Canadian Ex-minister Calls For Spending Despots' Riches On Refugees

A former Canadian foreign minister wants money seized from despots to be used to help refugees -- a proposal being pitched Thursday to UN ambassadors and international organizations in New York

Ottawa, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Jan, 2019 ) :A former Canadian foreign minister wants money seized from despots to be used to help refugees -- a proposal being pitched Thursday to UN ambassadors and international organizations in New York.

The recommendation of the World Refugee Council is one of several in a 126-page report "A Call to Action: Transforming the Global Refugee System." The group, led by former top Canadian diplomat Lloyd Axworthy, was formed in 2017 at the height of the global refugee crisis to come up with fresh ideas to try to deal with record-setting migration.

There are currently an estimated 68.5 million people driven from their homes by war, famine and disaster, according to the report's authors.

"So many people are on the move, and the financial system of supporting and protecting refugees is under real risk," Axworthy told AFP.

"We need to start to go after the bad guys," he said by telephone during a stopover en route to New York.

Seizing their ill-gotten gains, he said, "would free up new money for refugees, but also challenge the impunity of (dictators) who deprive their citizens of staying in their own homes, in their own communities." It would also take financial pressures off host nations, he said.

The report calls for making culprits accountable for "persecuting and displacing their own populations." "Oppressive regimes, those responsible for much of the forced migration, are in many cases corrupt, stealing from their treasuries and placing the money and other assets offshore," it says.

- Sue the despots - Axworthy proposes turning to the courts to seize funds languishing in accounts frozen due to sanctions, which he says the World Bank has estimated to be in the tens of billions of Dollars.

There is a precedent for such a move, he said, pointing to a civil case in France against the son of the dictatorial leader of Equatorial Guinea that resulted in a US$34 million judgment, two-thirds of which was later used by a charity to help the country's people.

Last week, the World Refugee Council took its recommendations to the African Union, which has agreed to implement some of them regionally.

In an earlier report last year, the group urged Washington to take a leading role in seizing billions from the regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela -- which has seen skyrocketing inflation, shortages of basic food and medicine and an exodus of Venezuelans to neighboring countries.

The report also cites massive migration from Myanmar, Syria and Sub-Saharan Africa.

And it notes that the United States -- once the leader on refugee resettlement -- in 2018 took in the lowest number of asylum seekers in four decades.

"The humanitarian commitment of nations, once a norm, has given way to nativism. Xenophobia -- fear and exclusion of the 'outsider' -- has gathered force in America, Europe, Australia and elsewhere," the report warns.

Beyond humanitarian concerns, the crisis has fueled political instability. The report cites as an example a "progressive weakening" of the European Union because of its inability to provide "timely and comprehensive solutions for refugees," leading to Brexit.