Chris Smith said...
Seven weeks ago, I held a hearing on Syrian refugees and we had the regional representative for the UNHCR as one of our witnesses, Pitterman, who did a wonderful job and he talked about the fact that the gross underfunding of the refugees including the appeals--we have more people who are displaced--IDPs or genuine refugees--than ever before, and yet the appeals go out for the UNHCR and 41, 44, 43 percent comes back so we are underfunding it, and that the trigger for this mass exodus into Europe and someday to the United States was, frankly, the World Food Programme cut of 30 percent, which put a number of people to flight, thinking that they were hopeless.
Context
Smith highlights the underfunding of refugee support and its impact on migration.
12/07/2015