Humanitarian group leaders (right) Dr. Michel Gabaudan of Refugees International, Nancy Lindborg of United States Institute of Peace, and David Milliband of the International Rescue Commitee describe their experience working with refugees from the Middle East over the last few weeks. (Sara Shouhayib/MEDILL NSJI)

WASHINGTON – The United States should increase humanitarian aid to people in hard-to-reach and besieged areas of the Middle East and share more responsibility with Europe in admitting refugees, senators and witnesses said at a Foreign Relations hearing Tuesday.

The committee focused on a humanitarian crisis that many are calling, “the worst since WWII.” The emphasis was on Syria and more broadly on how to help refugees return to their battered lands when the fighting ends.

Testifying before the Senate committee, International Rescue CommitteePresident David Milligan said people are fleeing Syria because of barrel bombings attributed to the Assad regime as well as threats from the terrorist group, ISIS.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said he feared circumstances on the ground inSyria are “getting worse, not better. We’re doing nothing to stop the barrel bombing, including that of chlorine gas.”

Witness Nancy Lindborg, the president of the United States Institute of Peace,who has done extensive work in Iraq, said the focus should be on giving refugees a chance to return home. Education, employment and trauma counseling could help refugees rebuild their society, Lindborg said.

“Even if Europe and the U.S. take the most generous amount of refugees possible that will only scratch the surface,” she said. The average displacement for a refugee inside a strife-torn country is 17 years, Lindborg said.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, nearly 4 million Syrians have fled the country and 7.6 have been displaced since the conflict began five years ago.

Secretary of State John Kerry announced earlier this month that the Obama Administration would increase the acceptance of refugees to 100,000 by 2017. But that number could change with mounting pressure from the international community as European nations admit more people. The current annual cap of refugee admittance in the U.S. is at 70,000.

Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said that it all comes down to politics.

“I think the breakthrough honestly has to be Obama and Putin sitting down and reaching an agreement on this,” he said. “I think not any other intervention is going to be effective on this in the long run. We need a political resolution on this.”

Alar Olljum, visiting Fellow in the center for U.S. and Europe at the Brookings Institution, also favors a political solution.

Humanitarian assistance, Olljum said, is only a temporary solution. “The only permanent solution is to have a political settlement to the conflict in that country.”

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn, said refugees are just like everyone else.

“The images of thousands of men women and children fleeing for safety should challenge every moral fiber within,” he said. “[They] want only to be able to raise their families in dignity and cherish the same values and things that we all care about, and yet we watch them on television in these desperate circumstances.”

Their recommendations came on the heels of a Washington Times report that an agent received an email last August explaining he or she could face retaliation for revealing a potential abuse, or blowing the whistle, to a supervisor.

Whistleblowers reveal corrupt practices, such as waste or abuse of authority, typically to a superior within their government agencies or organizations.

Whistleblower protection laws, which were most recently updated in 2012, shield government employees from retaliation if they report corruption to a superior. The 35,000 people the FBI employs do not receive those same protections, however, according to critics (They are protected under the law, right, just not in practice?).

“This ought to be cause for anybody to scratch their head,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday. During the hearing, professionals familiar with the FBI’s reporting system provided testimony about its flaws.

Stephen Kohn of the National Whistleblowers Center outlined numerous cases in which whistleblowers had to leave their positions at the FBI after making whistleblower retaliation complaints. Their cases took too long to resolve within the Department of Justice or their work environment became too hostile, Kohn said.

“The Department of Justice’s program for protecting FBI whistleblowers is broken,” said Kohn, a lawyer who represents agents in these cases.

Former FBI special agent Michael German, who was a whistleblower, said the FBI’s policy is not conducive to whistleblowing. Currently, all employees are expected to report corruption to a Special Agent In Charge.

“I can’t overstate how difficult it would be for an agent to break protocol and report directly to an SAC,” German said, adding that it would be uncommon for an agent to approach such a high-ranking official. Reporting to a more direct supervisor would be more logical, he said.

The FBI does not protect reports made to direct supervisors against retaliation, Kohn said.

The Department of Justice has thrown out many FBI retaliation investigation cases on the basis that the agent did not report to the designated superior.

The Government Accountability Office’s David Mauer said its January report on FBI retaliation complaints found that in one year, the DOJ threw out a majority of retaliation cases for this reason.

All FBI employees are expected to report to one of nine agency officials, including the director of the FBI and the attorney general, Mauer said.

Another concern with FBI retaliation cases is the length of time the Department of Justice spends resolving them. Some of these cases last eight to 12 years, effectively ruining promising agents’ careers, Kohn said.

Mauer, the GAO’s director of homeland security and justice, said the agency made similar findings. Timelines for these cases were very inconsistent, he said.

“DOJ took the longest for those cases where it found the FBI had retaliated against the whistleblower,” said Mauer.

The GAO report recommended a policy change that would ensure retaliation complaints were resolved within a specific, consistent timeframe.

Kohn, German and several lawmakers at the hearing agreed that the agency’s work does not automatically necessitate its own class of whistleblower protection policies.

“The details of the national security issues almost never have to go in front of a court,” Kohn said. “If they did, the federal courts have very good procedures for guarding secrets.”

Grassley, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, described the need for a “culture shift” within the FBI. The agency’s associate deputy director, Kevin Perkins, said he shares this vision.

“Whistleblowers are a critical element of a functional democracy,” Perkins said. “We share the desire for the process to be improved and expedited.”