President Trump Echoes ACLJ Call for Creation of In-Region Safe Zones for Victims of Genocide at UN

This week, President Trump delivered a powerful speech at the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly. To aid in the fight against ISIS and to help end the genocide against Christians, President Trump called for the creation of in-region safe zones, something we’ve long advocated.

In his maiden speech before the U.N., President Trump said:

We seek an approach to refugee resettlement that is designed to help these horribly treated people and which enables their eventual return to their home countries to be part of the rebuilding process. For the cost of resettling one refugee in the United States, we can assist more than 10 in their home region.

Out of the goodness of our hearts, we offer financial assistance to hosting countries in the region and we support recent agreements of the G20 nations that will seek to host refugees as close to their home countries as possible. This is the safe, responsible, and humanitarian approach.

This perfectly describes in-region safe zones and why they are needed.

However, the President’s advocacy for in-region safe zones is not new. It builds on his March 2017 Executive Memorandum, in which he called for a study to examine the costs of using in-region safe zones versus the cost of importing refugees to the United States. As we praised at the time, this was an important first step in making the case for in-region safe zones. As echoed in his speech, in-region safe zones are ten times more cost effective than conventional refugee resettlement.

In addition, as we've explained before, it is nearly impossible to resettle the tens of millions of displaced victims of the ongoing civil wars and jihadist genocide raging in Iraq and Syria.

This self-evident pragmatism is but one reason that the creation of in-region safe zones has always been an integral part of our 5-point plan for aiding refugees and our 7-point plan to stop genocide and protect Christians and other religious minorities facing genocide.

As we've articulated, “The creation of ‘safe zones’ addresses the need to protect the persecuted, while still protecting the national security interests of the United States.”

More importantly, in-region safe zones can be the Christian thing to do. As we've previously detailed:

In-region safe zones is actually the most compassionate way to care for the most people, the quickest, when dealing with a refugee crisis such as seen in the Middle East today.

There is no way to import millions upon millions of Christians and other religious minorities fleeing ISIS genocide. Our refugee program could not even come close to helping the number of people who need assistance. 

However, America’s leadership, funding and protection could allow for the establishment of safe zones for Christians and other religious minority victims of genocide right there in their own homeland. The refugees themselves do not want to be uprooted from their way of life and thrust into a different culture. It is more humane, more compassionate, and more workable to take care of them, protect them, and shelter them right there in their own homeland, allowing them to quickly and easily return to their own homes and way of life as soon as the crisis has been ended and ISIS has been soundly defeated.

While we have covered significant ground toward implementing these proposals in our efforts to stop ISIS’s genocide and protect Christians, much remains to be done. We are extremely encouraged that President Trump has brought this message of true humanitarian compassion to the U.N, and we must seize the momentum and press on. We must do our part to turn the tide of international apathy. Words are not enough. The international community must act, and it must act now.

Stand with us against ISIS‘s genocidal slaughter and persecution against Christians. Sign our petition today and demand that the U.S. lead the international community to stop the genocide and protect Christians.