Many of us have seen concerning images and testimonials of those living in dire conditions in refugee camps. However, while the discussion is often on the conditions of refugee camps (and necessarily so), seldom do we interrogate the policies that enable them. And it would appear, the UN and its satellite organisations and stakeholders, are culpable in the refugee crisis we see in the status quo.
THE UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES’ ROLE IN REFUGEE CAMP POLICY
“The Circular Refugee Problem”, and we ought to begin with the most culpable actor in this circular problem. Well, the United Nations, through its specialised agency the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (or UNHCR), plays a central role in shaping refugee camp policy worldwide. To be clear, UNHCR does not unilaterally “create” binding international law on refugee camps, BUT it has been instrumental in developing guidelines, standards, and operational policies that influence how camps are established, managed, and governed.
Additionally, UNHCR was established by the UN General Assembly in 1950, initially to address post-World War II displacement in Europe. Its mandate, which is outlined in the UNHCR Statute (UNGA Resolution 428(V)), is said to focus on providing international protection to refugees and seeking permanent solutions. The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol also form the foundational legal framework for refugee rights, though they are said not to directly prescribe camp policies, and rather emphasize state obligations to protect refugees, But, in practise, the UNHCR nevertheless serves as a “guardian” actor, that actually supervises implementation – thus maintaining an influential role in directing refugee camp policy.
But, what the masses are typically led to believe as far as refugee policy is concerned is that refugee camps emerge primarily when host governments, facing mass influxes, designate sites for temporary shelter. And even that primary responsibility for camp establishment and governance lies with host countries, which retain sovereignty over their territory, as they decide on camp locations, policies, and access to rights like work or movement. HOWEVER, the UNHCR often steps in as the lead agency for refugee camp coordination, and management, especially in what they deem emergencies. And so, alongside the International Organization for Migration (IOM), UNHCR leads refugee camp coordination and management under the UN’s Inter-Agency Standing Committee “cluster approach.”
Then, moreover, the UNHCR has developed extensive policies and standards for refugee camps. Primarily, these include settlement planning principles discouraging long-term, isolated camps in favour of alternatives that promote refugee self-reliance and integration. And while this sounds good on paper, it is in part how the UN has influenced concerning trajectories in immigration policy around the world, and further worsened refugee and asylum policies in the status quo.
Perhaps one of the worst examples of this is how the United Nations, through its subsidiary the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (or UNRWA) which (contrary to UN refugee camp policy) actual maintain in perpetuity so-called “Refugee camps” which really look like any other city, with shopping malls and rooftop satellite dishes, to the education and incitement of Palestinian children to murder and die for unjust causes, and even to UNRWA’s praise for the atrocities of 7 October. All funded by our tax dollars.
THE UN & ITS STAKEHOLDERS FORMULATE DESTRUCTIVE POLICIES THAT CREATE REFUGEES
But, the most significant concern here is not even that the UN is the custodian of the policy structure behind refugees. The significant concern is that the UN and its collaborators are behind much of the destruction in various parts of the world, because these bodies are led by some of the most atrocious globalists in the world, like the EU and NATO, who love wars and even sponsor them.
NATO IS NOT A MILITARY ALLIANCE, BUT A CURATOR OF INSTABILITY
In fact, let’s look at NATO as a primary subject, seeing as they are the primary reason for Ukrainian refugees in camps in various nations. And here, I’d like to present the argument that NATO (in the modern, post Cold-War context) is not a military alliance; and is instead a curator of instability – with countless documented incidents in history and the status quo that testify to this fact. Let’s begin with the Yugoslavian bombings in 1999. Now, the conflict in the Balkans worsened as Serbia increased its embargos on Kosovan separatists and Albanian civilians. NATO established the Kosovo Force (KFOR) in 1999 as a part of UNSC Resolution 1244 which mandated international presence in the region to mitigate the conflict. As the Yugoslavians resisted, NATO carried out a 78-day air bombing, formalising the KFOR’s entry into the region. And although the consensus among others is that NATO achieved its larger goal of stopping Milosevic and separating Kosovo (de facto) – which is also a problem considering why they opposed Milosevic and who they supported instead – the biggest debate remains whether NATO’s actions were humane in doing so. This is especially considering that the air bombing during this operation caused more than 500 civilian deaths. There was an exodus of refugees and the fundamental pillars of the Responsibility to Protect were broken because the people did not receive complete protection. And so, the apparent answer here is that NATO’s actions were not humane, in addition, their actions were ignorant of both the political climate in Yugoslavia and also the intellectual nuances of the conflict itself.
Of course. Some might say that determining whether NATO’s actions in Kosovo were truly a success or failure depends on what an individual considers more important: be it the ends or the means. However, in the 21st century, when international organisations are seen as bodies that represent major interests at a global level, concerns must be solved through dialogue, with force only being used as a last resort. And in light of this, NATO’s mistakes in Kosovo thus overshadow its successes. Just have a look at the impact of that bombing in this following clip. The context here is that two people were killed and four were wounded when NATO bombed a residential area in the southern Serbian town of Alek-sinac early on Friday morning. The attack left a number of houses in ruin. And meanwhile, Belgrade was still struggling with electricity cuts as NATO continued to target power stations in the Yugoslavian capital. Well, Russian President Vladimir Putin actually highlighted this portion of NATO’s notorious past in contrasting it to developments with Ukraine.
But you know benefited from the devastation serbia, a number of Western countries. In Serbia today, Italians took over the entire automotive manufacturing industry, while Austrian and Italian banks dominate. In addition, US Steel took metals, and Germans took the machine and tools sector. The Dutch and Swiss bought the majority of the product brands, while Austrians hold major mobile market share, and Norwegians are about to take the electric grid, while the Germans take the local telecom. And in all of this, Serbian victims of NATO’s deadly “mistakes” feel forgotten – and this is obviously despite apologetic speeches from some NATO members that have not come with substantive efforts to remedy the harms suffered.
THE CONSEQUENCE OF NATO’S DESTRUCTIVE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
Now, many of us have already read about the plight of Afghani refugees, but it would appear that the circumstances causing people to flee are also not organic at all. Now for some context, you’d recall that on September 11, 2001 al Qaeda hijacked several planes, which were successfully used as weapons against US civilians and infrastructure. Consequently, for the first time in history, NATO’s Article V was invoked to respond to the new menace – terrorism. Afghanistan was recognized as the first potential target because it had hosted insurgent terrorist groups. Consequently NATO was ready to act for the first time outside the European continent. By the end of the year 2014, NATO’s troops were set to withdraw from Afghanistan‘s territory. The question of the victory against endless terrorism is
dubious. According to Stephen M. Walt, a professor from Harvard university, NATO’s legacy in Afghanistan was just one failed endeavour after another. Some argue that, until 2005, NATO successfully restored order in Kabul and its surroundings, and discredited the Taliban’s leadership. However, later on, the Alliance entered political and strategic gridlock, and the consequent lack of future vision raised a rhetorical question on what to do next?
So what then happened? Simply, the outcome of the current condition of Afghanistan is the consequence of NATO’s strategy of the years it was operating. NATO and the US failed in terms of strategic thinking and planning. Afghanistan’s development according to the western model then failed. The United States also waged a controversial war in Iraq and redeployed the majority of intelligence and military capacities from Afghanistan. And then eventually, annual casualties of NATO dramatically increased and the Alliance lost public support due to the extended military operation, waste of resources and money, and uncertainty of final victory, all while a refugee crisis ensued.
Now, as an added point, in light of the Afghanistan context, some make the argument that the only reason that the Afghan government was able to sustain itself was because of the support of NATO forces; and that things then took a turn for the worse when president Donald Trump signed an agreement in 2020 to withdraw troops by 2021. I disagree – the failures were evident by 2014, NATO’s presence at that point was merely symbolic and to the expense of US citizens who were funding that. It was a means of trying to promote the optics that the US and NATO were doing something of value in Afghanistan when they were not. And so, president Trump did what NATO planned and failed to do by 2014 – to exit Afghanistan. But, shortly after the US left under Trump, the NATO president has the audacity to blame the Afghan government for the Taliban take over – not the fact that NATo trained the Taliban of their strategic political and military failures.
NATO’S INTERVENTION IN LIBYA IN 2011, AND THE SUBSEQUENT DEVASTATION
This then brings us to Libya. While there is much debate on whether the NATO intervention in Libya was a success, it is important not just to look at the conflict itself, but its aftermath as well. How it started is that the west promulgated the narrative that Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya was an epicentre of tyranny and human rights violations; and that, therefore, as a part of the Responsibility to Protect, the international community had to act. Of course, information from even CIA operatives has since come out to expose that this was not the real reason to target Gaddafi – instead, the west saw an African leader threatening their hegemony and the US’s unipolar order through his innovative ideas and policies for not only his country, but especially the African continent. These were policies like free education in Libya, and a gold-back African currency that would likely rival the US’s propaganda-backed dollar’s status as the reserve currency – especially in Africa; not to mention how less susceptible Africa would be to the dollar’s weaponisation. And so, they launched an operation that ended with the murder of Gaddafi.
But, while the US-led NATO which was supposed to be a ‘beacon’ of democratic values, was not entirely true to its purpose of protecting the civilian population of Libya; and while NATO’s main target was the Gaddafi regime, it did not emphasise enough combating rebel groups which were incredibly dangerous. Libyan rebel groups were responsible for many civilian murders, robberies, and war crimes. The rebels even killed civilians who supported the Gaddafi regime but did no crime. And yet, as per the first pillar of the R2P, protection applies to the ‘population’ of a nation, which includes every individual residing in the nation. Therefore, the UN and NATO forces failed to do just this – along with ensuring stability after the intervention – which was obviously never the aim.
NATO IS PROVOKING NUCLEAR WAR WITH RUSSIA
In all that we have discussed, NATO is also provoking nuclear war with Russia. You’d recall that the possibility of adding Ukraine to NATO has not been fulfilled, but it has resulted in a massive, unfortunate, and avoidable conflict between Russia and Ukraine – which REALLY is a proxy war between NATO and Russia. This is especially evidenced by how NATO has openly and dangerously provided intelligence and reconnaissance support to the Ukrainians, in addition to massive financial and military aid. But, Russia has so far avoided targeting American Global Hawk drones and RC-135 aircraft patrolling its borders—both of which are undoubtedly providing information Ukraine uses to attack and kill Russian forces.
And yet, if the roles were between Russia and NATO members, we would see more hostility. We know this because of the public reaction to fake intelligence that said Russia put out bounties to encourage the killing of American troops in Afghanistan. Some members of the intelligence community leaked this falsehood as a political attack on Trump during the final days of the 2020 election, and it made a lot of people understandably angry. It was, like so many of these stories, later disavowed. It is still important, though, because it reveals the incompetence and politicisation of American intelligence services. They have cultivated a pervasive, unthinking, and mostly fact-free anti-Russian ideology ever since Russia became more capable and assertive following Putin’s rise to power in 2000. In any case, Putin has issued a warning to NATO considering their involvement in Ukraine.
All of these incidents paint NATO as the curator of instability, as opposed to a solution to military threats. And so, seeing that it no longer has a place in the world in the absence of a Warsaw Pact, there should rather be a discussion about its dissolution over its increasing finances. And seeing that the Warsaw Pact was formed in response to the NATO alliance, this organisation has clearly been a problem since its inception. But, the point in light of today’s discussion is that where NATO went, there was resultant devastation that crippled the standard of living of those involved, and thus created conditions for a refugee crisis, all while the UN conveniently had a model to dictate what refugee camp and refugee policy (as a whole) would look like. And that is just NATO alone, and not all UN satellite organisations and partners. In any case, it is in the workings of this cabal wherein lies the circular refugee problem: which is that the refugee crisis is created by the same collective that claims to hold the panasea to it.
HOW THE CIRCULAR REFUGEE PROBLEM FEEDS INTO BAD IMMIGRATION POLICY
But now, the consequences of this circular refugee problem is not only that it exists; the consequence is the extent to which those who curate it go to sustain it. Which brings us to the intersection between the circular refugee problem and bad immigration policy, which is perhaps best seen in the United Ntion’s replacement migration report.
To begin with, the United Nations Population Division’s 2001 report, titled: “Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?”, it is said to investigate whether international migration can counteract population decline and ageing in regions with below-replacement fertility rates. Focusing on eight low-fertility countries—namely: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and also two regional aggregates (being Europe and the European Union), the study uses demographic projections from the 1998 Revision of the World Population Prospects. It employs a cohort-component method to forecast trends from 1995 to 2050, assuming medium-variant fertility (stabilizing below 2.1 children per woman), and also assumes improving mortality, and varying migration levels.
Additionally, the report defines “replacement migration” as the net international inflows needed to offset natural population decrease (which is measured looking at births minus deaths) and also to maintain specific demographic targets, such as total population size, working-age population (defined as ages 15 – 64), or the potential support ratio (which is the ratio of those who are deemed to be working-age to elderly, and consists of ages 65+).
Now, in this study, immigrants are modeled with an age-sex distribution averaged from major receiving countries like Australia, Canada, and the U.S., assuming they adopt host-country fertility and mortality rates upon arrival (meaning they live and start families in a similar fashion to the people in the receiving countries). But, ultimately, the report underscores the inevitability of population decline and ageing without intervention, in countries of focus like Italy, the US, the UK, and the others mentioned earlier.
But, what is curious about this study is that it hinges upon the concerns that conservatives have highlighted while the left dismisses it as conspiracy or an immaterial change to demographics. Clearly, even the people at the UN were aware that there were population decreases in a significant number of migrant receiving countries, hence they created a report that explored using migration to replace those aging populations. And so, the first thing that the existence of this report categorically addresses is that: the replacement of indigenous or naturalised citizens CANNOT be some abstract conspiracy if an international organisation like the UN, has engaged plans to use replacement migration to modify the demographics of nations. Literally, with the Replacement Migration report title, all the UN’s population division did was change the wording from “great replacement” to the more euphemistic “replacement migration”.
Then, the second thing that is exposed by the existence of this migration report is that Trump was absolutely right when he expressed the culpability of the UN in the state of migration policy in many recipient nations (local governments not excluded). The UN has essentially funded massive migration efforts that are changing the cultures and destabilising host countries in Europe and the US. AND how this intersects with the circular refugee problem is that crises are being deliberately manufactured to increase the number of refugees who will inadvertently serve as the unwitting labour in the UN’s great replacement agenda, especially since UN refugee camp policy dictates that refugees be eventually absorbed into broader society. But, of course, this is seldom highlighted in mainstream discussions and the reason is because anytime the great replacement is brought up, it is dismissed as a dog whistle for those with bigoted views, while leftist media even question whether the great replacement is even a bad idea.
REFUGEES ARE ALSO BEING USED BY THOSE BEHIND THE CIRCULAR REFUGEE PROBLEM
But, perhaps the worst part in all of this is that refugees, who truly are fleeing dangerous and horrific circumstances are not being treated as people deserving a dignified life, and rather as unwitting labour for the UN’s sinister plans to manipulate world populations. And this is seen in the portrayal of refugees as unwitting labor in broader demographic or economic strategies. International bodies, including elements associated with the United Nations refugee framework, facilitate or enable systems that channel displaced people into low-wage, precarious roles in host countries or third-party states. This perspective sees refugees not as people deserving protection and opportunity, but as a convenient source of cheap labour, often under exploitative conditions with limited rights or mobility. Meanwhile, such approaches also subtly manipulate population flows to address labor shortages or economic needs in recipient nations.
Compounding this is the growing practice of outsourcing refugee management and asylum processing. Basically, for all their talk about the responsibility to take in refugees, a number of liberal governments increasingly strike deals with less developed nations to intercept, detain, or relocate refugees. These arrangements expose people to grave risks: including arbitrary detention, forced labor, torture, or perilous journeys, all while absolving originating states of direct accountability. In this system, refugees become commodified, where they are intercepted at sea, warehoused in camps, or redirected to third countries that lack genuine protection capacity.
But, even this does not justify the influx of migrants or refugees beyond a recipient country’s capacity. The solution lies with eradicating the UN and its elements that fuel conflicts and disasters that cause refugees and push immigration factors to begin with.
Written By Lindokuhle Mabaso
