Message of CCA General Secretary on World Refugee Day (June 20) 2006
" Rekindling Flame of Hope and Keeping it Alive!"If your are a refugee parent watching your child grow up in a neglected camp, after a long and frightening journey to escape from oppression at your own country, or if you are a traumatized asylum seeker knocking at door of an affluent nation- hope is your best comfort and courage is your best fortitude!
"Hope" is United Nations (UN) theme for the year's World Refugee Day on June 20, 2006. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) statement requests the world to remember millions of refugees who are trying to pick up the pieces of once peaceful lives. Though different from each other, one thing binds them all: "hope" for a better future and a chance to restore lasting peace to their daily existence.
Hope may float due to UNHCR report released last June 2, 2006 titled The State of the World's Refugees: Human Displacement in the New Millennium, revealing that the number of world refugees has fallen to the lowest level in 25 years!
The report shown however, that the low number of refugees is not because there are now less social injustices occurring worldwide. But because there is less war between rival nations resulting to fewer groups of people seeking refuge to foreign grounds. Conflicts are now confining within nations- between ethnic and cultural groups- that drive away Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)
Asia hosts largest number, or 36 percent of world's total refugees. Iran accommodates 1,046,000 and Pakistan, 961,000. These refugees exclude some 1.9 million Afghans living elsewhere in Pakistan. Latest added are 1,700 Sri Lankan who fled to India last January 2006, after violence erupted anew between the warring Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tiger rebels.
UNHCR defines refugees as persons who are outside their country and cannot return owing to a well-founded fear of persecution. They left home countries unprepared, without travel documents to enter another country. Others escape from ongoing conflict and disorder that makes travel papers impossible to secure.
The 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees provide that persons fleeing persecution across borders deserve international protection. These also include basic rights necessary to live a free, dignified and self- reliant life even while they remain refugees
But all these rights are violated- by most countries who signed these international agreements and now hosting refugees!
Present-day refugees are "warehoused" in a camp far from local populations that not only defy their rights, but also breed idleness, dependency, and misery. While urban refugees illegally survive struggling in poverty and insecurity and often subjected to labor or sexual manipulation.
IDPs, unlike refugees managed to remain within their own country and do not cross national border. Thus, they are considered ‘ineligible’ for protection under the international system for refugees. This happens despite 25 million IDP's are scattered around the globe, 6 million or 30 percent more than total number refugees worldwide!
According to Refugee International, a Washington D.C. based institution,.5 million Burmese are internally displaced along Thai-Burma border. While over 1 million Burmese have fled to neighboring nations. UNHCR reports Sri Lanka has 352,000 IDP's. Added last April 2006, are 100,000 IDP's at Timor Leste- a tenth of the country’s total population!.
On the other hand, the number of asylum seekers has diminished significantly in recent years. Not because there are less prosecution going on worldwide, but because former friendly countries now enforce strict control. While electorates view them as burden forcing governments to spend large amounts of money on asylum and welfare systems.
UNCHR report that after the September 11, 2001 attack in United States, developing countries and industrialized states enforced stricter control to foreign nationals. Asylum seekers and refugees are viewed as potential threat to national security and public safety. They are now considered "agents of insecurity, rather than its victims."
A number of industrialized nations including Canada, United States and Australia are using "detention" in order to deny entry and asylum. While some European governments have proposed plans to cordon off and prevent asylum-seekers and refugees from reaching Europe's borders.
Such actions will not solve forced migration! Resources should be focused on solving its roots causes which not only include regional or internal conflicts, but also poverty due to globalization and free trade agreements that are disadvantageous to poor countries- where most refugees originate!
Churches and church-based organizations should reiterate their voices as the conscience of the world. We must remind affluent countries especially US, Canada and Australia that centuries ago, history recorded them as "refugees" in the land they now call their own. And they should not be strict, but be sympathetic to uprooted people they once belong!
Together with people around the world, CCA call on world leaders of both asylum nations and countries of origin to work with international organizations, and most importantly with the displaced communities themselves, to re-examine circumstances causing long-term displacement and develop comprehensive plans for lasting solution.
Together with people around the world, CCA call on churches and church-based organizations to reaffirm our belief in the God-given dignity of all human beings, our commitment to advocate for the rights of uprooted people, and our dream of a world of compassion and hospitality.
