The questionable cost-to-benefit ratio and long-term benefit of the United States' military involvement in Iraq has been a subject of widespread scrutiny debate. But much less attention has been paid to the massive human migration due to the invasion of Iraq, which has caused the displacement of roughly four million individuals.

This book documents the current global refugee crisis and examines the interrelated factors of immigration enforcement, international human rights law, political violence, and refugee protection.

There are two disparate components to the global refugee crisis: first, there are about 46 million refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), most of whom are struggling to survive in the poorest and most violent countries in the world, and second, our interpretation of international human rights law allows this state of affairs to worsen.

Refugee protection has been a longstanding policy that ostensibly protects victims of human rights violations from other countries. In actuality, protection is largely negated by systematic efforts by industrialized states to reduce the number of refugees arriving at the borders. This book provides a comprehensive examination of this worldwide problem and rejects the idea that the majority of asylum seekers abuse the system to gain entrance into the country.

• Provides the latest empirical data covering the last 30 years, analyzing the human rights practices of the states that produce the majority of the world's asylum seekers
• Includes a chapter of over 40 biographies of distinguished refugees from all over the world.
• Contains primary source documents of international treaties and protocols related to refugees, as well as data figures revealing statistical trends of asylum seekers and displaced persons