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Since US President Donald Trump started his second term in office, he has been systematically dismantling the United States’ asylum system and violating the fundamental human rights of refugees. For example, the Trump Administration has suspended the US refugee resettlement program, set the lowest refugee admission cap ever and introduced travel bans for those who may be seeking asylum from a number of countries. In addition, the Trump Administration has expanded deportations dramatically across the…

By James Simeon, Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, York University One of the central challenges for all higher education instructors is keeping their students fully engaged with the course content as part of their program and degree requirements. One sure way to engage your students in your course’s content and their learning is through international online learning modules developed through collaborative efforts with colleagues at universities abroad. The benefits of doing so not only outweigh…

By James Simeon, Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, York University Causes and Consequences: Acknowledging the Roots of Forced Displacement The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants was adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly on September 19, 2016, nearly a decade ago. At that time, the Declaration noted, that human mobility was at unprecedented levels with more than 244 million people on the move, and with more than 65 million people who are…

By Rachel McNally December 2024 With the news in recent weeks highlighting the changes to Canada’s 2025-2027 Immigration Levels Plan (released October 2024), there is one refugee sponsorship program that does not appear in the levels plan: the Joint Assistance Sponsorship Program. In March 2023, I published the paper “Equally Public and Private Refugee Resettlement: The Historical Development of Canada’s Joint Assistance Sponsorship Program” in Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees. In this post, I explore…

By James C. Simeon, Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University, Email: jcsimeon@yorku.ca To note that the world is currently ablaze with protracted armed conflicts is to state the obvious to even the most casual observer of the world scene. The three most notable of protracted armed conflicts are, undoubtedly, the Russia – Ukraine War, the Hamas – Israel War, and the Sudan Civil War. According to the…

By James C. Simeon, Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University, Email: jcsimeon@yorku.ca It is now common knowledge, or should be, that the mass production of refugees is overwhelmingly due to wars. Astonishingly, more than half of the world’s refugees (52%) and others in need of international protection come from just three countries: Syrian Arab Republic; Ukraine; and Afghanistan.[1] In fact, 87 percent of all…

by James C. Simeon Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University Refugee and forced migration studies has evolved as both a multi-disciplinary and an interdisciplinary field that encompasses several disciplines including anthropology, conflict studies, demography, environmental studies, history, international studies, law, peace studies, philosophy, political economy, political science, public policy, public administration, psychology, sociology, social work, war studies, among others. Within this field of studies…

by James C. Simeon Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees assigns the UNHCR at Article 35, Co-operation of the National Authorities with the United Nations, that states “… shall in particular facilitate its duty of supervising the application of the provisions of this Convention.” And it further specifies that States undertake to provide “… (c)…

By James C. Simeon By the time the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee’s (UNHCR) Global Trends, Forced Displacement in 2021 was released on June 16, 2022, its figures for the previous calendar year were already outdated in a number of key respects.[1] The most obvious being Russia’s blatantly illegal full scale invasion of the Ukraine on February 24, 2022, that has resulted in some 14 million people being forcibly displaced to…