Latest update December 22nd, 2024 4:10 AM
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STANDING BY REFUGEES
This year’s World Refugee Day, celebrated on
Wednesday last, marked the 67th anniversary
of the 1951 Convention on Refugees status by the United Nations (UN). The UN defines refugees as people fleeing conflict or persecution, religious, political or otherwise from their countries of birth. Under international law, they should be granted refugee status, protection and support from the country they enter.
The day was established by the UN to honour refugees for their courage, strength and perseverance of fleeing their homeland for the aforementioned reasons, and their contributions to their communities. It became an annual event worldwide on June 20, 2001 to raise public awareness of the plight of refugees around the world and of the efforts to protect their human rights and maintain their dignity in a world where violence, war and persecution have forced millions of families to flee for their lives.
World Refugee Day marks a key moment for the public to send a message to governments that they must work together to protect, accommodate and help refugees to rebuild their lives in their adopted countries. It is to remind people about the failures of the international community to provide adequate food, shelter, basic amenities and other services to refugees. After all, refugees are human beings and should be treated as such.
Statistics from the United Nations Agency for Refugees reveal that as of mid-2017, there were 65.7 million refugees worldwide. More than half of them are children, which is the highest number of child refugees since World War II.
Syria, which has been ravaged by internal conflict for the past seven years, has the most refugees. An estimated 900,000 Syrians fled their country in 2017, bringing the total number of Syrian refugees to almost 6 million. Most have settled in neighbouring countries, including Turkey, which accommodates the largest number of refugees globally with 3 million; Pakistan is second with 1.8 million and Lebanon is third with one million. An additional 6.6 million Syrians have been displaced within Syria itself.
The conflict in Afghanistan has resulted in 2.5 million refugees, and religious and ethnic conflict in the newly-formed country of South Sudan accounted for 1.5 million refugees. They are followed by Myanmar and Somalia which have 1.2 million and 900,000 refugees respectively.
The United States which has historically led the world in terms of refugee resettlement, as of 2015, has less than one percent of the total number of refugees in the world. In 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, the U.S. granted asylum to 110,000 persons. However, since assuming office in January 2017, President Trump reduced the annual refugee admission for 2017 from 110,000 to 50,000. He has also adopted a “zero tolerance” crackdown on asylum seekers crossing the U.S. border from countries in Central America such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras due to civil unrest, violence and conflicts.
Trump has declared that the United States will not be a migrant camp.
However, he is being opposed by churches, human rights groups and civic organizations across the country for his recent decision to place refugees in federal prisons and their children into foster care. Many have viewed his policy to separate children from their parents as insensitive and barbaric. We have since seen something of a reversal of this draconian strategy.
At this end, we must brace ourselves for an influx of Venezuelan refugees fleeing their country as its socio-economic and political systems worsen. Guyana should use the occasion to develop a more coherent policy framework that goes well beyond its relations with Venezuela to include CARICOM, Latin America, and the Caribbean’s Spanish-speaking States, without whom, our efforts to end the border controversy with Venezuela will not likely materialize.
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