Solutions: Doctrine for Conflict/War Driven Immigration

What the United States, the European Union and Middle-Eastern nations need both individually and in a correlated manner is a Doctrine of Conflict/War Driven Immigration. It would be even better if the United Nations had a Doctrine for Conflict/War Driven Immigration; but such a doctrine would run afoul of procedural controls that prevents the United Nations from affecting a policy that would disturb one or more of its privileged members. So the proposed doctrine would be a foreign policy lightning rod for those nations and world powers who either benefit from war/conflict situations or who fear the doctrine would interfere with their ability to act on the world stage without consequences beyond their control.

The proposed doctrine is conceived on the principle that non-military citizens of a nation where the societal structure is disintegrating under internal conflict or civil war have a right to safety in their lives, their families’ lives, in their businesses/professions, and in their beliefs. In essence the doctrine asserts that when a nation’s governmental entities cannot ensure the safety of their citizens or is the actual threat to their citizens and thereby results in a portion of their population to attempt emigration to another country. That situation of emigration would constitute a condition for other nations receiving the influx of emigrants to be empowered to act under the doctrine.

When internal conflicts produce massive, large-scale exoduses of their civil population to other nation states’ territories, the consequence is invariably an immigration crisis to those affected nations. The crisis can manifest along any number of dimensions but always includes humanitarian, security and economic problems. Accommodating the influx of people requires that receiving nations’ government agencies have policies, resources and funding to respond to the immigrants. Even if these nations’ had programs in-place to handle nominal levels of immigrants, those programs do not automatically or simply ramp-up to deal with a large rapid increase. Even when extraordinary efforts are made to respond and provide care, the immediate actions and solutions are only temporary. As additional immigrants continue to arrive and as the duration of support extends over time, the impacts on nations can exceed their ability to provide refugee relief and to accommodate and integrate the refugees into their economies and societies.

These crises usually result in border closings and confrontations, isolation camps for refugees, refugee smuggling activities, internal political issues, and of course increasing costs. Regardless of the outcome of the conflict/war within the refugee’s home nation, the receiving nations will not have a means to recover their costs from those nations that caused the crises. Thus providing a haven for citizens of other nations in conflict is a destabilizing force that has few, if any, benefits. It thus become incumbent upon these nations to affect policies and programs to respond more effectively than just struggling with refugees and hoping for an end to the conflict that will allow for repatriation.

The proposed Doctrine for Conflict/War Immigration permits a nation or group of nations to designate a nation undergoing conflict and thereby promoting emigration to their nation as a regional or global stability threat. Based on evoking the doctrine under this circumstance the impacted nation(s) would be within their rights to secure a section of the refugees’ nation for refugee support, settlement and protection. Thus under the doctrine affected nations become governmental representatives for the refugees in the area(s) designated as in-nation refugee havens. Any action taken by any group, in-national military force or any external entity not in-nation against the haven areas would represent an act of war and permit military actions against such without restrictions.

Within the haven area(s) the doctrine’s policies would be to promote the resettlement of refugees into the delivery of local business, healthcare, community and to become the internal security and law enforcement operation for refugee/residents. No accommodation is made for any military group that is actively engaged in the on-going conflict, so the haven is not an area for one side, faction or group to organize or secure their military resources. The haven area(s) create a safe place for civilians until those citizens decide to rejoin with whatever government is recognized as a post-conflict sovereign government or become a separate state. The nation(s) instituting the haven(s) use their resources on constructive solutions that don’t disrupt their own economies and cause internal displacements that add to the problems produced by the immigration events.

This doctrine is intended to make it undesirable and self-destructive to nations that engage militarily in internal conflicts that result in mass migrations of their citizens to other nations. The doctrine does not address or offer a basis for responding to internal national conflicts that do not involve civil migrations.

The Doctrine of Conflict/War Driven Immigrations puts in place an option and a means for nations to respond to the causal agents of the crises rather than just being caught in a responsive position with little to no impact on or influence on the factors that are at the source of the crises. Ignoring the cause through inaction has the predictable outcome of not making any difference.