Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System: Alexander BETTS and Paul COLLIER London UK, Penguin Random House, 2018,268 pages, ISBN: 9780141984704.

• Author: Imamoglu, Saadet Ulasoglu
• Position: BOOK REVIEW

The global refugee regime designed to provide protection to people fleeing persecution was harshly criticized for failing to handle the recent refugee crisis, led by the Syrian conflict, that has been ongoing since 2011. With this book, Betts and Collier offer a comprehensive analysis of the Syrian refugee crisis and inadequacies of the global refugee system. They examine the causes of the crisis, evaluate the weaknesses of global refugee regime, identify problems that have made the regime inefficient and ultimately offer a new approach to overcome the regime's shortcomings.

The first part of the book explains the reasons behind the largest refugee crisis that Europe has experienced since the Second World War. The authors argue that state fragility in Syria resulted in violent disorder which eventually led to mass flight (p. 25). The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the agency of the global refugee regime, gathered people fleeing Syria in camps located in countries neighboring the origin country, which was a method prevalently used since 1980s (p. 41). According to the authors, the Syrian refugee crisis intensified when many refugees who were constrained in camps in the regional host countries attempted to go to Europe by risking their lives (p. 73-78). In Europe, the frontline countries-Italy and Greece-overwhelmed with refugee flows, abandoned their first country responsibilities, stemming from the Dublin Regulation, that held the member of the European Union where an asylum seeker first arrived responsible to examine the asylum application (p. 79-80). When refugees were unrestricted by the frontline countries, the borderless Schengen Area facilitated refugees' movements towards the wealthy countries of Northern Europe-especially Germany (p. 81). With Chancellor Merkel's decision to accept refugees who arrived in Germany, the authors contend that the extent of the crisis expanded.

The second part starts with moral thought experiments on duty of others to assist refugees, rights of refugees to migrate, and responsibilities of both refugees and host countries for integration. The authors conclude their thought experiments by stating that the international community has a duty to support refugees and that states should share the burden regarding refugee protection (p. 124-125). According to them, the main problems of the current refugee regime are the negligence of countries geographically distant from fragile states...