Archive for category: Refugees and Displaced Persons

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33.3 Million Internally Displaced People in 2013

There are 33.3 million internally displaced people worldwide as of 2013 according to The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) in a report released mid-May.

The Global Overview 2014: people internally displaced by conflict and violence, the IDMC’s flagship annual report, was launched at an event co-organized by the IDMC, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

The IDMC has been monitoring internal displacement figures since the late 90’s. The current numbers show 8.1 million newly displaced people in 2013, up 1.8 million from 2012.

Displacement occurs heavily in areas experiencing extreme conflict and violence, leaving the most unstable countries with the highest population of displaced people. Figures from the IDMC show the rankings of these areas as follows:

Countries with the largest displacement related to conflict and violence

  1. Syria (6.5 million)
  2. Columbia (5.7 million)
  3. Nigeria (3.3 million)
  4. DRC (2.9 million)
  5. Sudan (2.4 million)
  6. Iraq (2.1 million)
  7. Somalia (1.1 million)

As seen, 63 percent of the total displacement numbers come from Syria, Columbia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan. Syria passed Columbia as having the most internally displaced people (IDPs) last year and accounts for almost half of new displacements in 2013.

However, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region containing the highest number of internally displaced people since 2003. “These numbers show why it’s so vitally important that the international response to Syria should not be at the expense of displaced people in Africa or elsewhere,” says Antonio Guterres, the High Commissioner for Refugees.

Currently, 12.5 million people are internally displaced in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a 55 percent increase in new displacements in the region from the previous year. The most problematic areas are the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

Aside from being forced to migrate from their homes, IDPs suffer various health issues associated with the move as well. Displacement camps are often militarized and lack inadequate shelter. Proper health treatment is often inaccessible while living conditions are unsanitary.

Continuing conflict also makes it difficult for governments and humanitarians in the field to deliver aid. Conditions are so bad that the average displacement time for affected people is now 17 years, according to Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

“We have a shared responsibility to act to end this massive suffering,” urges Guterres, “Immediate protection and assistance for the internally displaced is a humanitarian imperative.”

A promising sign for positive change comes with the African Union’s Kampala Convention, the world’s first international treaty that legally binds states to assisting and protecting their IDPs. Five additional countries signed on this year alone.

The fact that internal displacement is an upward trend reveals an inherent flaw in the way the issue is being addressed. Comprehensive reform on the local, national and international approach is now being discussed as efforts increase to resolve the IDP crisis.

– Edward Heinrich

Sources: Internal-Displacement,Algazeera,The Chicago Citizen
Photo: FT Photo Diary

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1,000 Days Campaign in Rwanda 

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Since conflict started in the Democratic Republic of Congo, children have been fleeing the violence to Rwanda and into the hands of another challenge: malnutrition. The state of food security and proper nourishment in Rwandan refugee camps is becoming dire as nearly 44 percent of children under 5 face serious chronic malnutrition.

However, the Rwandan government is making strides to welcome its new residents with open arms and humanitarian aid. Under the command of Prime Minister Pierre Damien Habumuremyi, the Rwandan government launched the “1,000 Days in the Thousand Hills” campaign back in September of 2013 to combat malnutrition in both its refugee camps and its local population. With the help of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs (MIDIMAR), the 1,000 days campaign was implemented first in the Kiziba camp in Western Rwanda, then in all five refugee camps in the country.

The mission of the campaign: combat malnutrition using programs that make populations more self-reliant and educated on proper health. The approach: provide children with the proper nutrients for the first 1,000 days from birth until the child’s second birthday and establish local community efforts to produce more nutritious food.

The 1,000 Days campaign in Rwanda is not unique. In fact, similar programs have been implemented in a variety of other locations including Ethiopia, Indonesia and Guatemala. But what makes Rwanda’s campaign special is its focus on integration. Like all of MIDIMAR’s programs, the 1,000 Days in the Thousand Hills campaign aims to connect the refugee and local populations by using their combined forces to solve mutual problems. All practices used in the local population are being used in refugee camps and vice versa.

What are these practices? As established, the campaign seeks to make populations at risk more self-sufficient while still receiving help to reduce malnutrition. Programs include setting up kitchen gardens and animal breeding programs. At the start of the campaign, 315 kitchen gardens were set up and 151 families received rabbits to breed, eat and sell. The hope is to make refugees and local populations independent with livestock and farming techniques that provide them with greater nutrients.

On top of this, the 1,000 days campaign aims to provide children with the necessary sustenance for healthy development and nutrition from day one until age 2. This allows children to escape malnutrition and stunting of growth and to have better immune systems and brighter futures. The program achieves this goal both by putting more food into the community and educating parents on what counts as fortified and healthy foods, such as vegetables, fruits and milk. In addition, the campaign seeks to spread awareness on the warning signs of malnutrition and the diseases associated with the condition.

All of this culminates in two results: first, it brings children out of risk of malnutrition by providing them with necessary protein from the start. Second, it pulls populations into a state of food security by providing sustainable ways of harvesting good food.

The program is set to end in October of 2016, but many strides towards success can be taken by then. With any luck and lots of hard work, malnutrition will cease to be an insurmountable problem facing refugees in Rwanda.

– Caitlin Thompson

Sources: All Africa, Doctors Without Borders, Ministry of Disaster Management, Relief Web, Republic of Rwanda, Republic of Rwanda Ministry of Health, World Vision International, 1000 Days
Photo: Republic of Rwanda Ministry of Health

 

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Spotlight: Refugees International

Fleeing political, racial and religious persecution, more than 15 million people worldwide have left their homes and sought safety across international borders. They are refugees; often as unwelcome in their host countries as they were in their own.

For many, it is out of the frying pan and into the fire.
International law forbids the deportation of peoples with refugee status. Still, deeply rooted ethnic and national divides can make neighboring countries reluctant to accept them.
It is estimated that half of refugees today settle in major cities. Hundreds of thousands of Somali citizens, for example, have gone not to internationally established camps, but to Nairobi, Kenya. These urban refugees, with neither shelter, funds nor connections, find themselves in situations nearly as desperate as the ones they left.
Hindered by language and social stigma, they are limited to the poorest paying jobs. Their ambiguous political standing, meanwhile, affords them none of the safeguards given to citizens of their new homes. The British organization, Hidden Lives, quotes one man, “I don’t have legal documentation. I don’t have a job. I don’t leave my house.”
Access to health care, though needed by many, is often restricted.
So why not just head for a refugee camp? Conditions there are no better. Camps are notoriously overcrowded and vulnerable to the spread of communicable disease. Violence and sexual assault goes largely unchecked. For basic needs such as food and water, refugees are reliant on international aid. Refugees also must rely on international aid for health care, education and development. Who do they rely on for security forces? International aid. International aid, unfortunately, must come in waves.
Consequently, any group that raises awareness or funds to sustain displaced peoples, in and out of country, becomes integral to their survival. None is more widely known, perhaps, than Refugees International (RI).
RI focuses on advocacy and policy reform. In addition to meeting with world leaders, it organizes 15 yearly field missions to determine the living conditions of refugees and internally displaced people across South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. These missions are essential to the organization: because of the information gathered, it is an influential authority. RI is consulted on not only the need for aid, but also the amount required and its distribution.
It was RI that alerted the United Nations to the lack of post-rape kits available in the Central African Republic earlier this year. It was RI that encouraged the United States to support the Nansen initiative, which protects displaced victims of climate-related disasters. The U.S. set aside more than $150 million for the deployment of peacekeepers to the CAR at the request of the organization. In response to their report of violence against women in Syria, the United Kingdom provided more than $14 million dollars in funding.
The U.N. Refugee Agency calls 10.8 million people ‘refugees of concern.’ Almost three times as many live as IDPs. While they wait for resettlement, or war and persecution to end, they have to entrust their lives to the international community at large. But the nations most capable of giving aid are often the furthest removed. It is left to Refugees International, and organizations like it, to bridge the gap.
– Olivia Kostreva

Sources: UNHCR, Health Poverty Action, Refugees International, Hidden Lives
Photo: The Global Herald

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Architectural Award Winner Receives Acclaim for Refugee Work

Celebrated architects are mostly known for the great buildings they design in expensive, multi-million dollar projects. Thus, when the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban was honored with the Pritzker Architecture Prize, it was remarkable in that he has largely been known for his innovation in refugee shelters. The refugee work that Ban has done in his home nation of Japan has helped many displaced by the earthquake/tsunami disaster of 2011, as well as refugees in other parts of the world.

The innovation from Ban comes from his use of disposable and recyclable material. The voters of the award said of Ban, “His buildings provide shelter, community centers and spiritual places for those who have suffered tremendous loss and destruction.” In 2011 the famous Christchurch Cathedral was decimated after a New Zealand earthquake. Ban built a temporary devotional structure out of cardboard tubes for those left without their religious sanctuary, giving the community an outlet in their time of difficulty.

Ban first got involved with refugee structures in the wake of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Ban saw the conditions the refugees were living in, and he said, “I thought we could improve them.” Working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Ban designed tents using paper tent poles that gave a cheap yet efficient and easily transportable shelter for the refugees. The UNHCR made Ban a consultant after his work in Rwanda.

His work in Kobe, Japan after the 1995 earthquake foreshadowed the work he would do in this decade. Ban designed houses made of cardboard for those displaced and even built a “Paper Church community center.” Some of the structures he made in Kobe were “meant to be used for three years were used for 10.” Ban’s work in these places has not only made a lasting emotional impact, but clearly a physical impact on the landscape as well.

The work that Shigeru Ban has done is exactly the type of innovative refugee work that should be encouraged in dealing with burgeoning international crises. Resources are stretched thin when working at so many different levels at once, and innovative minds like Ban’s can help remedy that strain. The Borgen Project and advocacy groups like it encourage funding for this type of innovative relief work.

The work that Ban has done in Japan since the 2011 disaster has capped off a career of humanitarian work. Ban has built partitions for families living in gyms, making life easier in a difficult situation. He even designed a three-story refugee shelter on the grounds of a baseball stadium. Ban sees the work that he has done in his home country as a necessity that is seen too little among the best of his profession. Ban says, “I was very disappointed in our profession. Because we are mostly working for privileged people, with power and money.”

With this recent award and the $100,000 grant that comes with it, one can hope that Ban is starting a wider trend in the architectural profession.

– Eric Gustafsson

Sources: BBC, New York Times, PBS
Photo: CNN

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Reinvigorated Childhood, Courtesy of Shakespeare

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Struck by the catastrophic circumstances of their previous lives in Syria, children in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan spoke of bullets, bombs and death. Nawwar Bulbul wanted to change that. A prominent soap opera actor until being blacklisted by the Syrian government on account of joining in protests against the regime, Bulbul brought his love for theater with him as he fled.

The Zaatari Camp in northern Jordan has ballooned with the recent inundation of Syrian refugees fleeing over the border and, with a lofty 102,704 residents, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, currently stands as the world’s second-largest refugee camp. Basic needs such as food and water are met on a marginalized basis by various international organizations attempting to help quell the trauma of the current Syrian crisis, yet children require more than that in order to live with the hope of successful and fulfilling futures. With less than 40 percent of refugee children attending school, there is a huge deficit of arts and culture among traumatized population.

For over two months, Bulbul has worked to bring happiness to the lives of these children. Because of the impressive initiative taken by this actor-turned-director, 100 refugee children come together to rehearse Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” Translated to classical Arabic from its original Bard’s English, the play brings joy to its performers and a renewed sense of childhood innocence to those who have been stripped of such rights and privileges.

One young girl named Ammari, who came to Jordan along with five sisters and a brother, says she feels the transformation.

“I do not feel lonely any more in this place,” she told reporters. She has found something to finally entertain her and take her mind off of the victims of calamity around her.

Though some may claim that this particular Shakespeare tragedy is not suitable for children, Bulbul argues otherwise. He says he took only the roots of the story for the children’s adaptation, and focused primarily on the differences between lying and telling the truth. While Bulbul’s initiative received no support from international organizations and only minimal support from friends in the Syrian community, the past two months of play practice have shown outstanding success for the youth.

In discussions of Shakespeare’s plays, the participants showed behavioral and emotional development. The children involved learned quite a bit about controlling anger as well as the violent and destructive consequences of seeking revenge. For a group that has spent a good portion of life so far living amid death, destruction and humiliation, these are lessons some may have thought unfathomable in previous months.

Yet Shakespeare is not the only poetry in this situation. Bulbul translates from Arabic to mean bird, or oftentimes nightingale, a bird primarily known for singing in the dark. So as Nawwar Bulbul brings the song of hope and joy to the inner darkness of an overpopulated refugee camp, he does, so beautifully, live up to his name.

– Jaclyn Stutz

Sources: Ahram Online, Times of Israel, Global Arab Network
Photo: Times of Israel

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Thailand Deports Rohingya Muslims Back to Myanmar

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Rohingya Muslims are a stateless people.

Their homeland is in dispute; some argue that it is Bangladesh and others argue that it is Myanmar. The sitting government in Myanmar’s organized persecution of the Rohingya has caused hundreds of thousands to flee to other countries in any means that they are able.

A great number have fled to nearby Thailand assuming that they would be safe from deportation back to a state that does not recognize or want them; however, they were wrong.

The situation in Thailand for the Rohingya is not a welcome one. Since the early 2000s, the Rohingya have been fleeing persecution in Myanmar to any country that is close at hand. However, Thailand is not the sanctuary that it used to be for the Rohingya, according to Abdul Kalam, a Rohingya who has lived in Thailand after escaping forced labor in his home.

Kalam is the head of the Thailand’s Rohingya national organization. The plight of the Rohingya in Thailand is not widely known save for a brief international spotlight in 2009, when media captured boatloads of Rohingya refugees being towed back out to see by Thai naval ships.

The Rohingya are trapped in vicious circle.

Thailand is one of the few countries in the world that has indefinite imprisonment terms and due to this unusual fact, this is often the fate of those being detained by Thai authorities. A group of reporters filmed the appalling conditions that many Rohingya face while being indefinitely detained in Thailand.

The conditions that the Rohingya were found in are deplorable and it is a travesty that such treatment of human beings is still occurring. The cells that were being used as holding areas were designed to house just 15 men each, yet Thai authorities had placed 276 Rohingya men in them. The Thai government should be aiding the Rohingya in their escape from persecution; however, Thailand does not recognize the Rohingya as refugees.

The troubling news for the Rohingya in Thailand is compounded by the fact that reports document how the Thai government has been secretly selling Rohingya to human trafficking camps deep within the Thai jungle. Reuters found evidence of these camps and reported on the plight of the Rohingya trapped in them. Reuters presented one of Thailand’s highest police officials with the evidence that was uncovered about the camps and when asked, police Major-General Chatchawal Suksomjit, Deputy Commissioner General of the Thai Royal Police gave the startling reply that he indeed knew about the camps, but called them “holding cells.”

The plight of the Rohingya is known to the world, but little is being done by the United Nations or any other international aid group. The persecution that the Rohingya face at every turn in their struggle to cement their lives somewhere should be considered one of the most flagrant abuses of human rights in the 21st century.

There are many pressing issues occurring around the world every day, but people can exist in a world free of persecution for any peoples regardless of ethnic or religious status.

– Arthur Fuller

Sources: BBC, Fox, Time, CNN, Reuters, IRIN, Human Rights Watch
Photo: Press TV

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Typhoon Recovery in the Philippines: 100 Days

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It’s been more than 100 days after the devastating Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines and recovery efforts are still underway for those who have been displaced from their homes.

The storm, one of the most powerful ever recorded, hit the archipelago on November 8th, killing nearly 6,000 people and displacing 4.1 million.

A government-led recovery effort, known as the Strategic Response Plan (SRP), was launched following the typhoon. The plan covers the next twelve months and requires $788 million, of which 45% has already been received.

Along with these typhoon recovery efforts, the United Nations and its affiliated partners have helped to provide food, medicine, water, and sanitation and hygiene assistance to those affected. Tents and tarpaulins have been distributed to approximately 500,000 families, but many more still remain without shelter.

UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Philippines, Luiza Carvalho notes that, “the need for durable shelter for millions of people whose homes were damaged or destroyed is critical.”

In Tacloban, a city of 250,000, major typhoon recovery efforts have been underway to pump money back into the local economies. Coconut farmers and fishermen represent the backbone of the economy in this area but their livelihoods have been severely threatened by the storm. In response, the UN development programme has recently implemented both short-term and long-term plans to help farmers get back on their feet.

Oxfam has noted that the Filipino government has been slow to deliver funds for agricultural and reconstruction support.

Thanks to generous donor contributions, great things have been achieved in the relief phase of the recovery effort. In the coming weeks, it is critical that the international community continues to provide support to those whose lives have been devastated by Typhoon Haiyan.

In a recent UN statement, Carvalho noted, “the Filipino people should be commended for the pace of progress that we have seen in the first 100 days. But we cannot afford to be complacent.”

– Mollie O’Brien

Sources: The Guardian, UN
Photo: Aljazeera

Syrian Refugee Resettlement in the U.S.

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The United States currently leads the world in refugee resettlement yet could fall short in the case of the crisis in Syria. With more than two million Syrians fleeing the country and another 6.5 million displaced within Syria’s borders, this is quite possibly the worst refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

The demand for resettlement is huge.

In a Senate hearing on January 7, State Department Assistant Secretary Anne Richard stated that the United States expected to begin resettling more refugees, increasing referral acceptances to several thousand Syrians in 2014. Additionally, the United Nations a few weeks ago stated that the United States would be accepting around 30,000 vulnerable Syrians referred for resettlement.

Unfortunately, post-9/11 immigration laws may pose some difficulties.

Under U.S. laws, not all of these vulnerable individuals can be legally received. Those people who are considered to have given ‘material support’ in some form or other to rebels are considered to have possibly supported terrorism, even if the ‘material support’ was approved by the United States.

In this manner, Syrians who gave so much as a sandwich or a cigarette to a soldier fighting for the Free Syrian Army will not be accepted, according to Illinois Senator Dick Durbin.

Human Rights First has called for the U.S. to resettle some 15,000 Syrians per year. While this perhaps should be feasible for the world’s leader of refugee resettlement, it is a particularly lofty goal for a country that will have a tough time finding Syrians with no connection to either side of the conflict.

As such, the United States is working on easing the anti-terrorism laws to some degree with respect to Syria in order to support the global effort to take in and support Syrian refugees.

The United Nations calculates that Syria has lost at least 35 years of human development from the multitude of tragedies that have occurred in the past three years. The strongest nation in the world should be doing more to work with the international community in aiding the victims of such devastating circumstance.

– Jaclyn Stutz

Sources: Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal
Photo: Think Progress

European Countries Open Doors for Syrian Refugees

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The Syrian civil war has been the cause of daily consternation for those affected by the war and the humanitarian groups looking to administer to victims’ needs. This past week saw the opening of peace talks in Switzerland as representatives from both sides of the war and nations with interests in the region looked to find some way to bring the conflict to a close.

With chances of a settlement looking grim, a number of European nations including the United Kingdom and Sweden have announced plans to bring in some of the refugees of the war. The refugee crisis resulting from the civil war has stretched the beleaguered nation’s neighbors to their limits.

The United Nations Higher Council for Refugees recently announced that the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon had exceeded 890,000, with over two million Syrians now living abroad in total. With these staggering figures have come questions over how best to administer to the refugees’ needs, and how well the host nations could sustain this influx.

With these concerns in mind, Sweden has opened its doors to the refugees, more so than any other Western nation according to the CBC. Since 2012, the Nordic nation has taken in 14,000 refugees, far exceeding Germany, which has taken in the second-most refugees of any EU nation.

The path from Syria to Sweden is rather perilous, as refugees flee their homes with little luggage and must rely on smugglers to take them into Western Europe. In a nation they presumably know fairly little about, Syrians have gotten a warm welcome in Sweden.

One Syrian interviewed by the CBC said, “They are providing almost everything,” when questioned about their living conditions.

Sweden and Germany had taken in 64% of the Syrian refugees entering Europe from the beginning of 2012 until May 2013, according to the European Asylum Support Office. None of the other European countries in the study come close to their totals, but it looks some nations are willing to share the burden of hosting these downtrodden people.

Despite this seeming lack of interest by European nations in housing the Syrian migrants, some governments are debating opening their doors to more Syrians. William Hague, the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom, has said that his government is planning on “helping people who are particularly vulnerable,” particularly these refugees.

This represents a significant change from a government that had not committed to any refugee plan, and had up till now declined to sign for a United Nations refugee sanctuary program.

The peace talks in Switzerland and the plans that the United Kingdom has announced are being worked on represent promises being made to the Syrian people. Yet these people have been dealing with the results of the conflict for three years now, with their homes and lives being torn apart.

The lack of support for refugees beyond that done by a select few nations represents a failure on the part of the Western world. The burgeoning crisis that is engaging Syria’s neighbors is a dangerous scenario, and show the need for foreign aid that developing nations still need.

– Eric Gustafsson

Sources: CBC News, DNA India, The Guardian
Photo: NPR

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Small Islands and Environmental Refugees

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For a long time, human civilization has seen refugees from all kinds of nations, due primarily to political or militaristic reasons. However, there is set to be an occurrence of some of the first mass cases of “environmental refugees,” who will be forced to leave their homes as a result of climate change.

For example, small island nations with extensive low-lying coastal areas are placed in a difficult position because of rising seas. While for most developed countries the issue of climate change does not implicate intensive and readily apparent consequences, the same does not apply for many developing island nations—whose very existence is threatened by the projected rising seas of the near future.

The necessity for adaption is an especially prominent issue that these island nations face. This is particularly true since many of them are small and still developing, making it difficult for them to counter rising seas on their own. Moreover, public money that may be spent towards healthcare or education is often required to be reallocated towards protecting their shores. This ends up putting a drain on the economies of various island nations, making the situation for their people looks quite bleak.

The United Nations have identified 52 small island developing states that will face the brunt of climate change effects. All of them—very unique with their own lasting culture—may see their way of life come to an end, as communities will eventually become heavily displaced. However, the issue extends to a plethora of other people on a global scale as well. For instance, the majority of the global population is situated among coastal areas, while many others, over 600 million people worldwide to be exact, may also face the possibility of displacement since they are living within low-lying coastal areas less than 10 meters above sea level.

To address some of the issues presented, the United Nations General Assembly convened late in 2013. Speaking on behalf of small island developing states, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda—Winston Baldwin Spencer—spoke about the rising greenhouse gas concentrations stemming almost exclusively from a number of nations within the developed world. Pleading his case, Spencer stated that, “Developed countries should shoulder their moral, ethical and historical responsibilities for emitting the levels of anthropogenic greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It is those actions which have now put the planet in jeopardy and compromised the well-being of present and future generations.”

Following the Kyoto Protocol, which unsuccessfully attempted to put a cap on the atmospheric carbon concentration, the United Nations has established the 2014 Climate Summit. World leaders from across the globe are expected to congregate in order to address climate issues and push for innovative solutions that span across areas including government, business, finance, industry and civil society.  The Summit is planned to take place in New York during September of 2014 and will attempt to accomplish a global climate agreement. This will be of monumental significance for small island developing states as they are already doing as much as they can to limit the number of environmental refugees, but find that they still need the help and cooperation of the entire international community.

– Jugal Patel

Sources: World Issues 360, Inter-Research, United Nations, United Nations
Photo: The Age