2019 Spring Edition: Rethinking Governance

Letter from the Editor

April 17, 2019

When Hassan (pseudonym) arrived at the U.S. border, he had traveled a much longer path than other asylum seekers. As an Afghan refugee, he had made his way through the mountains of Afghanistan into Iran, braved the treacherous border into Turkey, then somehow made it to Latin America before arriving at the U.S. His was a journey of desperation, a bid for survival.

But Hassan is not unique. Today, the number of refugees globally is at one of its high points since the Refugee Convention came into effect in 1951. Although the political and diplomatic realities have changed, the legal instruments remain the same even as countries around the world struggle to cope with the rising numbers of refugees and other displaced persons.

The various refugee crises unfolding around the world – whether in Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Mali or Europe – are the global human community’s shared responsibility. Like international security and global climate change, the refugee crises are transnational issues that require our collective efforts. (Is it a surprise that international insecurity and climate change are also producing refugees?)

Some of the problems are giving rise to entirely new cross-border situations. Whether it is Islamic State (IS) fighters and their families returning home after the collapse of the so-called Caliphate, or European regulations surrounding data protections affecting U.S. users, piecemeal solutions by individual countries can hardly address the challenges. If the problems do not recognize borders, the legal regimes bound by geography won’t address them.

That is why these collective issues require our collective efforts. They require a rethinking of global governance instruments such as the Refugee Convention, the various U.N. Security Council Resolutions about returning IS fighters, or the European efforts to deal with data privacy.

Last year’s Spring Edition tackled the uncertainty in a policy environment where the sands were shifting under our feet. The global rise of right-wing populism, disruptive technologies, and economic upheaval create fear and uncertainty, but they also offer an opportunity to rethink the governing fundamentals.

This year’s theme was a challenge to policy practitioners, academics and students to rethink governance at the international as well as local levels – after all, solutions to most international problems have to be reckoned with locally (think small Italian towns tackling the Mediterranean refugee crisis). 

We present this year’s Spring Edition with the hope to move the debate forward from a description of issues to their resolution. We think that the Spring Edition is a compelling intellectual exercise in this direction, and we remain grateful to authors who submitted their work, our peer-reviewers, and our staff who worked hard.

Ahmad Shuja Jamal

Editor-in-Chief