In early 2011 Tunisians hung a handwritten banner over the main street of the market town of Tataouine reading: “Welcome to our Libyan brothers”.
Their support was just as well, as Libyans pouring across the border soon doubled the town’s population from 40,000 to 80,000.
As we mark World Refugee Day it’s worth asking how many other countries would have shown the same hospitality.
Politicians in the developed world often scaremonger about asylum seekers but it is poorer nations that shoulder around four-fifths of the world’s refugees.
The amazing generosity of Tunisians who opened their homes and hearts to people fleeing last year’s civil war in Libya is revealed in the latest issue of Forced Migration Review (FMR), which looks at displacement following the Arab Spring revolutions.
