Refugee Nation is a 2015 proposal to create a new nation to voluntarily resettle the world's

refugee A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

population to solve

crisis A crisis ( : crises; : critical) is either any event or period that will (or might) lead to an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, or all of society. Crises are negative changes in the human or environmental affair ...

. According to

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

estimates, there were about 82 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world at the time of the proposal.

Proposal

Refugee Nation was launched in June 2015 by Jason Buzi and received extensive media coverage in July 2015, beginning with an article in ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

''. In his proposal, Buzi offers a number of alternatives for creating a nation of refugees. These include: # Buying uninhabited islands from a country such as the Philippines or Indonesia. # A country with a lot of habitable but unused land giving away or selling this land for the purpose of establishing a refugee nation. One example given is Finland. # A small island nation which is sparsely populated agreeing to become a refugee nation. Current citizens would receive significant financial benefits. #

New islands Below is a list of new islands created since the beginning of the 20th century by volcanism, erosion, glacial retreat, or other mechanisms. One of the most famous new volcanic islands is the small island of Surtsey, located in the Atlantic Ocean ...

to be created in international waters as a homeland for refugees.

Funding

Funding for Refugee Nation is proposed to be by governments,

NGO A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...

s, the

or private donations. Jason Buzi, a successful

Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...

real estate investor, had previously earned positive press as the benefactor behind 2014's Hidden Cash multi-city project. With Refugee Nation, Buzi has drafted the initial proposal, established an online presence
www.refugeenation.org
, and gained exposure for his plan through a PR agency. In October 2015, Refugee Nation launched a

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...

campaign with the aim of raising billions of dollars to buy land or islands as a permanent home for the world's refugees.

Symbols proposed for the nation

Syrian refugee Yara Said designed a red-orange flag, resembling the life vests of Mediterranean refugees; fellow Syrian refugee Moutaz Arian created an anthem. Although neither of those could be allowed by the International Olympic Committee for the use by the

Refugee Olympic Team at the 2016 Summer Olympics The Refugee Olympic Team competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016, as independent Olympic participants. In March 2016, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach declared tha ...

, some of the supporters used the flag unofficially. Yara Said described the flag as "if you’ve worn a lifejacket as a refugee, you will feel something when you see this flag...It’s a powerful memory." As of June 2021, an

emoji An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversat ...

of the flag is available on

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for Android and

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

Other related proposals

Less than two months after the proposal received wide media coverage,

Naguib Sawiris Naguib Onsi Sawiris (or Sawires; ar, نجيب اُنسى ساويرس ; ; born 15 June 1954) is an Egyptian billionaire businessman. Sawiris is chairman of Weather Investments's parent company, and the former chairman and CEO of Orascom Tele ...

, an Egyptian billionaire, offered to buy a

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...

island to house refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict.

References

External links

* {{Official website
Refugee Nation site, featuring the proposed flag
Refugees Proposed countries Settlement schemes Micronations 2015 introductions