Refugee Problem Quotes

The refugee crisis is a challenge for the whole of Europe, and Europe - it's a very fair point to say it's not just a security issue. It's also an economic issue.

No large scale refugee problem has ever been solved by repatriation, and there are certainly no grounds for believing that this particular problem (the Palestinian refugee problem] can be so solved... The facts we must face force us to the conclusion that for most of the world's refugees the only solution is integration where they are.

That was not part of the U.N. resolution; it was not part of the mandate to go on to Baghdad and, frankly, if we had gone into Baghdad and pushed Saddam Hussein off, we would have inherited an even bigger mess than the mess we inherited with the refugee problem.

The Arab countries … did little or nothing about the terrible refugee suffering of more than 50 years.

The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die.

Today three-quarters of the Palestinian people are displaced: there are 5 million Palestinian refugees throughout the world.

As we have 250,000 Syrians murdered, slaughtered; millions running around the world, running for their lives. It's not working. We need to try something else. And that is not reckless.

The great powers have got to find a way to end this war [the Syrian Revolution] because the refugee problem will not be solved without it.

Gaza is such a tremendous humanitarian problem, it's way beyond Israel's capability to do anything significant about. It's a world problem, but the world doesn't want to do anything about it. That the world has packed them like sardines in a tiny piece of territory run by a fanatic Islamic group, run by a fanatic group like Hamas. Unless the world decides it wants to tackle this problem, that they want to deal with refugees there, prepare to absorb some of the refugees.

We need a legal and political understanding of the right of the refugee, whereby no solution for one group produces a new class of refugees - you can't solve a refugee problem by producing a new, potentially greater refugee problem.

The many refugees are not a Greek or German problem. They are a European problem. We should therefore develop a common strategy. That's why I am launching a cross-border movement for more democracy.

If there are more and more environmental refugees, they are going to end up on your doorstep too.