Passing Through Hardships; One Refugee Every Four Seconds

Tens of millions of people around the world have left their homelands out of necessity and due to political, climate, or war-related reasons. June 20th is an occasion to express solidarity with refugees and displaced persons and to make necessary efforts to ensure their humane living conditions.

Seventy million and 800 thousand people… This is the latest census by the “United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees” of those fleeing insecurity and deprivation in their homelands. Ten million of this population have no nationality or citizenship. Forty million of them are internally displaced persons who have been displaced within their own countries. 25 million and 400 thousand are war refugees who have settled in other countries. Of this number, nearly 20 million people are under the protection umbrella of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees; including five million and 500 thousand Palestinians.

From this vast human population, three million and 100 thousand people are striving to obtain refugee status from another country; an endeavor that sometimes leads to the depths of the Mediterranean Sea and sometimes to months of wandering in tents, caravans, and sleeping on streets.

Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, says: “These figures are, by any measure, unacceptable and reflect a humanitarian crisis that requires solidarity and collective thinking. We must strive to ensure that the displaced, war refugees, and refugees find safety while simultaneously finding solutions to the root causes of the problem.”

Since 2001, the United Nations has designated June 20 as “World Refugee Day.” A day to pay attention to the fate and rights of millions of people who flee conflict, harassment, persecution, bloodshed, and violence, and seek security in another corner of the world.

Rights of Refugees and War Displaced Persons

The International Convention relating to the Status of Refugees was approved on July 28, 1951, in Geneva and has been signed by 138 countries. In Article 1 of this treaty, those who have the right to refugee status are those who are persecuted and harassed because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, ethnic minority, or due to political beliefs, and lack personal safety, social security, and access to justice in their homeland.

The primary responsibility this convention places on signatory countries is that a refugee must under no circumstances and pretext be returned to a country that poses danger to them. The first paragraph of Article 33 of the convention states: “No contracting state shall expel or return (refouler) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories in which his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”

War criminals, military personnel, and human rights violators are not covered by this convention. Germany is one of the countries that guarantees the right to asylum in its constitution (Article 16). Denmark was the first country to ratify this treaty.

Signatory countries of the Geneva Convention are obligated to respect the following rights in regard to refugees and war-displaced persons:

The right not to be expelled except in special cases (Article 32), the right to work (Articles 17 and 19), the right to education (Article 22), the right to shelter (Article 21), the right to use public facilities and assistance (Article 23), the right to freedom of religion (Article 4), the right to access courts (Article 16), the right to free movement within the host country (Article 26), the right to possess identity documents (Article 27)

Statistics and Facts

According to the definition of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a migrant is someone who has left their place of residence for any reason, willingly or unwillingly, but a refugee is someone who has fled war or persecution resulting from political, religious, or ethnic beliefs. On this basis, all refugees are considered migrants, but not all migrants are considered refugees.

In the latest UN report, it is stated:

The Stateless; The Eternally Deprived

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates that every person has the right to the nationality of a country, but approximately 10 million people in the world are deprived of national identity. This group lacks identity certificates, identity documents, passports, and citizenship papers. They cannot study, cannot enter the labor market, nor can they learn a profession. They are an invisible class because they are deprived of social rights and are considered nothing.

Those who have fled war and had no identification documents with them during their flight are called stateless persons. Many Syrians who have fled to Lebanon or Jordan find themselves in such a situation.

The largest group of stateless persons is the Rohingya minority in Myanmar, and approximately one million of this ethnic group currently live in camps in Bangladesh.

Political Conflicts

Supporting refugees is a legal and moral obligation, nevertheless, the acceptance of war refugees and displaced persons in safe countries has become subject to political conflicts, racist tendencies, or electoral competitions.

In Turkey, which leads among refugee-receiving countries, war refugees and displaced persons have become a tool of threat against Europe. Iran links the continued hosting of Afghans to the lifting of current sanctions against the country. The conflict over fair burden-sharing of refugees and displaced persons in Europe has become a political challenge and has fueled nationalism and resistance to pluralism. Right-wing governments in Hungary and Italy are rejecting the European Union’s migration and refugee agreements. The camps on Greek islands are filled with lost and desperate refugees, and the Libyan camps, which are the first destination for North African refugees, have been transformed into open-air prisons. Political and social crises in Latin America have caused even Venezuelan and Colombian citizens to join the queue of asylum seekers.

World Refugee Day arrives as human rights organizations and civil rights activists warn about the infiltration of racism and xenophobia in the public opinion of host societies.

Simultaneously, at the initiative of the United Nations, a campaign to declare solidarity with refugees has been launched with the hashtag stepwithrefugees. In this campaign, which started in March 2019, all organizations, schools, companies, and individuals are called upon to take one small or large step to draw attention to refugees. Participants are required to walk at least one kilometer in the name of refugees and displaced persons and then encourage three other people to do so. This campaign has a symbolic aspect in sharing the experience of the journey of refugees and displaced persons, and the visual and content summary of it is scheduled to be released on June 20.

Source: DW