- Well thank you very much.
It's a great pleasure to be with you here in Doha.
I've been traveling across several continents
in recent years, not just the countries that people
are fleeing from around the world,
but also the places they're fleeing to,
to the refuge camps, migrant camps, that people end up in.
And I've been struck by so many thoughts during this time,
but one of them is that there are so many utopian dreams
that occur, people dream that you can live
in a borderless world on one hand,
other people pretend you can just stop anyone coming.
These are impossible dreams.
But somewhere in the middle of them
is something we need to aim for.
And one of the ways I've started to realize
how we need to think about this is in the following terms.
Not about right or wrong or good and bad.
I'm a good person, you're a Nazi, it's too easy.
What we need to think about with this
is that we're in a situation with migration
talking about competing virtues.
There are two virtues in this whole debate
that are in serious competition,
not just between people, but within all of us.
The first virtue I would say is the virtue of mercy,
the desire to be merciful for our fellow human beings
who are suffering.
And we all feel that, everybody should feel that.
But there is also another virtue here, the virtue of justice
and that's not just justice for people fleeing countries,
but justice for people in the countries
that they are fleeing to.
We can't ignore those two parts, we need to recognize,
that's what's going on here, this is why it's so difficult
when the debate goes down the middle of all of us.
So look, there are so many questions we need to think about
if we're going to address this,
and I'm so glad, by the way, this isn't a debate,
because this is a very not debatable issue,
but why we need to think about this.
Let me give you just six examples
of things we need to think about
much more deeply than we have.
The first is this, I would suggest it is very obvious
that the developing world cannot move
to the developed world.
So what do we do?
Who can come?
That's one part of that question, and the second part,
which is much harder, who can't?
We are very, very bad at having even a bit of that debate,
but we need to.
Secondly, what are the differences between people
fleeing for their lives from a war zone
and people fleeing serious severe economic deprivation,
in for instance, Sub-Saharan Africa.
Now there are differences, but if you recognize that,
then you've got to work out where along the way
you would put your line for legitimate asylum claims.
A third of people in Sub-Saharan Africa polled last year
by Gallup said they've wanted to move
and leave Sub-Saharan Africa.
So, you've gotta work out along this way
if you're gonna have a sustainable asylum policy,
who qualifies for it, and I would suggest
we are not very good at having that discussion either.
A third point.
We know that some cultures find it easier
to mix into other cultures and others,
but we don't know exactly how,
and we don't know what the proportions of people are
in another culture that work well, integrate well,
and adapt well, and what the proportions are
that started to make that integration,
that adaptation far harder.
And have thought very little about this
and what thinking that has been
has been pretty bad.
Let me give you another example of something
we need to think about.
How do we deal with a question this serious
in the age of social media?
An age when a single photograph of a single person
can go all around the world, and everybody sees it,
and everybody says, something must be done.
And the politicians think, I've gotta do something.
And then they do something.
And the public say, no, that wasn't the something
we were thinking of.
We thought of something else, but we don't know what.
How do we live in that world?
How do politicians act I that world?
How do we have any form of political leadership
in that world?
How do we work out what the right thing to do
is in that world?
Not just in the short term, but in the long term too.
Let me give you a fifth question.
How do we ensure that we're able to have a serious
and deep debate about these issues?
And that we're able to allow people to express
legitimate concerns, and have that debate without those
legitimate concerns being dismissed
as xenophobic, nativist, and so on.
How do we work out where that might be the case
and how do we work out where it's not,
where there are legitimate fears?
Sixth question.
How do we overcome fatalism?
The fatalism you hear everywhere these days.
Sometimes in the spirit of optimism.
This is the world as it is now, people move,
this is globalization, get used to it, suck it up.
Don't complain.
How do we get used to that?
How do we deal with that?
Now, I've got rather unsurprisingly,
fewer answers than I've got questions,
but let me give you just three answers I would suggest
that we could hold onto as the beginning
of a set of answers to this.
The first is, hold a very clear line
between people fleeing for their lives from war zones
and people fleeing economic deprivation.
Find and hold to a very clear line on it.
If you do not, I predict with absolute certainty,
that you will continue to erode public sympathy
with people who need the sympathy the most.
Because these things will be rubbed together and allided.
So I would suggest, first of all, find that
and hold onto it pretty close.
Second thing I would suggest,
find a broad level of agreement,
and there is a lot of this internationally now,
that the best way to cope with the most serious situations
is to keep people roughly in the area
of the country from which they fled.
It's must easier to look after them there,
it's much easier to get international aid there.
My own country, Great Britain, is I think
the second largest donor of international aid
within the regions of Syria.
That should, I think, be one of the models for this.
That we make sure that people, we don't have this idea
that some people have for you to disperse X percentage there
and X percentage there, and let's put these people there.
Thirdly, I would say, make sure you increase
economic productivity in refugee camps.
Make sure people have a hope and a purpose and a work life
when they're outside of their country.
Look, I'm concluding with this, because otherwise
the music will get so loud you won't hear me.
There are no simple answers to this
because there are no simple questions in this.
This whole business does not give itself to sound bites,
but it does need a much deeper debate
that most of us have been willing to have so far.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)