“The Institute is a bridge between the problems and challenges facing Armenians in Armenia and those with the intellectual and the academic skills and passion to tackle them. Migration is a challenge facing Armenians today — out-migration from Armenia, high levels of labor migration, in-migration of refugees from Syria to Armenia. It’s indeed one of the social and economic problems and opportunities facing us,” she said and introduced the panel’s moderator, Professor Manuel Pastor, Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change at USC and the director of the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. 

 

Professor Pastor introduced the panelists: Dr. Pablo Ceriani Cernadas, Vice President of the UN Committee of Migrant Workers’ Rights; Hovig Etyemezian, Head of the UNHCR Mosul, Iraq, Office and Former Zaatari Camp Manager in Jordan; Sherri Kraham Talabany, President of SEED, based in the Kurdistan region of Iraq;  Ali Noorani, Executive Director of the National Immigrant Forum in Washington DC, and Professor Lori Wilkinson from the University of Manitoba and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Migration and Integration.  

 

Manual Pastor introduced the topic by saying, “One of the things I appreciate about the Aurora Prize and the Aurora Dialogues is that it’s an attempt to flip the script, particularly to deeply appreciate the Armenian Genocide but to move from the concept of victims to survivors, to shift the focus from those who were persecuting to those who are allies. And it seems to me that there is yet another challenge to flipping the script, and it’s from thinking of humanitarianism as rescue to thinking about humanitarianism as prevention—that is, dealing with some of the fundamental causes that are getting people to leave and trying to address those fundamental causes.” He led the conversation with the observation that the topic of migration has three arcs: First, the fundamental causes that are causing migration and displacement; second, what are the best practices and things we should know about integration and settlement; and third, what a 21st century system of migration should look like and how such a system can be attained. 

 

Professor Pastor asked the panelists to discuss the single main issue they want to make sure gets addressed.  In addition to the panelists, video-recorded comments were interwoven into the conversation. Commenting were Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group, Isabel Mota of the Gulbenkian Foundation, Aart de Geus of the Bertelsmann Foundation, and Professor Michael Doyle of Columbia University.