Wednesday is World Refugee Day.
But ours is a world of refugees every day, every week and every month in this era, with displaced people on the move everywhere and at an unabated rate.
On Tuesday, the United Nations reported that last year "wars, violence and persecution drove worldwide forced displacement to a new high in 2017 for the fifth year in a row." Across all countries, the report stated, 68.5 million people — or one human being in every 110 — are displaced.
The profound population dislocation won't end soon. Indeed, it may accelerate as multiple regions suffer chronic conflict, climate change, economic desperation and other turmoil of the kind already convulsing countries and whole continents.
In particular, Europe is politically embroiled in bitter immigration strife threatening to further unravel a postwar order that has delivered seven decades of relative peace and prosperity.
In Germany, the most serious challenge to Chancellor Angela Merkel's rule is coming from an immigration-inspired intraparty dispute that may lead to the collapse of her relatively weak coalition government.
Merkel bought herself a fortnight to forge a broader European agreement on immigration policy. Should she fail, her government may, too, potentially bolstering the far-right Alternative for Germany party.
A far-right coalition of parties has already ascended in Italy. And acting upon the strident anti-immigration campaign rhetoric, the new government turned away a rescue ship filled with desperate African asylum-seekers. Malta balked, too, so Spain saved the day, and most likely lives, by ultimately accepting the vessel.
