tralia, and Israel sought after refugees and competed for the benefit of absorbing them. Today, industries are lured from one country to another with the help of tax incentives and other inducements in the same way successful immigrant countries once tried to coax potential emigrants into their borders. Presently, refugees are nearly always regarded as an economic and social burden. It is the myth of actions in the name of the national interest, as well as short-sighted perspectives having one eye on the 'standard of living' and the other on the preservation of the status quo that force refugees, migrants, asylum seekers, nomads and displaced persons into the role of a reluctant international avant-garde. Recognized as refugees by the UN (and several international conventions), they are kept alive in camps, prisoners of international charity with their status established and confirmed. This group is not just supra-national but also multilingual, multi-cultural, and multi-religious. It commands neither territory nor capital. It has neither democratic structure nor any suitable form of political presentation or even any kind of government. A next generation Refugee Republic has long-term potential: an experimental supra-territorial state, multi-cultural as well as multi-lingual and multi-religious, would be able to anticipate socio-ideological and economic challenges. It would both force and enable solutions. Such an entity would act as a structural model for the rest of the world. The 23 million refugees officially recognized by the UN are equal in number to the inhabitants of Venezuela or Iraq, and account for a population even larger than that of Australia. However, the worldwide refugee population of non-registered refugees and displaced persons may actually be much higher. In its 1990 report, the United States Committee on Refugees estimated the number to be 47 million, almost as many refugees as resulted from World War II. Those 5...
