What is the importance of Aurora in the humanitarian world?
I think it’s a fantastic new addition to the global landscape of recognition for wonderful contributions to our common humanity. The Aurora Prize is really capable of soon becoming recognized as the kind of Nobel Prize for humanitarian action. The important thing about the Aurora Prize is that it recognizes not only individuals for selfless humanitarianism and people who have done wonderful things at personal risk to save lives and to improve the quality of lives. The important thing about the prize is that it also recognizes the organizations, which lie behind so much individual activity, and which are so important in moving things forward. This is the only prize of its kind which gives that weight to the organizations that can make such a humanitarian difference.
So it’s not only important for Armenia and Armenians and for giving new content to the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, which is important, but much more generally, this is a way of giving new content to the humanitarian commitment that we must as a globe have, creating a new group of role models for people to recognize and aspire to.
What is the number one humanitarian issue in your opinion and who is able to solve it?
Obviously the number one humanitarian issue in the world is the catastrophe in the Middle East, the huge exodus from Syria, the number of displaced people, the number of atrocity crimes that are continuing to occur there. Political leadership, if we can find it – it’s gone missing – is capable of solving this that in a way nothing else really can, but it’s going to require much more dedicated and consistent efforts then what we’ve seen from the leaders of the major powers and the regional powers so far. Humanitarian actors, civil society organizations, individuals can all contribute in various ways to minimize the impact of this terrible unfolding catastrophe, including through welcoming and recognizing refugees who are trying desperately to escape this conflict. We all have responsibilities of this kind but ultimately this is one for political leadership, and unhappily that leadership has just gone missing.
Why do individuals have less confidence in their own ability to help refugees? What’s your take on this?
I think that a lot of things got mixed up together. Individuals in developed countries have now got concerned about their economic future in the way they previously were never concerned. They fear diminution in their employment prospects if new immigrants, refugees, come in. You’ve got people now anxious of their physical security in the aftermath of 9/11 and the terrorist attacks, which continue to occur, and who somehow believe that their welcoming refugees may add to the risks they are going to suffer.
You’ve got people all over the world in this context, economic uncertainty and physical security uncertainty, also getting culturally very uptight and getting concerned about others, other religions, other ethnicities, other nationalities, and just being less welcoming towards the others than we want them to be. All of these things are remediable with a strong political leadership, with civil society organizations working hard to generate role models, with things like the Aurora Prize showing us so much positive energy that is out there, with ordinary people doing ordinary things. But it’s a very alarming situation at the moment that there is such diminution in compassion and understanding, and we have to work very, very hard to turn that around.
Do you think that the world refugee crisis is an impossible problem to solve in terms of civil society driven political pressure?
I don’t think any problem is impossible to solve. I remain an incorrigible optimist about the possibility of good policy change. We know what we must do. The numbers alone, they are huge and not beyond the capacity of European and other societies to absorb. The demographic realities are that these countries can benefit from the absorption of migrants coming in. This is, of course, the case in my own country, Australia, as well. We can turn this around, but it is going to require real political leadership, and that political leadership is basically going to change if it only feels the pressure coming up from below. So it is fantastically important that individuals take seriously their responsibilities to campaign, to organize, to put pressure on governments to change their ways and think of the huge number of people the world absorbed after the Second World War, you know, when millions of people were displaced. We can manage this. This is not an impossible effort but it requires a lot of political will, a lot of political energy and a lot of that energy just has to come from ordinary citizens.