The right to a future: human rights, armed conflict and mass migration - the Raoul Wallenberg legacy.

• Author: Kjaerum, Morten
• Position: Symposium on the Refugee Crisis

Currently there are more than 65.3 million people displaced worldwide (1) of which 21 million have crossed an international border and thus may qualify as refugees under international law. Twenty four people were forced to flee each minute in 2015. The reasons are wars and armed conflict, oppression, climate change and environmental disasters and other causes that may hit the international headlines for a short while only to disappear again in the graveyard of "disaster news," (2) but leaving millions of people in protracted situations of forced displacement. (3) Living in war zones or being caught in an idle refugee situation deprives millions of young persons and others the right to a future.

The international community has to cope with high numbers of forcibly displaced persons now and in coming years. Thus, is there anything in the past that we can use in the present in order to be ready for the future challenges? In the title of this volume, the name Raoul Wallenberg appears and for good reasons since there may be elements of his heroic actions that may inspire today. So, let me provide you with a very short introduction to him and in particular how he relates to the topic of this volume.

Let us head back to the last months of 1944 in Budapest, Hungary. (4) The Second World War is heading toward its end, which came in the spring of 1945. Nonetheless, the final solution to the so-called Jewish problem or "end-ldsung" continues as nothing has changed. In those days around 3-400,000 Jews still lived in the city, but the Nazi and the Hungarian Arrow Cross regimes did all they could to deport as many as possible to the death camps or simply kill them on the spot. Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat working at the Swedish embassy in Budapest. With his incredible humanitarian spirit he wanted to rescue as many Jews as possible from the mass killings. He established the famous "schutz pass" regime, by which the holder was officially protected by the Swedish state and under their protection. He created international protection areas in Budapest. In great danger, he stopped trains deporting Jews to the extermination camps in Poland to ensure that those with schutz pass were not deported. He negotiated with the worst of the worst Nazis and Hungarians all with the aim to save as many lives as possible. To give these people a future.

One particular incident stands out: (5) Raoul Wallenberg has heard about the nightly killings at one of the bridges crossing the Danube in Budapest. The Jews are chained three and three and in each group one is shot and thereafter thrown into the cold winter water in the river. The dead person pulls down the two other who will drown; in that way the perpetrators save ammunition. This went on night after night and was carried out by young, angry Hungarians who hated the Jews. Raoul and his rescue team stood a little ways downstream and jumped into the freezing water and rescued as many as they could--night after night.

He, in collaboration with others, saved around 75-100,000 Jews; however in 1944-5 more than 3-400,000 were deported to Auschwitz "where the SS killed approximately 320,000 of them upon arrival and deployed the rest at forced labor in Auschwitz and other camps." (6) But those that survived never forgot the courage and humanitarian spirit of Raoul Wallenberg. In those days with so much all-encompassing evil, people remember that one person who stood out as a shining example. The person who gave them hope for a better future. When the war was heading toward its end in 1945, Wallenberg was captured by the Soviet army and disappeared in the Soviet prison camps. He was most likely executed in 1948. Only in late 2015 the family initiated the process of declaring him deceased. (7)

So what has Raoul Wallenberg taught us? What he illustrated is what humanism means: the value and agency of each human being. Every life is worth fighting for irrespective of that person's religion, ethnicity or culture. It is illustrated well when he rejected requests from foreign companies to handpick particular people for their businesses. For him, what he did was a humanitarian act respecting the right to life for all. It was the work of persons like Raoul Wallenberg that shaped the thinking and values underpinning the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 and the international human rights regime as it has developed thereafter. Individuals who, in the words of Michael Ignatieff, have a "moral imagination" (8) of a better future for all have always driven human rights forward.

How does this apply today with 65 million displaced persons? How does this apply to the situation with the refugees fleeing from Syria? How can the international community contribute to ensuring a future for these refugees?

More than five million people have fled the violence in Syria in the last four to five years. They are predominantly finding protection in neighbouring countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Increasingly, however, they have begun seeking protection elsewhere, in particular in Europe. In 2015, more than 1.2 million refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq...