11:45 A.M. EST 
Real Audio of Briefing
MODERATOR: Good morning. Welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center and this World Refugee Day. We have a very distinguished panel for you this morning, beginning to my far right, with Ms. Kelly Ryan, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. Next to her is Mr. Vu Dang, who is the regional director for the International Rescue Committee.
And next to him is Mr. Victor Tanner, who is an independent researcher and aid worker who has authored a number of studies for the Brookings Institution. And we also have, from Brookings, Ms. Roberta Cohen. She is a senior advisor on internal displacement. We're going to be joined, I hope fairly soon, by Mr. Tim Irwin from the UNHCR, UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
I believe Deputy Assistant Secretary Ryan would like to start things off with a few remarks. I think all of the participants have a few opening remarks and then we'll open it up to questions. When we do, two things: please wait for the microphone and please identify yourself and your media outlet when you ask the question. Thanks so much.
MS. RYAN: Good morning and thank you very much for coming to meet with us to discuss World Refugee Day. I think it's important for us to remember the refugees around the world, many of whom are in very terrible circumstances that the U.S. Government and our colleagues in UNHCR are trying to assist.
The number of refugees this year has risen. Those under UNHCR's mandate are up 14 percent to 9.9 million refugees. This is up from 8.4 million last year. And this is due to the increased movement of Iraqis, Somalis, and others. This morning, Under Secretary Dobriansky announced that the United States has given an additional $72 million to UNHCR. Our contribution to date this year is $290 million. We're very pleased to have been able to continue to be the largest supporter of UNHCR in its protection and its assistance mandate.
We have also announced this morning -- Ellen Sauerbrey, our Assistant Secretary, announced the creation of the United States State Department's International Fund for Refugee Women and Children, which is a fund that companies, organizations, or individuals can contribute to and the monies will be directed to refugee women and children throughout the world. So we're very eager to open that opportunity up for Americans to contribute to assisting refugees worldwide.
And while we're going to take a lot of questions, I thought it would also be important to tell you that overall, the United States is the largest contributor to the international organizations that work on protection of refugees and we contribute about 20 to 25 percent of those budgets.
Finally, the theme this year is about resettlement of World Refugee Day and the United States is very proud of our resettlement work. We are interviewing refugees in over 60 localities worldwide and 60 different nationalities. We're pleased to be able to bring in over 50,000 refugees this year and with the need in Bhutan of the Bhutanese refugees in Nepal, with the Burmese in Thailand, with Iraqi cases, and with some of the other cases that we have throughout the world, we anticipate that we will have a very robust number of refugees needing to come in future years. And we will be very eager to work with UNHCR and our colleagues on identifying those refugees and bringing them to the United States.
So with that, I think I'll stop there.
MR. DANG: Well, I am the Director of the International Rescue Committee's brand new resettlement center based in Silver Spring, Maryland. It's called the Suburban Washington Resettlement Center. What we do is we work with our partner organizations, such as Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities to help transition refugees into their brand new lives here in America. So we provide immediate assistance in the form of food, shelter, housing, clothing, the basic necessities of life. We also provide cash assistance to the refugees.
We also work with our partners in the community, the Department of Social Services, healthcare providers to make sure that the refugees get the services that they need, such as food stamps and Medicaid. And finally, we offer refugees job assistance training. That's our goal, to get the refugees up and running and self-sufficient as soon as possible. So we provide services such as resume-writing, how to fill out job applications. We help refugees to locate jobs. We place refugees in jobs. We work very closely with employers on getting the refugees acculturated to their new working environment and we also do follow-up visits with employers.
So we -- again, we basically take refugees from harm to home. That's the International Rescue Committee's motto and that's what we do on a daily basis in Silver Spring, Maryland.
MR. TANNER: Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Victor Tanner. I'm a faculty member at Johns Hopkins SAIS. I've also done some work for Brookings over the years on both internal displacement in Iraq and most recently, on the situation of Iraqi refugees in the Syrian Arab Republic.
Just a couple of points in a few minutes and I hope that we'll pick up some of these issues during the questions if there is interest. One is the nature of the violence in Iraq, which has driven much of the displacement. And what I just would like to share with you is that in the course of our research, myself and my Iraqi colleague, who writes under a pseudonym, have seen the nature of the violence change.
The research that we did in the summer of '06, late spring, early summer of '06 indicated that yes, there was plenty of sectarian violence, but it was really confined mostly to the armed groups, to the radical armed groups on both sides, on both the Sunni side and the Shiite side. And that has begun to change. The research that we did this spring, in the spring of '07, we have really seen a change where some of the violence and some of the very hard, sort of, polarized feelings are beginning to take root more deeply in Iraqi society. And that bodes ill for displacement patterns in the future.
The second thing I'd like to share with you -- point I'd like to share with you is the fact that the displacement of Iraqis both within Iraq and outside as refugees is not a humanitarian problem. It is a political problem. And of course, there are humanitarian consequences, there are humanitarian manifestations of that problem, but it is a political problem both inside Iraq and in the countries of asylum, particularly in Jordan and Syria, who carry the highest case loads of Iraqi refugees.
The third point I'd like to share is I just really want -- you know, having spent time in both Jordan and Syria, recently having spent a lot of time in Iraq over the last few years -- although I stopped going, I must say, in 2004 -- what is very clear is that we, at risk -- as the world, as the international community, ending up with a large population of 2 to 3 to 4 million people who are most unhappy and who might be out of their country for years and years and years and possibly decades. And I just want to think about -- you know, what a problem the Iraqi -- the Palestinian refugee problem has been over the last 50, 60 years for the region and indeed, for the world. And just think of what an enduring Iraqi refugee crisis could do over the next -- you know, 10, 20, possibly 50 years.
And then the last point I'd just like to flag is the responsibility of this country, of the United States in terms of not only humanitarian assistance, because as I said, it's not a humanitarian problem. It's a political problem. It's still the political responsibility in terms of its responsibility to Iraq and in terms of resettlement. Clearly, you know, I don't know the latest figures; 7,000 and 25,000 were announced in April, the potential for this country taking 25,000 Iraqi refugees this year. When you talk to both the refugees themselves and to authorities in countries like Jordan and Syria, that is seen as just not enough. And I hope that's something that we will be able to talk about further. Thanks very much.
MS. COHEN: Good morning. I co-founded and was the co-director for many years of the Brookings Institution project on Internal Displacement, working closely with the representative of the UN Secretary General on internally displaced persons. So when I look at World Refugee Day, I see it as a day to focus attention not only on refugees who cross borders, but also on people who are often called internal refugees, who are uprooted by conflict and human rights violations, but who remain inside their own countries.
In fact, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres is currently in Southern Sudan, where he's observing the returns of both refugees and internally displaced persons or IDPs. And since he came into office in 2005, Guterres has strongly supported and expanded the UNHCR role with IDPs. Now one of the reasons for that was to make the agency more relevant to today's emergencies, which generally produce more internally displaced persons than refugees.
There are 9.9 million refugees. There are 25 million internally displaced persons who are often in refugee-like conditions without the support of their own governments and in need of international assistance and protection. They may be subject to different legal regimes because refugees are outside their countries; IDPs are inside their countries. But operationally, in many situations, it makes little sense to make distinctions. If you look at Darfur, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Chad, you will see that the refugees and the IDPs all need international protection.
Guterres, the High Commissioner, has said that you cannot refuse to act just because they have not crossed a frontier. The worst cases of internal displacement today are the Sudan, Iraq, which Victor has mentioned, Colombia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burma, Sri Lanka. The largest overall number of internally displaced persons are in Africa. But the region with the most significant deterioration is the Middle East and mainly because of the Iraq situation, but also the Lebanon-Israel war.
Despite the numbers and the conditions of the IDPs and how their presence in countries can be destabilizing, the need for a comprehensive approach to both refugees and IDPs is not supported by all. There are refugee advocates who fear that attention to IDPs will take away from the central position that refugees have held and will undermine the right to seek asylum.
Now while it's true there's a great worldwide inhospitality to refugees, it's also true that not everyone can leave their country or even wants to leave their country, making in-country protection essential, although extremely challenging. Now donor governments also have sometimes held back from giving funds directly or in large enough quantities for IDPs because they will say that, well, these are the responsibility of their own government. That may be true, but governments often do not have the willingness or capacity to protect and assist their own internally displaced populations. And in this regard, I would hope to hear that the United States is giving strong support for IDPs in Iraq.
Over the past decade, there has been movement internationally with regard to the internally displaced. There's been greater international involvement. Although there's no legally binding convention like the Refugee Convention, there are guiding principles on internal displacement, the first international standards for this group of people. There also have been some conceptual breakthroughs that are pertinent to IDPs like concepts of sovereignty as responsibility, or the responsibility to protect people at risk.
Institutionally, there's no one agency, but in 2006, there was a new International Division of Labor put into effect, whereby the different international agencies assume the lead in the field in areas of their particular expertise. This is for IDPs, so when it comes to protection, camp management, and emergency shelter for IDPs in conflict situations, UNHCR has become the lead.
At the national level, there's also been an increasing number of governments that are developing policies, laws, and institutions underlying that there's a growing acceptance on the part of some governments of national responsibility. However, national and international actions are not enough to deal effectively with the large growing numbers of internally displaced persons. And in fact, action needs to be accelerated because the numbers of IDPs are predicted to increase substantially because of climate change. Not only does climate change produce natural disasters -- I mean, hurricanes or floods, droughts, rising sea levels which uproot people, but climate change intensifies and fuels conflict over scarce resources, especially in developing countries, leading to further displacement.
UN Under Secretary -- UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in an op-ed in The Washington Post a few days ago, pointed out that the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, he called it, arising in part from climate change, that the change in rainfall patterns reduced the arable land. And this, in turn, brought the farmers and the herders in Darfur into conflict.
So to conclude, I would say that if we agree that the uprooting of people, whether it's one side of the border or the other, is a prima facie case of vulnerability. Then it's clear that World Refugee Day must acknowledge the global crisis of internal displacement and promote actions to address it, as well as strengthen policies and programs for refugees. Thank you.
MODERATOR: When asking your questions, if you could make sure the panel knows who you're addressing the question to.
QUESTION: I'm David Beasley with Radio Free Asia. This is for Ms. Ryan. Can you comment a little bit on the Hmong refugee problem in Thailand, specifically any refugee problems in Burma?
And then also for Mr. Dang, what is the International Rescue Committee doing for these people, sort of specifically for these people? And what kind of difficulties have you run into working with these populations?
MS. RYAN: On Hmong, if I could, I'll just back up a little bit. In 2004, at the request of the Government of Thailand, the United States resettled almost 15,000 Hmong and it was a very successful operation and we're very pleased that nearly -- I think all have or virtually all have arrived in the United States and have been settled in five resettlement communities, by and large because of their family relationships. But this is sort of the second wave of Hmong arrivals to the U.S. after the Vietnam conflict. We -- there are certainly Hmong that are living in Thailand and we have had great interest in them as has UNHCR. UNHCR has done refugee status determination on some of them and found them to be in need of international protection.
We and other members of the international community have been very direct with the Government of Thailand that we believe that genuine Hmong refugees should not be returned to Laos and we've urged them to halt any deportation of the Hmong without giving them an opportunity to make a claim for refugee protection. We've had some good success recently. With young girls -- some percentage of the young girls, I think 18 were able to be returned to Thailand after long interventions by the Government of Thailand. But we are interested and have indicated to the Government of Thailand and to UNCHR that we would be interested in accepting referrals of any of the Hmong who they believe require a third country resettlement.
On the Burmese, there's some great news there, actually. We have been having success with Thailand on this war over three years now. We are going to begin operations in two new camps which have over 50,000 inhabitants. And apparently, I'm pleased to tell you that there are signs up saying "Please resettle us." So there's great interest in resettlement out of these camps. We anticipate large numbers will come forward. We're going to be processing in them as quickly as we can get there. We have a very excellent staff, a refugee coordinator, and an overseas processing entity in Bangkok that are working fast and furiously. We'd like to see large numbers of arrivals of the Burmese. And in this case, it's mostly Karen and Chin who are coming this year and will continue to come. And we've been working also with the Government of Thailand for those Burmese who are unwilling to consider resettlement as they want to go home, whether we could improve on local integration and we've been continuing that effort with Thailand.
QUESTION: Just on that thought, quickly just to follow up, are you working with the -- with Thailand in terms of capacity building for them? This is a huge burden for them as well. I mean, is the State Department actively involved in --
MS. RYAN: Yes. Our assistance to Thailand for all refugees is very high in terms of both money and actual capacity building. It's interesting, Thailand is an unusual circumstance. You're probably aware of this, but there's a very well-structured NGO community there that's doing much of the work that UNHCR would do in other places in the world. So it has been able to have a very sophisticated food network. It has been able to work with the Thai Government on expanding access for Burmese and the camps to -- and it's incremental to opportunities to work and to higher education. At this point, one is only permitted if one lives in the camps to go to education till the ninth grade. And we'd like to see secondary and college education opportunities for Burmese who are going to remain in Thailand.
MODERATOR: Mr. Dang.
MR. DANG: Well, the -- I can speak for my office. Basically, we resettled three Burmese from August to May of this year -- last August to May of this year and we expect to resettle seven more before the end of this year. I would say that -- well, just to go back to the three things that we do essentially; first thing is providing them with the basic necessities of life, making sure that they have housing and food and clothing and cash assistance. I think in that area, one of the major problems that we face is essentially a lack of resources.
One of the primary programs that we have to assist the Burmese, for example, is called the Reception and Placement Program. And that provides $425 per refugee client for an entire month. So as you can imagine, that's not a lot of money because you have to essentially find them furniture, bedding, towels, silverware, plates. The State Department has a very long list of the things that refugees need to have in their home before they enter their home, so you have to take that into account. That money also has to provide for their food. So that means a family of four receives approximately $65 per week for food.
So it is a matter of lack of resources and that's why the IRC has to work extra hard to develop contacts within the community, whether they be with employers, property manager, civic organizations. As a matter of fact, just last night, I went to the airport with one of my case managers to meet a refugee family. They came in around 12:00 midnight last night. And we drove them to their apartment and we did a very quick orientation for them and we said, "Good luck and we will see you tomorrow morning."
It's -- and we also had a volunteer working for us yesterday, a wonderful volunteer in the community who happened to have a minivan. And so we packed up all their luggage in her minivan and drove it to their apartment. So it's a very, very bare bones operation. So lack of resources, number one.
In terms of referring them to receive cash assistance or to receive medical care, I think one of the problems we face is really helping them to really navigate what is a very, very complex and bureaucratic system of accessing medical care. And in the third case, which is to help them find employment, one of the things that we have to do is we have to get them self-sufficient within four to six months time. That's not a lot of time to help them find a job that's going to be able to support them and their families. But we do the very best that we can working with our community partners, to try to get them up and running and self-sufficient.
Of the IRC -- one last point -- the IRC does take pride in hiring former refugees. And in my staff, I have a Burmese man who was, at one point, a refugee and he's been incredibly helpful in terms of interpretation in getting the Burmese acculturated to the U.S. -- U.S. life here.
MODERATOR: Another question?
QUESTION: Nidal Ibourk from Almustaqbal Alarabi magazine. My question is regarding the conditions and the difficulties that refugees face on a daily basis in their countries before they come to the U.S. or any other country. Can you explain to us more -- a little bit about the daily conditions? And when they come here to the U.S., I know that you try your best so that they become fully engaged in society. So later on do they, like, stay here or you give them a deadline to go back to their countries? Thank you.
MS. COHEN: Maybe I could answer a little bit. I've been working the field for 15 years and I can tell you that the -- man's inhumanity to man is almost unrecountable. I have interviewed people who have been victims of rape and torture. I have witnessed families come in who have lost family members, who have had their children taken from them, who have been brutally treated by state and non-state actors. So the range of harm that befalls refugees is very, very serious.
There's a good example, I think, this year that I'm very proud of. We -- at our request, UNHCR has referred to us "survivors of a massacre" in Burundi. These were Banyamulenge Tutsis. They had unfortunately knew that this was coming and they watched in horror as some of their family were macheted to death. So the survivors of this horrible massacre are being resettled to the United States. They have gone through cultural orientation to prepare for the United States and the cultural orientation trainer who's done this for 25 years describes them as some of the most severely psychologically damaged people that she's met and this is a good example, I think, of why resettlement is so valuable.
When they come here, we will get them assistance in both medical and psychological help. They were not safe where they were and so it truly is a rescue. But we have seen North Koreans come in, who have -- who know that if they're returned to North Korea, they will be put in a gulag and killed. We have seen Liberians who have lost family members. We have seen victims of child soldiers in Sierra Leone -- I met one this morning -- who was forced to be a child soldier, who has been resettled in the United States.
In Darfur and Chad you see refugees and IDPs that have experienced terrible atrocities in their family. So it is a -- it is really life-saving work in some circumstances. And it prevents future violence or future harm in others. So it is -- the persecution is very severe and it is very difficult for people to talk about it sometimes and there are lots of cases of post-traumatic stress syndrome.
MODERATOR: You want to comment?
MR. TANNER: I'd just like to comment quickly on the conditions that people face in their countries before fleeing. I thought it was interesting that Roberta brought up global warming as an issue. And certainly, we've seen a lot of displacement over the years as a result of drought and flooding and, you know, look at the displacement that occurred after Katrina in New Orleans in this country.
But I think we should never lose track of the political reasons for displacement and to -- how important politics are when people are displaced. First of all, I think that for instance in Darfur, yes, there's an ecological crisis. But quite frankly, the Secretary General is quite off the mark if he's saying that that is why there is massive displacement in Darfur. There's been an ecological crisis all across the Sahel. We haven't seen the same movements of people. People are moving, people are fleeing in Darfur because of the policies of the Government of Sudan. That is why. Now, maybe ecological crisis may be a contributing factor in something that may have started things off. But people are fleeing because of abuses committed mostly by the Government of Sudan.
The second issue is how the political institutions of a country address displacement. Again, in this country whether one agrees or not with how the Administration has responded to the Katrina crisis, the fact of the matter is as a society, as a polity we are responsive to suffering in our country -- maybe not as much as we would like, but we are. That is not the fact in many other places where people are either displaced internally or forced to flee as refugees. So don't ever lose track of the political component of why people have to run away.
MS. COHEN: Far be it for me to speak for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. But I don't think the -- the article was just trying to show that climate change is going to be a cause of conflict and that it's already occurring. I don't believe he actually thinks that that is the reason for the problem which really lies with the Government of Sudan. I just wanted to make one comment on civil war situations, quite a number of them, not all. You often find a persecuted group that is either seeking greater autonomy in its country or that is seeking is seeking some kind of better treatment on political, economic grounds and they're often isolated. And then you have civil wars in which they're engaged. So you find groups that are not quite considered like all the other citizens. They're the other; they're separate; they're often minority groups.
There are a lot of displaced who are minorities, so that if you look at Sri Lanka, you have the Tamils and you have fighting against the government and the government in turn fighting against them. There's an awful lot of this and this then, in turn, affects the -- those who resettle or want to leave these countries and become refugees or in Iraq, where you have intercommunal violence, but you also have a tremendous -- I mean, government, also involvement with -- in persecuting particular religious groups so that they will want to leave.
But you also have to think of all the people that either cannot get out, so many of them beforehand are in these -- they may be in their own countries, but they're not quite considered the same as other citizens; they're considered lesser than. And so they almost -- you know, that's why they're often called refugees in their own country. And you see this kind of a repeated vacuum of sort of responsibility in a country where a group, an ethnic or religious background is often the heart of the displacement and whether they become refugees or IDPs and that is, as Victor says, a political problem in the sense that it's up to a government to decide how they're going to deal with different ethnic groups in a society, to what extent they're going to share political power or wealth.
And as in the Sudan, if the government is not going to be willing to really share political power and wealth with the rest of the country, then you have the peripheries and you have all the various tribal groups and ethnic groups that are going to be discriminated against, persecuted. And there, how you deal with the climate change issue is going to be the critical factor. And governments that are not multicultural, that are not democratic, you're going to find worse situations and you're going to get a lot of refugees and IDPs from these situations.
MR. DANG: I just wanted to say one quick thing. Concerning the point as to what they face when they get here in this country, despite all the horror that they faced overseas and despite what can often be a very difficult transition into an entirely new life here in America, despite all those challenges, refugees are incredibly hardworking. Refugees know how to persevere and refugees foremost know how to survive. They are survivors and not only that, but they thrive in their new lives here in America and they become wonderful citizens and their children go to school, graduate from college, do wonderful things. That's what I've seen among our clients with the International Rescue Committee.
And I can speak from experience because I was a refugee myself. My family came to the States when I was three years old from Vietnam, 1975, and it was a difficult transition for all of us. But in the end, I think it worked out quite well. So I can speak from experience that refugees, once they come here, and thanks to the support of the Department of State and Department of Health and Human Services and state agencies in Maryland, for example, with that kind of support, they are able to survive and thrive here in the States.
MR. TANNER: Sir, there was a part in her question that we didn't answer which I thought was important, which you asked if people are given a deadline.
QUESTION: Yeah, to return back to their --
MR. TANNER: And I can't answer that. But I think --
MS. RYAN: I can.
MR. TANNER: -- you can.
MS. RYAN: No, there's no deadline. In fact, our whole refugee resettlement system is based on the idea that we want refugees to stay, remain and integrate. So we don't seek refugees to return. In fact, by statute, one is required as a refugee to appear a year later to adjust status to lawful permanent resident. So we really -- our model is that this isn't a temporary situation. It is one that we hope will lead to the person viewing the United States as their new home.
MODERATOR: Thank you very much, unless you have any closing words.
QUESTION: May I ask a question?
MODERATOR: Sure.
QUESTION: Kelly, could you speak a little bit about U.S. policy toward both IDPs in Iraq and refugees?
MS. RYAN: Sure.
QUESTION: How many IDPs are you helping, what sort of responsibility is the U.S. taking on that score, and actually, how many refugees are coming in from Iraq? Can the numbers get bigger?
MS. RYAN: On Iraq, I wouldn't be a government official if I didn't tell you we had a working group, so we have a working group on Iraq refugees and IDPs. This is composed of people from within the State Department and USAID. We're working on both issues. We work very closely with the ministry in Iraq handling displacement and we are supporting, through USAID, NGO activities in Iraq to help those who have been moved. We actually do have very good figures. The UNHCR estimates that two million Iraqis have fled from Iraq to neighboring countries, and that two million have been displaced within Iraq.
In FY07, the USG is planning (pending final appropriation) to provide over $150 million to meet emergency needs of displaced Iraqis, including food, shelter and medical assistance, through PRM and U.S. Agency for International Development's Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA).
From within Iraq, because of the food system -- the food distribution system -- so unlike other places in the world, where movements are more difficult to track, in Iraq, we are able to see the displacement almost immediately when it happens. Yes, the numbers, since the bombing of the Golden Mosque have increased outside of -- to Syria and Jordan in particular. And I do anticipate that Jordan will continue to be receiving, in particular, some numbers. There's a question about whether both countries will continue in the spirit of solidarity to keep their borders open, an ongoing question, I think.
One of the priorities for PRM is education of Iraqis while they are outside their country. And we're trying to set up a system to educate over 100,000 Iraqi school children starting in the fall, including a summer school program. So we're working with the Ministry of Education in Jordan and in Syria to get kids in school so that they have something to do and aren't really on hold as they wait hopefully for the search to create conditions in which people can go back.
The registration of UNHCR in the past four months is up. 135,000 Iraqis have registered. It's interesting to see that we've had -- and on this number issue, let me say what the number of resettlement has been talked about is sometimes misleading. The number that has been talked about a lot in the press is 7,000. That's the number that UNHCR said it could refer to us by September 30th. That was just the capacity they had at that time. They are going to meet that figure probably within this week, so they will continue to refer cases to us. And we will discuss with Congress what the number of Iraqis that should be resettled next year should be. But they believe that there are large numbers of Iraqis in Egypt, in Syria, in Jordan, and in Turkey who require resettlement and we're working with them and other resettlement countries to provide that opportunity.
The growth rates have been very high on the Iraqi cases that have been presented so far and some have already been approved. But DHS is going out on circuit rides all summer long trying to get as many cases done so that we can keep the people arriving who are in need of this protection. But we're also looking at assistance for those who can't go or don't want to go in the region and we're also looking for assistance for those who are waiting.
Another priority I should mention is those who have helped the United States Government, working for us or our contractors or as translators. We've had a number of really high profile cases that have gotten media attention come to us and we've been able to work on those cases and we've been working with Amnesty International and others on that.
And another piece that I should mention is we don't just rely on UNHCR for these types of cases. We're getting them from our colleagues in DOD, from our contractors who understand that these people are particularly at risk, and we'll be hosting a workshop this summer for our assistance agencies and our advocates on this who know of refugees who really need to come as quickly as possible and we will be opening access to the program for NGOs to give us specific names, specific accounts of cases. So we have a lot of things going on at once.
Our hope is that Iraqis will be able to, as they want, go home to a country of peace and stability. This period now is one in which we are trying to do everything possible to make their time outside their country productive and to decrease the risk those countries will close their borders, which I think is a very significant challenge to us as we go into the summer.
MR. TANNER: My information is that Jordan -- you know, basically you cannot enter Jordan over land and haven't been able to -- if you're an Iraqi without residency.
MS. RYAN: Syria has been -- Syria's kept that border open.
MR. TANNER: Since April.
MS. RYAN: Yeah, and it's a real -- I really hope that Syria will continue to keep its border open to Iraqis who need to get out.
QUESTION: Is there time for another -- one question --
MODERATOR: Just one last one. Because as this is World Refugee Day, this is -- going to have a busy day.
QUESTION: Busy group, okay. For Mr. Tanner, you asked us, I think, to think about the implications of a large Iraqi refugee population. I think that was what you were asking.
MR. TANNER: Over time.
QUESTION: Over time. I'm curious what your thoughts on what-- what does that mean? I mean, what are the implications of this population? Clearly, you think that they're going to be there over time, long-term. What are the implications going to be for the rest of the world and how the region works?
MR. TANNER: Well, I mean, I think that the reason I raised this issue is because I think there are very serious implications. I'm not sure I know what they are. But again, if you look at the Palestinian problem, which remains, you know, for hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of Palestinians unresolved -- the issue and doesn't look like it will be resolved any time soon, the issue of return, and how much instability that has created in the region and in sort of the sphere of international relations. And look how much bigger Iraq is than Palestine, population-wise, and look at the figures. And you know, my deep, deep hope is that most of the refugees -- Iraqi refugees will return home and I think they want to. In fact, I know they want to; they absolutely want to. They do not think that they will be returning home anytime soon because they view the political situation inside their country with -- you know, with such dismay.
So I think that one really has to think, even if it's for three, four, five years, let alone longer, what those populations of increasing -- you know, will increasingly be beleaguered, will become poorer, are finding it hard to integrate and they're not integrating in local sites. I mean, if you look at Iraqi refugees in Syria, they actually are part of the economy and that's to Syria's credit. But the fact is, you know, tensions are on the increase. Our research showed us that tensions between Iraqi refugees and ordinary Syrians are increasing. They were much better a year or two or three years ago when there were far fewer Iraqis in Syria.
So you know, what's going to happen to these people? What's going to happen? And just for -- you know, an image of it, which I think has captured a lot of our imagination, has been that of Palestinians in Iraq who have been forced to flee Iraq because of -- you know, their situation vis-à-vis certainly, the Shia part of the government and authorities and how -- you know, they're stuck on the borders of Syria and Jordan, some of them. And God forbid this type of situation will develop with Iraqi refugees. I really think it's something to be afraid of, something to fear.
MODERATOR: Okay, I really have to end this right now. So thank you very much to our panel today. Thank you for coming.
