[Note]: This diary is the next installment of 10 Stories the World Should Hear More About as identified by the United Nations for 2006, a Booman Tribune Group Project suggested and coordinated by ManEegee.
They are far from the media spotlight – in Asia, in Europe, in Africa.
They have been there for years – perhaps decades.
There are millions of them.
“They” are people who have been displaced from their homes due to armed violence, coups, ethnic cleansing, human rights violations, wars.
They suffer as a result of their ethnicity, politics, religion, language or culture.
They are often called refugees, but given the vagaries of national and international laws and political intentions they are sometimes called internally displaced persons (IDPs), asylum seekers, or simply illegal immigrants. The way they are defined drastically impacts what protections and services are, at least theoretically, available to them.
The United Nations High Commission on Refugees ( UNHCR) describes 33 so-called protracted refugee situations, which they define as groups of 25,000 people or more who have been in exile longer than five years. This definition eliminates groups such as the 21,000 Rohingya who fled Myanmar (Burma) to Bangladesh over a decade ago. It also excludes the oldest and largest refugee situation – the Palestinians -which is handled through a different bureaucratic entity: The United Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. ( UNRWA ). The UN categorizes more than half of the world’s 9.2 million refugees as “protracted” and estimates that the average length of refugee situations is 17 years.
International law pertaining to refugees derives from a number of sources: The 4th Geneva Convention of 1949 , the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and subsequent protocols. The specific situation of refugees in Africa was also addressed at the 1969 OAU Refugee Convention. These repeated iterations of policy reveal the intractability of the problem and the elusiveness of a solution.
A refugee is defined as a person who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.” Since 1951, this definition has been broadened-in both official and informal ways. Notably, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), extended the definition to include people fleeing in small groups or en masse from a collective danger, such as insecurity or war, rather than treating each individual on a case-by-case basis.
An Internally Displaced Person, a legal and bureaucratically distinct entity, is defined as person who has also fled his or her home because of conflict but has not crossed an international border. He or she remains under the jurisdiction of national authorities and thus is not a refugee. IDPs do not benefit from any specific protection under international law.
People fleeing from armed conflict are provided special protections under other portions of the Geneva Convention if they cross international boundaries. Here, too, people fleeing for their lives too often get caught up in legal and semantic hell. If for instance, the situation from which people are fleeing is not considered a war, neighboring countries have no obligation to accept the refugees. So if a conflict is considered, say, an “anti-terrorism” operation, the refugees can be turned back at the border, causing them to be IDPs and forcing them back into the horrific situation from which they were fleeing in the first place.
Humanitarian groups such as Doctors Without Borders are, at times, at loggerheads with UNHCR. UNHCR’s role is complicated, ironically enough, by considerations the United Nations must make with regard to its peacekeeping activities – which make them less inclined to declare a situation a “war.” Still, UNHCR has over 6,000 staff members working to assist millions of refugees worldwide.
Under international law, refugees have three options available to them: voluntary repatriation, integration into the host country, and resettlement into a third country. In reality, their options are limited.
Forced repatriation, though illegal, occurs regularly. Third countries are not often enthused about receiving large numbers of immigrants. Integration in to the host country presents myriad cultural and socio-economic problems.
Refugee camps are often attacked by local armies or militia, causing people to flee from one camp to another. Large food shipments are at times hijacked. Malnutrition, illness, and lack of sanitation are common problems. Situations can become so dangerous that humanitarian organizations are forced to abandon the refugees.
The day to day realities for protracted refugees vary from difficult to horrendous depending on where they are. Russian-speaking ethnic Armenians,who fled Azerbaijan, are generally safe, but face incredible difficulties finding jobs and in integrating socially in Armenia. Refugees in Bangladesh are confined to camps and fear forced repatriation to Myanmar. Refugees in parts of Africa are subject to violence and malnutrition, facing a daily choice between staying in the camps and risking attack while waiting for food aid to arrive or traveling on foot through insecure territory.
The scope and complexity of this problem are more than dozens of diaries can cover. The extent of the human misery is more than the imagination is willing to absorb or than the human heart can bear. Millions upon millions of souls – the young, the frail and the elderly – live lives of fear, of danger, of deprivation. Out of the spotlight — and out of our awareness.
The humanitarian groups and bureaucratic entities that provide assistance cannot begin to ameliorate the situation as long as nations use the refugees as political pawns and as long as the rest of us – through ignorance or apathy – fail to demand better for our fellow man.
The Doctors Without Borders website is a wealth of information about the various refugee calamities our fellow humans are currently enduring, and also provides information on how to donate to relief efforts.
Kahli – thank you for your contribution to this series. Each diary has been so well written.
It seems so long ago now, but I used to talk with friends on how to “fix” things, intellectual exercises really. Then there was the underlying hope that a “hero or heroine” would appear who would make it “all right,” or if not all right, at least move us in the direction of “all right.”
Someone pointed out in a diary that we seemed to be going through and bouncing around the grieving stages: anger, denial, bargaining (there’s another which I forget), but avoiding the final stage of acceptance.
Thinking about refugees, I think there have always been refugees. They are the reason people are all over the planet. Though there were and are adventurers, wondering what is over the horizon (those on Antarctica), most people have moved on from need.
I have no solutions. The only thing that comes to mind is Gandhi’s, “Live simply, so that others may simply live.”
To live or try to live from the belief that we’re all planetary “renters” or “guests.”
To work to recognize and reduce or eliminate my “tribal identity.” Blueneck wrote a wonderful diary on this: Global Exceptionalism which includes a link to a site with activities which show one’s biases.
And to support those who put themselves “on the ground.” Doctors Without Borders is a wonderful organization.
Thank you again Kahli.
tampopo, I’m going to answer part of your question from my diary over here, as this one is active and related:
I don’t know how much of a difference it would make, actually. I know there was some small success with people protesting against the use of sweatshops and child labor by various corporations. I think, on paper at least, that conditions in some cases have improved a tiny bit, but they can’t improve much and still hold the bottom line and make a huge profit. And it’s become (or maybe always has been) accepted “reality” that it’s only natural and right that profit trumps people.
Then you have cases where the governments of countries and of other governments work together to make sure that there is a constant pool of what is basically slave labor such as the place Jack Abramoff was involved with, the name of which I forget, but which was done with not only full knowledge but active encouragement of some elements of the US government as well as the govt of the island. And I’m sure others as well.
Anyway, though, corps have been killing people on the ground in various places for years, with no reprecussions, just because they were in the way, so I’m not all that optimistic that even publication would change things much. People either don’t want to know, don’t believe, or don’t care, for the most part.
I don’t know how to fix things, either. As you say, there have always been refugees, always been the weak who are taken advantage of by the strong and the greedy. We do have the power to change things incrementally, of course, using our buying (or not) power, the power of the vote, shedding light on various abuses (governmental and otherwise), supporting NGOs and other organizations. Those are all just stopgap measures tho.
Real change would take just that… real change, where things were turned upside down, so to speak… from where they are now.
Thanks for your response. So here I am, in Kahli’s diary, saying I have no solution when a short time before that in your diary I was trying to come up with a solution.
I read about the attempted changes in the clothing manufacturing – the language ended up so watered down that it meant very little changed.
I was noticing ads in a magazine by various corps on how “responsible” they are and “caring” which made me wonder why they spend all the money they do to maintain their image. What do they fear?
Real change would take just that… real change, where things were turned upside down, so to speak… from where they are now.
Has there ever been such a place or time or people? Song snippets keep playing through my mind, “I know a place where dreams are born and time is never lost…”
And isn’t it odd the way people always want things to get better, but will scarcely tolerate change.
I agree that blueneck’s diary was outstanding.
For years now, we have been trying to build stronger bonds with others by encouraging us all to point proudly to our special tribal attributes and to cling to our tribal uniqueness. Despite the good intentions of trying to get people to accept “otherness,” I think in some ways it has exacerbated the situation. Perhaps it is just time for the pendulum to swing back for a time while we embrace our commonalities.
Excellent, Kahli. I know you’ve barely scratched the surface of the issue, but you’ve still included bunches of information.
That’s really what it all comes down to, isn’t it? I was astounded when I found out a couple of years ago that in the US we have people who have been detained for years. No crime or anything, just that maybe their asylum application has been dismissed, but that the countries they’ve come from refuse to take them back. Or, the countries themselves have ceased to exist. So, the people (families and all) stay in a sort of prison system.
Which actually seems to be the way many countries are thinking is the best way to handle their refugee/asylum seeker problems – no doubt as a way of greatly discouraging people from even trying. Just put them directly into prison, ala Australia and other countries… or set them up in shanty/tent towns, where there is little security or food or hope.
People in those situations are easy to take advantage of, because no one cares. In some cases, there is no safety even with the UN, as the peacekeepers themselves have been the ones raping women or trading food for sex and so on.
We need an entire reworking of the UN council on refugees policies, no doubt, but it’s unfortunate that governments with whose interests lie in not equitably solving the issue would be the ones working the policies out and voting on them ;).
Thanks for the great work.
it is sortta like being caught between a rock and a hard place or damn if you or damn if you don’t situation in many of them. everything is caught up in numbers as a qualifier one way or the other. when will the world get a clue? such an atrocity on earth is this. now we see more of this due to war. i just get sick everything i hear of rape bloodletting or massacre of one for or the other. just makes my blood boil.
by the way. good job…you all are doing us a great favor in doing this..hope you know…hugsssssssss
Thank you all for your significant discussion, your caring hearts and your kind support of this diary.
I’ve been at work all day or I would have responded sooner.
It was a sureal sort of day. I work in an gallery in a 150 year old adobe building. I am surrounded by art, by a glorious garden, and by the sounds of classical guitar all day long.
After writing this diary and becoming more immersed in what others are suffering, I felt like the luckiest person on the planet.