When it comes to most of the ‘International Day of….’ and ‘World …. Day’s, they have been instated to raise awareness and are quite effective at that, meaning that over the years they come to seem less and less relevant, after all most people are aware. With World Refugee Day the opposite appears to be the case. More people than ever appear to be aware of the existence of refugees, yet at the same time fewer people than ever appear to have real awareness of what they are talking about.
The rhetoric that seems to be spreading is ‘we don’t want them here’, ‘we cannot afford to have them come’, ‘they should go back to where they came from’. Refugees are not seen as a group of human beings, they are seen as a flock of enemies, of ‘others’. As a collective, not as individuals. Not as human beings. In fact, the far right – and a startling proportion of the media – makes a point of dehumanising them, even going so far as to literally describe them as animals.
You want them to ‘not be here’? You want them to ‘go back to where they came from’? What do you think they want? They would like NOTHING better than to not be here, to be able to go back where they came from, to be able to pick up the lives that they were forced to leave behind. However, when war – in several cases wars supported by the very countries that refuse to take in the refugees displaced by those wars – forces you out, you have to go somewhere.
First you try to find a safer place within your own country, refugees still do, as shown by the millions of people who live as internally displaced people in countries torn apart by war or disaster. If there does not turn out to be any safe, liveable space to be found in your own country, you go to a neighbouring country, with a culture, language and climate that are still somewhat familiar. Again, statistics show that this is exactly what is happening. That 86% of refugees are accommodated in the region they came from.
It is only when it turns out that conditions there are unbearable too, either because the neighbouring country is also war torn, or because there are so many refugees in the displacements camps that living conditions have become subhuman, that in further desperation people will try to go further afield, in the hopes of being able to live in safety, of being able to live. Of being able to hope that their children will survive.
The desperation of refugees shows in the fact that for example in 2015 in Burundi 55,000 refugees had come to live there, while in the same year 293,000 people left Burundi as refugees. To seek refuge in a country where the situation is such that almost 3% of the population decides to leave it as a refugee, really brings home the fact that these people do not feel they have any options left. And this is only one of many similar examples.
And do you think Burundi, a low-income country, ‘can afford’ to take in 55,000 refugees better than Australia, a high-income country with more than double the population of Burundi and far more space, who took in 37,000 refugees, but did so kicking and screaming? Burundi did not think ‘we have some money left over, let’s welcome these people’. They simply realised that these are PEOPLE, people who have nothing left and no place to go, and that that simply means that you have to find a way to help them. It is not easy, but you do find ways.
And lest we forget, 55% of the refugees coming into Burundi and 54% of the refugees leaving Burundi were children. This too is not an exception. In some cases, the percentage is more than 60. As always children are caught up in the tangles created by the adults, and they suffer more. Some of the children travel with their family, some of them set out on their own, and some of them become separated from their family in the course of their journey.
We should use World Refugee Day to take a moment to remember that all refugees are real human beings in desperate need, not just the cute children in the disturbing photos that pass by now and then. We need to remember that they need help. And that they have much to offer. Previous generations of refugees are now part and parcel of our society, paying taxes and contributing in many different ways.
And if you are interested in becoming more aware of how to really help unaccompanied and separated refugee children, you might want to have a look at the free online course organised by CELSIS: Caring for Children Moving Alone: Protecting Unaccompanied and Separated Children. I am finding it very interesting and useful. And although week four has already started, there is still plenty of time to go through the entire course.
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