Duterte offers refugees a home in the Philippines
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has offered to take in the worlds refugees at a time many Western countries are closing their borders for those displaced, reports www .aljazeera.com.
An estimated 1.8m people became refugees in 2015 as the world witnessed a 300 percent increase in the number of people forcibly displaced crisis from 2005 to 2015.
Duterte told Al Jazeera his decision to welcome refugees into the Philippines, a country of 100 million where poverty is widespread, is due to Western countries failure to help them.
I say send them to us. We will accept them. We will accept them all. They are human beings, he told Al Jazeeras 101 East in a rare, behind-the-scenes look at his presidency.
Without elaborating how the country will deal with the arrival of refugees, he added: They can always come here. I will welcome them until we are filled to the brim.
Duterte said the Western nations seem to be very accommodating on human rights but suddenly change course and say no.
You stay there. We will build a wall [and put up] barbed wire. And now the hypocrite is there, staring at us eyeball to eyeball.
