We're in Danger! Who Will Help Us? : Refugees and Migrants: A Test of Civilization

Victims of wars, oppression, and famine depend on well-prepared interventions for their basic survival. Yet in the twenty-first century, the world's conscience has gone dormant, and governments have been left free to ignore or trivialize their moral obligations to humankind. Caring societies cannot hide from these daunting humanitarian challenges. As in the past, only experienced, bold leadership can marshal allies for proposed twenty-first century solutions.

We're in DANGER! Who Will HELP Us? is the chronicle of one humanitarian leader's experience working on behalf of civilian victims of war, oppression, and famine, fully revealed in American know-how, initiative, and grit. James N. Purcell Jr. writes from leadership perspectives gained directing global humanitarian organizations and shares his and his team's daring interventions into the humanitarian crisis in Indochina following the Vietnam War and in other world regions-interventions that saved, protected, and restored the lives of millions of refugees. Presidents, feisty congressional debates, and strong volunteer groups helped Purcell and his team marshal allies for twentieth-century solutions, and today he makes the case for the same unyielding spirit for humanitarian crises in Syria, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Central America.

Civilization's new test is whether we can help free the world's conscience and regain a sense of moral outrage, purpose, and resolve to face our responsibilities directly and to act. As caring members of the international community, we must determine our appropriate and equitable roles in solving systemic dysfunctions that bring people to the brink of despair-and help those we can.

James N. Purcell Jr. led American and international refugee and migration programs, serving as director of the US State Department's Bureau for Refugee Programs and director general of the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration for most of his career, since 1979. Today he lives in Maryland and works with humanitarian groups.