World Refugee Day : Right to respect and dignity
Today, June 20, is World Refugee Day. This article is an overview
of the refugee situation in the world, especially Africa.
Antonio Guterres
Refugee children playing chess in northeastern Thailand
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REFUGEE: Today we are facing what may prove to be one of the greatest
challenges of the century. Almost 40 million people worldwide have been
uprooted and forced to flee violence and persecution.
The future is likely to see increasing numbers of people on the move.
Many of them will be in search of economic opportunity and better lives
or escaping environmental degradation and natural disasters.
Others will be forced to flee failing states wreaked by violence and
persecution. But in most instances, people are fleeing a combination of
these factors, compounding one another to provoke a perfect storm of
loss and dislocation.
I have spent the past few days in Sudan, a country at the epicentre
of one of the world’s great displacements. Here I have seen firsthand
the stark reality of forced displacement as well as some of the
solutions. Hopes that globalisation would naturally bring steady growth
while also narrowing the gap between rich and poor have not been
fulfilled.
While global trade and wealth have indeed increased, the gap between
the world’s rich and poor is widening, driving more people to move and
to fall prey to unscrupulous groups whose new business line in human
smuggling and trafficking is worth billions of dollars a year.
Climate change and environmental damage lie behind increasingly
frequent natural disasters with dramatic human consequences. Different
models of the impact of climate change all present a worrying picture of
human displacement. East Africa offers a stark example.
All predictions are that desertification will expand steadily, making
it difficult for people to earn a living and provoking further
migration. All of this is happening in the absence of international
capacity and determination to respond.
People are also fleeing war and persecution. Even when we have plenty
of early warning, the international community has repeatedly failed to
prevent conflicts. Instead, agencies like mine are left to deal with the
human consequences.
Prevention is possible, more effective and cheaper. But it requires
wisdom, political and diplomatic effort and an investment in eliminating
the root causes, including social and economic ones.
Sudan’s Darfur crisis is a good example of the complexities. The
conflict has political roots, but is also fuelled by increasing
competition between traditional herders and farmers for scarce
resources, especially water. When this is linked with political
tensions, the results are explosive.
The relatively recent concept of humanitarian intervention argues
that states have an obligation to protect their citizens, and if they
are unable or unwilling to do so, then the international community
should step in.
Today, in the aftermath of events in Iraq, the idea of an
international “responsibility to protect” is losing favour. It can be
extremely difficult to help people who are displaced within their own
countries and who unlike refugees outside their homelands - are not
covered under international law.
But there’s good news too, as here in the remote south of Sudan where
tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees are making the choice to return
to their devastated homeland after decades of conflict.
Although largely unreported, they are coming home with U.N. help from
refugee camps in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya,
Ethiopia and the Central African Republic. Others are returning from
exile in Libya and Egypt, as well as from other parts of Sudan itself.
Like virtually all of the world’s people forced to flee violence and
persecution, the southern Sudanese have long dreamed of going home
despite the uncertainties and hardship.
And all of them deserve much more support than they have been
getting. To mark World Refugee Day, I joined southern Sudanese as they
returned from Uganda to begin rebuilding their lives. Our greatest
satisfaction comes from helping a refugee family go home, and their
repatriation is a ray of hope in a strife-torn region.
But even when conflicts are resolved and the uprooted are able to go
home, their problems are not over. Some 50 percent of countries that
emerged from conflict in recent years fell back into strife a stark
reminder of the imperative of addressing in a comprehensive way the
increasingly complex challenges that push so many people from their
homes.
It is time to recognise that we are facing what is nothing less than
a new paradigm of displacement in the 21st Century, with a plethora of
push factors driving people from their homes on an unprecedented scale.
There are no easy answers, but while the international community
grapples with the root causes of displacement, it must pay more
attention to protecting the vulnerable and building opportunities for
their futures.
The writer, a former Prime Minister of Portugal, has headed the
Geneva-based Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees since 2005. |