ABSTRACT
This is a time of crisis for migrants. Despite the best intentions of the specialized and experienced humanitarian aid community and the heartfelt investment of many cultural workers in the arts and humanities, people of goodwill are at a loss in the face of new and aggravated assaults on civilian populations. At the time of writing, the global situation is growing worse. The world refugee population, including internally displaced persons as well as those driven from their native countries, has never been higher since the end of the Second World War, spiking, in fact, over 8 percent in 2014 alone (UNHCR 2015). The majority of new refugees and displaced persons come from a chaotic and brutal civil war in Syria that is destroying not only lives but heritage sites of importance to all humanity, which are two or three millennia old. The current figure of nearly sixty million displaced worldwide does not include those who have been securely resettled in the past, but still bear wounds, trauma, and the cultural exclusion of forced displacement. Nor does it include those forced from their homes because of the catastrophic results of climate change, which is predicted to double or even potentially quadruple the number of displaced people by 2050, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM 2009).
