On Friday, Oct. 7, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for his efforts to end a half-century-long civil war. While recognition of his effort is laudable, it represents a missed opportunity to shed light on one of the worst — if not the worst — humanitarian crises our world faces: the displacement of 65 million people, 21 million of whom are refugees fleeing war-torn countries.

 A better recipient would have been someone like Cedric Herrou. Herrou is a farmer who has smuggled over 200 African migrants across the French-Italian border free of cost, according to an Oct. 4 New York Times article.  Herrou greets the migrants at a local Red Cross camp, heralds them into his pickup and brings them to his homestead atop a hillside in the French Alps — where the journey begins. 

After planning the great escape, Herrou leads small groups to different train stations, deciding which is safest based on tips received from locals. From there, the migrants board illegally. Some are caught by authorities. The rest make it through. 

The same Oct. 4 New York Times article featured a telling response by Herrou, who says of his citizen-smuggling mission, “I don’t have a global solution, but the state is not managing this properly. I think it’s my duty. And I don’t think it’s normal that children have to go through this.”

Instead of being commended for his efforts, Herrou is being actively pursued by authorities and was arrested in August by French police. To treat him this way is a disgrace; Herrou has more in common with Harriet Tubman than with criminals. It seems that a significant lesson from world history has been forgotten: Smugglers of people fleeing persecution are heroes, not villains.  

The situation today is reminiscent of many dark moments in international relations. In 1939, the United States infamously spurned the MS St. Louis. Aboard were 937 Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. Of course, due to the 1924 Immigration Act, the U.S. could not knowingly allow smuggled persons into the country. The consequences were disastrous. After being deported back to Europe, one out of every four passengers ended up being killed in a concentration camp, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 

 A similar cycle occurs today. Migrants get a first taste of freedom only to be forced back to unstable countries. Many end up losing their lives. Smugglers who try to help are labeled “bad guys,”  and governments who supposedly uphold national security are the “good guys.”  However, immigration has not been linked to national security threats, as detailed in the Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies.

According to a July 29 article in The Telegraph, two smugglers from Kent assisting Albanian refugees were detained by British authorities and sentenced to four years in jail for unlawful immigration. The punishment was handed down amid newly surfaced stories detailing how some smugglers exploit their clientele. 

In fact, smugglers have recently been accused of everything from theft and money laundering to organ harvesting. Heinous crimes, to be sure, yet smugglers’ track record of helping refugees is better than that of governments and international organizations by a long shot. 

According to the U.S. Department of State, the United States has accepted one-fifth of one percent of Syrian refugees. However, as detailed in a Sept. 15, 2015 Time magazine article, our country could accept hundreds of thousands more, as was done after the Vietnam War, World War II and the rise of Fidel Castro. Obama’s plan to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees is simply not enough.

European countries have not welcomed many migrants either. Over 1,321,560 people applied for asylum in Europe last year, yet only 292,540 were granted asylum status, according to a Eurostat report highlighted in a March 4 BBC special. 

Perhaps worst of all, Australia sends every undocumented refugee they catch to a detention camp in Papua New Guinea to be “processed,” a horror highlighted in a May 5 Huffington Post article.

Aside from the isolationist approach adopted by the international community in the wake of the refugee crisis, Westernized countries have also committed egregious humanitarian violations — bulldozing over occupied refugee camps, deporting Afghan veterans and detaining migrants.  The death toll has risen drastically. Over 5,400 migrants died last year in their attempts to reach safety, according to the International Organization for Migration.  

Smugglers, in contrast to governments, have safely guided hundreds of thousands of refugees in the same year. Many do not deserve the charge of being what the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime calls “profit-seeking criminals.” If all do, then many top officials should also be tried as “profit-seeking criminals.” 

President Vladimir Putin, for example, makes 7.6 million rubles a year — more than twelve times what the average smuggler makes — according to an April 15, 2015 Moscow Times article,  and he has deported thousands of migrants, even banning them from many work spaces in 2013.  Yes, many smugglers are corrupt, and few probably have purely altruistic intentions like Cedric Herrou, but this is true of many politicians and leaders as well. One such figure is Nelson Mandela, who militarized the  African National Congress, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of rivals during South African Apartheid. Another is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who abused his wife, according to his autobiography. Even so, these leaders are idolized for what they did accomplish despite their imperfect moral actions. Smugglers should be seen in a similar light, especially considering the failure of the international community in resolving the migration crisis.

Too often, governing institutions install roadblocks on the path to freedom and justice where average citizens open doors to them.