the pressure is at the point of entry,

and then, as people move in this chaotic way through the Balkans,

then they come to Germany, Sweden, basically, and Austria.

They are the three countries that are, in the end, receiving the refugees.

The rest of Europe is looking without doing much.

BG: Let me try to bring up three questions,

But I think the questions are very present

in the minds of many people in Europe right now,