Refugee crises: has Ukraine changed perceptions?

Europe has shown a big welcome to refugees from Ukraine. The Inside Geneva podcast asks whether this generosity will be extended to others.

Podcast host Imogen Foulkes is joined in this episode by refugee policy experts.

“The Ukraine crisis has really humanised the refugee issue, people have been able to see women, children, men in extremely difficult circumstances,” says Jeff Crisp, an expert on refugee policy with the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre.

“As someone who understands the horrors of war very well, I was so happy to see countries in Europe opening their borders to Ukrainian refugees. But the question is: what was happening before that?” asks refugee and activist Nhial Deng.

According to the UN, 100 million people worldwide are currently forcibly displaced. Are we really honouring the 1951 Refugee Convention, which outlines the rights of refugees and the obligations of states to protect them?

“We do need to continue education and commitment to these principles, because we never know when they’re going to be needed,” says Gillian Triggs, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection at the UN Refugee Agency.

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For more audio content from SWI swissinfo.ch, explore The Swiss Connection, a podcast with Swiss stories for the world.