Writing in the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, António Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), raises an urgent alarm. The plight of some 5.3 million refugees displaced in the Syrian conflict, he declares, “is extremely precarious, and without unrestricted humanitarian access to those in need, it is getting worse every day.” He is poignant in addressing the children among the refugees. “Hundreds of thousands of young lives have already been shattered by this conflict,” Guterres writes, “leaving the future generation of an entire country marked by violence and trauma for many years to come.”

This important and timely essay is the centerpiece of our Special Report: Humanity on the Move. It stems from our collaboration with the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies here at the American University in Cairo; we’re especially grateful for the support of Director Ibrahim Awad, a former director of the International Migration Programme at the International Labor Organization, and lecturer Shaden Khallaf, a former advisor on Middle East humanitarian and political affairs at UNHCR. In the Middle East, the Special Report examines anew the tragedy of the Palestine refugees in an essay by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a former commissioner-general for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Looking at the more recent case of Iraqis displaced by conflict is Dawn Chatty, director of the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. Among migration topics further afield, Andrew Lam and Tatiana Wah offer insightful reports, respectively, on the Vietnamese and Haitian diasporas. To explore the topical and controversial issue of immigration reform in the United States, The Cairo Review Interview is with Julián Castro, the mayor of San Antonio, Texas, one of America’s leading Hispanic politicians.

Finally, we are honored to publish “Fight Against Polio,” an essay by Bill Gates, chairman of the Microsoft Corporation and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates worked with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan, and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, to host the Global Vaccine Summit in Abu Dhabi in April. Explaining what drives him and his wife to campaign for global health, Gates says: “We’re both optimists. We believe by doing these things—focusing on a few big goals and working with our partners on innovative solutions—we can help every person get the chance to live a healthy, productive life.”

Scott MacLeod
Managing Editor