Forced Migration: The Human Face of a Health Crisis

Addressing a joint session of Congress, Pope Francis said that migrants “travel for a better life.…Is that not what we want for our own children?”¹ With that plea, the pontiff placed a human face on the modern migration crisis, with nearly 60 million refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing predominantly from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia²; children comprise half the group. The global response is wholly incommensurate with the need: the European Union agreed to distribute only 120 000 asylum-seekers, and the United States will increase its annual refugee cap from 70 000 to 100 000 by 2017—neither of which will substantially affect the humanitarian crisis.