Countless refugees and migrants flee horrific and oppressive conditions, but there is an element in forced displacement that does not receive enough attention: the weaponization of migration by dictators. This phenomenon undermines U.S. national security interests and hinders humanitarian and development assistance globally.   

For instance, 92 percent of the 6 million Ukraine refugees created by Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked war are hosted in Europe. Lithuania, Finland, Latvia, and Estonia have accused Russia and Belarus of using migration as a weapon. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk stated, “We are dealing with a coordinated, very efficient—on many levels—operation to break the Polish border and attempts to destabilize the country.”

Putin has done this before. Putin assisted Bashar al-Assad in using forced migration for his own ends, too. About 6.6 million left Syria for the Middle East and Europe, most notably Germany. In 2016, General Philip Breedlove, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander for Europe and head of the U.S. European Command, testified before Congress that “together Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve.”

Wars in Ukraine and Syria understandably have large numbers of refugees. Yet surprisingly, a country not engaged in either internal or external conflict is the source of one of the largest refugee crises worldwide. Nearly 8 million refugees and migrants have fled Venezuela due to a man-made protracted crisis led by authoritarian dictator Nicolas Maduro and his criminal enterprise.

Maduro has weaponized migration to ease pressure from the United States and feed a false narrative that sanctions are causing migration. We cannot be fooled by this ruse. Heavy migration began at least five years before sanctions were imposed. Plus, exceptions in U.S. law exist so that food, medicine, and humanitarian assistance are permissible for sanctioned countries. The cause of human suffering, malnutrition, poverty, violence, and human rights violations is Maduro. However, if Maduro is allowed to steal the upcoming election just like in the past, millions more may flee in desperation.

Dictators of a feather flock together, and perhaps nobody better epitomizes the willingness of dictators to turn refugees into weapons than Daniel Ortega, as Nicaragua has become a centralized trafficking epicenter. Ortega is using security and military forces to transport people from its borders of Costa Rica to Honduras and allowing the airport to facilitate international trafficking. Hundreds of charter flights and thousands of people have already traveled through Haiti and Cuba to Nicaragua. After charter flights from as far away as India, France, and Germany were found connected to Nicaragua, the State Department last year warned of visa restrictions against companies suspected of assisting illegal migration.

Last month, the State Department finally put that warning into action and imposed visa restrictions on an executive of a charter flight company who was using Nicaragua to facilitate illegal migration. These rogue regimes also profit from the migration scheme, evidenced by the State Department acknowledging that “the Ortega-Murillo regime in Nicaragua continues to financially benefit from the exploitation of vulnerable migrants.”

While humanitarian assistance is needed to assist refugees, it is also impacting traditional development assistance. President and CEO of the Wilson Center and former Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development Ambassador Mark A. Green recently stated: 

Humanitarian assistance is a response, an immediate response—it’s not an answer, at least not a compassionate answer. I think our job is to dust off our development tools, adapt them, reshape them, reenergize them for this generational struggle…Every dollar of humanitarian assistance must be reinforced with threads of development and resilience to help displaced communities withstand future shocks. 

The United States is by far the largest humanitarian assistance donor, providing about $9.5 billion in 2023, but where is everyone else? Even if the donations of the second through tenth largest donor nations were combined, the sum would not surpass U.S. contributions. This model is not sustainable, so what should we do?

First, we must recognize the perils of inaction. Sticking our heads in the sand and hoping these protracted crises go away is inadequate. The United States and our allies must collaborate to resolve crises instead of focusing on mere containment.

Other countries need to contribute more humanitarian assistance. The Global Fund model leverages $1 of U.S. contributions for $2 provided by other donors. The Ukraine supplemental bill stipulated that funds for Ukraine may not exceed 50 percent of the total amount provided by all donors. A new incentive using these models should be applied to accelerate reforms in the humanitarian arena.

In addition, consider the Wilson Center’s Refugee and Forced Displacement Initiative working group report, which reaffirms the importance of U.S. leadership and offers policy recommendations for enhancing and strengthening refugee-related policies.

These challenges are not going away and are growing in size and scope. Most refugees are not returning to their countries of origin and remain in host countries or camps for many years. In addition, an average of 339,000 children are born as refugees every year—most in developing countries.

According to the UN, over 117 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced due to “persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations and events seriously disturbing public order.” Chasing away their own citizens has benefits to these dictators: billions back in remittances to prop up their collapsed economies and fewer angry citizens to protest their corrupt misrule. State-sponsored weaponization of migration is unacceptable, and as we hold dictators to account, we must also renew our commitment to make every assistance dollar count. There’s no time (or money) to waste.

Eddy Acevedo was deemed a “traitor” to Nicaragua by Daniel Ortega and was sanctioned by the Russian Federation. He is the chief of staff and senior adviser to Ambassador Mark Green, the president and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He was formerly the National Security Adviser at the U.S. Agency for International Development and senior foreign policy advisor for former Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL.). This opinion is solely that of the author and does not represent the views of the Wilson Center.

Image: David Peinado Romero / Shutterstock.com.