Mandy Patinkin Quotes

We have a human rights interest. Then there is the immigration problem. The human-rights violations have caused people to take to boats and flood not only the United States, but other countries in the region, creating great instability.

The global movement of displaced people, many of whom end up in detention without hope, is one of the most pressing issues of our times.

Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity

I approached UNHCR because I believe in what the United Nations. I believe refugees are the most vulnerable people in the world. They are affected by everything, including landmines. They are vulnerable to everything.

The dream of Europe is a region of freedom and peace, of security, law, democracy, tolerance and mutual respect. If you look into the faces of the refugees you will see this dream. These are people who are fleeing from war, hate, violence and unjust systems.

Migrants all over the world are pushed and pulled across borders by hunger, terror and climate change. It happened to my own family.

The poor economic health of Europe contributed to the migrant crisis. All the migrants wanted to flood to the few healthy countries—–like Germany and the U.K.

Displacement is very tough on the people who are displaced and for the country that is hosting them.

In the global world, we have an unprecedented mobility of peoples, we are aware of the needs of refugees and asylees, and not to speak of the 30 million displaced persons as a result of civil wars within their own countries. And yet the map that we navigate literally is the map of the nation state, and so we have no way as a world community of addressing this problem of border movement and trans-border justice, except through the categories of nation state.

Syria cannot continue this way—killing their people

I sincerely wish that every member of Congress could visit the displaced person's camp in Germany and Austria and see just what is happening to 500,000 human beings through no fault of their own.

There are millions of people all over the world, right now, who are looking to the United Nations for protection and redress against the violation of their rights and deprivation of their freedoms.

The refugee crisis shows we can't be isolated from the world's geopolitical troubles.

I fear that the migratory crisis signals the beginning of the end of women's rights.

People end up fleeing countries who adopt economic policies based on these flawed principles. And more often than not, they come here.

It cannot be right in a world of increasing human progress - whether in medicine, space exploration or renewable energy - that so many people are denied the most basic human rights.

I am angry that the international community has failed to find a permanent solution to the plight of the Rohingya. I am also ashamed that, in not speaking out loudly enough, we - humanitarians - have been complicit.

You don't need a passport to work on human rights.

Women, men, and children have fundamental rights to humanitarian assistance and protection. Yet far too many states block aid and attack their own citizens, and too many others - including some of the world's wealthiest countries - turn their back on those fleeing conflict and violence.

We can't deter people fleeing for their lives. They will come. The choice we have is how well we manage their arrival, and how humanely.

In countries where people have to flee their homes because of persecution and violence, political solutions must be found, peace and tolerance restored, so that refugees can return home. In my experience, going home is the deepest wish of most refugees.

We live in an era where masses of people come and go across a hostile planet, desolate and violent. Refugees, emigrants, exiles, deportees. We are a tragic contingent.

Why are all these refugees rushing to the beauty and strength of Europe and to the United States and not rushing to their own capitals or the capitals of the Muslim world? We ought to be pushing back. We ought to be putting people back on these boats and putting them back into the places where they came from and telling these leaders in the Arab world, "You have a responsibility as well."

Quite clearly this is a human disaster of enormous proportions. We have tens and tens of thousands of displaced people across the United States,.

I think writers can respond by writing about the refugee crisis, by looking at problems faced by migrants, by trying hard to portray them as the human beings that they are.