Briefing Paper 2/2016, Bonn: German Development Institute.

Europe has been discussing how to deal with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East, Africa and other parts of the world for months now. However, one frequently overlooked aspect is the fact that just a small percentage of the world’s approximately 60 million forcibly displaced people actually come to Europe – the number of asylum applications across the entire European Union between 2008 and September 2015 totalled around 3.5 million. Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon and Iran are each accommodating over one million refugees, thus probably more than the European Union to date.
All in all, the number of people forced to leave their homes has never been as high as it was in 2015. Flight is a reaction to threats to people’s physical or psychological integrity. The causes of flight include wars, political repression, terrorism, food shortages and natural disasters. What can development policy, including humanitarian aid, do in order to combat these root causes?

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