海角大神

A real estate mogul in California has a unique solution to the global refugee crisis: offer refugees a state of their own.聽

Jason Buzi, an Israeli-born Silicon Valley property developer, wants to provide land to the world鈥檚 who have sought asylum outside of their countries of origin. The so-called Refugee Nation, Mr. Buzi writes in a , is a 鈥渟imple鈥� answer to a growing crisis: 鈥渇or the millions of stateless people around the world 鈥� a state of their own!鈥�

Potential critics have not dismissed the idea.

In an op-ed for聽, Alexander Betts, director of the Refugees Studies Centre at the University of Oxford, writes that Buzi鈥檚 conception of the humanitarian crisis is 鈥渟pot on.鈥�

Mr. Betts applauds Buzi鈥檚 notion that refugees could govern their own communities: 鈥淭his recognition of the autonomy of refugee communities and their capacity to be economically and politically self-sufficient is long overdue,鈥� he writes. 鈥淭oo often, it has been assumed that refugees are dependent upon humanitarian assistance beyond the emergency phase of a crisis, when in practice they can exercise political and economic agency. Around the world, research has shown that under the right conditions, refugees are capable of building聽聽as well as聽.鈥�

Betts does caution against the concept of isolating an already marginalized population, writing that 鈥渢he idea is premised upon exclusion rather than inclusion. It implies that refugees should not be integrated within existing political communities but confined to separate communities. In discussion on social media this has been likened to a聽.鈥�

In the聽, Buzi suggests several options for refugee outposts. The 鈥渆asiest and fastest鈥� option, he writes, would be a sovereign nation that elects to take in refugees. He suggests Dominica in the Caribbean or Micronesia in the Pacific, both of which have relatively low populations within a few hundred square miles of space.

"It's almost shocking to me that nobody's talking about this as a solution," Buzi says in an interview with . "We have a lot of stateless individuals all over the world right now," he says. "The idea is, if we could give them a state of their own, at least they'd have a place to live in safety and be allowed to live and work like everybody else."

Still, the specifics are unclear, and artificial nation-building is problematic. Most people, if given a choice, would choose to stay with friends, and family, as well as favor the option of repatriating, should conflict at home settle.

鈥淎 human being has his life plans 鈥� and wants to go to the country where he has the best future,鈥� says Alberto Achermann, a migration law expert at the University of Bern in Switzerland in an interview with 海角大神. While relocation would help correct some of the dysfunction in Europe's current system, it overlooks human intention, he says. 鈥淭hat is the biggest problem with all of these redistribution plans in Europe.鈥�

Buzi says he sees no other comprehensive solution being seriously discussed, calling efforts thus far 鈥減iecemeal.鈥� In his manifesto, he cites refugee camps that at best temporarily relieve hunger and the need for shelter on the road to asylum, and at worst, provide such services across lifetimes, and generations. He writes that such camps 鈥渄o not begin to address the core problem. The camps鈥� host countries almost never offer refugees any citizenship, or even the right to work."

The Bay-Area real estate investor previously worked on another splashy social justice project, albeit on a much smaller scale. Known around San Francisco, and then all over the web, as the 鈥淗idden Cash鈥� guy, Buzi hid nearly $15,000 in small sums around California cities and clues about where to find the money. He encouraged participants to then 鈥減ay it forward鈥�.

He is using that profile to spread awareness about this new undertaking. Buzi says in an interview with the Post that he has already put between $10,000 and $15,000 of his own money into setting up a team and , and he plans to put in much more to help the idea gain traction. "I'm not a billionaire," he says. "But I'm in a place where I can spend some of my own resources to try and promote it and help it along."

Action on the refugee crisis is urgently needed. As the Monitor previously reported, the number of refugees arriving to Europe by sea this year stood at 46,500 at the end of May, compared to 41,243 in the same time period last year, an increase of 12 percent. The number of those who have died is up 20-fold. In lieu of a redistribution plan for refugees to the European Union, which was slated to come in July but didn鈥檛, Refugee Nation is offering a change in the conversation.

James Hathaway, the director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum at the University of Michigan Law School says of Buzi's proposal to the Post,聽"What I love about it is his sense of moral outrage about a problem that could be fixed but no one is fixing."聽聽