UNHCR's Filippo Grandi: How the Pandemic has Upended the Lives of Refugees

Guest: Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees

When the pandemic first took hold earlier this year, refugees around the world braced for the worst. Tightly packed camps with poor hygiene seemed like viral hotspots in waiting.  But these nightmare scenarios largely did not come to pass, or at least hasn’t yet. Even still, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi (who recently contracted the virus himself) tells Ian Bremmer in this episode of the GZERO World podcast that the coronavirus has upended the lives of millions of refugees in countless ways. Countries that were already limiting their number of refugees closed up their borders entirely. And today, as nationalist sentiments and straight-up xenophobia become ever more prevalent, 80 million people, or one percent of the world’s population, find themselves displaced.

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