"Preface" [2019] ELECD 2025; in Juss, Singh Satvinder (ed), "Research Handbook on International Refugee Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) xii

Book Title: Research Handbook on International Refugee Law

Editor(s): Juss, Singh Satvinder

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section Title: Preface

Number of pages: 13

Extract:

Preface


In recent years the UNHCR has expressed mounting concern at how `war, violence and per-
secution' in the world have `left one in every 122 humans on the planet a refugee, internally
displaced or seeking asylum', and has expressed disquiet over how the world is failing the
victims in an `age of unprecedented mass displacement'. It is now clear that, `the level of
worldwide displacement is higher than ever before, with a record 59.5 million people living
exiled from their homes'. Yet, it will come as no surprise to anyone to learn that the war in
Syria has been the single largest driver of displacement. Thus, even by the end of 2014, `the
conflict had forced 3.88 million Syrians to live as refugees in the Middle East and beyond, and
left 7.6 million more internally displaced. In blunter terms, one in every five displaced persons
worldwide was Syrian'.1 More than one-third of refugees arriving are children.2
The western world has not escaped this turmoil. In its Editorial, `Age of Anxiety', The
Times of London explained how `[u]nchecked immigration from Syria, the wider Middle
East and sub-Saharan Africa has changed the terms of politics in Europe' and that `[f]ears
about the migrant surge has nudged the far right into governing coalitions' in many countries
where the `appeal is to those terrified of Islam; the sense of Muslims being an alien presence'
and that, `[t]hese are Europe's new rulers, the ...