World Refugee Day 2025

By Janine Leone Campling

Friday, 20th June marks World Refugee Day  - a timely reminder, amid recent escalating conflict in the Middle East, that displacement is often sudden, unchosen and beyond individual control. At any moment, the global community decides who is granted compassion, who is left to endure hardship, and who will be labelled a drain on the economy. One thing remains clear: a large group of human beings are suffering with nowhere to turn.

Against this backdrop, the promises of globalisation ring hollow. While it is meant to ease the flow of goods, capital and people, the reality is selective. When it comes to human movement, the focus has shifted from enabling safe passage to containing it. Yet containment is neither economically sustainable nor strategically sound. It is more cost-effective to invest in upstream solutions that address the structural drivers of displacement - especially in regions where conflict is not the only force at play. In the Sahel, for example, many flee to Europe not from violence but from depleted soils, vanishing water sources and the absence of economic opportunity. While warfare and political instability may prove unavoidable, investing in nature-based solutions across the resource-constrained Sahel region present measurable intervention opportunities - often at significantly lower financial and moral cost than migration deterrence.

With London Climate Action Week approaching, the correlation between climate vulnerability and mass migration toward Europe merits acknowledgement.

What drives someone to risk crossing dangerous waters in a vessel clearly unfit for the journey? For someone who boards an overloaded rubber boat off Libya, the decision is not reckless - staying is simply the greater risk. If drought, insurgency or destitution threaten everything at home, even the Mediterranean looks survivable.

Africa's working-age population will exceed global totals by 2030-35, a demographic reality requiring strategic consideration. The Great Green Wall Initiative positions this workforce expansion as economic opportunity rather than potential border pressure through unsustainable migration patterns. Environmental restoration in degraded landscapes can generate employment where populations currently reside, creating retention incentives through improved livelihood prospects.

This approach transforms demographic transition from challenge into competitive advantage, developing human capital the global economy requires whilst reducing migration-driven tensions at European frontiers.

The arithmetic is elementary: Up‑stream investment in resilience builds assets, skills and markets; down‑stream crisis management merely patrols a problem. Walls guard consequences, forests grow solutions.