We need to prepare now for the humanitarian disaster resulting from Vladimir Putin’s scorched earth war on Ukraine: the probable displacement of 10 million or more sudden refugees. We’re witnessing the fastest crisis displacement of innocent people since World War II, with more than 2 million documented Ukrainian refugees — mostly women, children and the elderly — in just the first two weeks of this crisis. This number obviously doesn’t include those who escaped without being documented or those who had already begun fleeing from Moldova or other neighboring states. The pace continues to escalate in line with Putin’s increasingly indiscriminate shelling and unthinkable war crimes.
We need to act.
After a career in our national security space, I now serve on the national board for one of the largest U.S.-based refugee resettlement agencies, headquartered here in Baltimore, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. What I know is this: These numbers of people in sudden peril far outstrip European ability to handle it in the region, and the Biden administration needs to take urgent action now — now — to prepare for the even larger exodus we can see coming. Poland in particular is performing spectacularly, receiving by far the largest numbers of sudden refugees over the last 10 days. It won’t be able to keep up over the long haul, however — and neither will our standard refugee resettlement procedures.
The numbers of refugees we’re talking about will make the historic U.S. evacuation airlift from Afghanistan — some 76,000 individuals — look like a field training exercise for this building disaster. (And, truth be told, we’re still struggling with that, with Afghan evacuees still being housed in hotels and other makeshift temporary accommodations.)
Here are six steps I believe the administration needs to take right now, to prepare for a disaster barreling toward us:
One: Plan for at least 500,000 war refugees to be given sanctuary in the U.S. (Yes, you read that number correctly — it may be shocking at first, but understand that it’s far fewer than what Poland alone has welcomed in just the past week.)
Two: Designate USAID Administrator Samantha Power to lead the U.S. refugee response, and give her the authority and funding to get it done. (I admit that this a very inside-Washington recommendation, but an international effort of this scope will require very real authority, leadership, diplomacy and logistics experience.) As a first task for her, pull together an international virtual conference ASAP: Which countries can take how many? Europe will be on the front lines, but the U.S., Canada and others will need to provide significant backup in numbers that may stun the senses.
Three: Declare a new Humanitarian Disaster Response category for Ukrainian War Refugees, separate and apart from the existing Presidential Determination (PD) ceiling for all other refugee resettlements. The existing ceiling — 125,000 worldwide — is laughably low for a disaster of this magnitude, and standard Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) systems are simply not equipped for this scale and urgency. Declaring a special category such as this may establish a precedent, but any single event which triggers multiple millions of refugees is certainly worthy of such treatment.
Four: Authorize and fund State to task the nine approved U.S. resettlement agencies, already stretched thin by Afghanistan, to begin preparations for this incoming wave, most immediately by hiring relevant language-capable staff. One additional specific ask: Immediately request those agencies to identify capacity for unaccompanied (orphan) children in need of trauma services. This will be a huge need.
Five: Direct the Pentagon to prepare for what will be a truly historic evacuation. Further direct the Pentagon not to dismantle, but instead to retain and expand the spaces which were used to provide temporary housing of the Afghan evacuees. The last of these evacuees departed those bases literally just weeks ago, on Feb. 19.
Sixth and last, but by no means least: Call for Russian and Ukrainian speaking communities — and all of us — across the U.S. to assist, accept and facilitate resettlement. Some of those we resettle may be the ones who then return to Ukraine to take on the challenge of rebuilding what Putin has destroyed.
Time is of the essence. The U.S. failed to meet the demands of wartime refugee flows resulting from World War II. We can’t fail to learn lessons from history — for a crisis which we watch, streaming live in front of our eyes.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Diane E. Batchik serves on the national board of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
