Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
02 November 2011
World Refugee Problem is Growing
When the guns start firing people start fleeing;
they fill up cramped refugee camps that are
supposed to be temporary but often become permanent
The United Nations says there are an estimated 14 million refugees living outside
their country of citizenship, such as these Sudanese people in the Central African
Republic (left).
Most of these refugees remain near their home countries and live in temporary camps that, because some conflicts stubbornly carry on for decades, turn into permanent camps.
A much larger number of people, about 26 million, remain in the country of their birth and endure internal displacement. Their safety is often in peril because battle lines in war have a nasty habit of moving back and forth. What might have been a relatively secure haven behind the lines can quickly be overrun by the other side. When that happens, refugees are especially exposed to atrocities.
Refugees an Old and Stubborn Problem
In the 16th and 17th centuries war was an almost permanent condition in Europe. Most of the conflict was between Catholics and Protestants and between royal families that craved each other’s territory.
Eventually, some wiser heads saw the futility of whacking away at each other and the Treaty of Westphalia was signed in 1648. The important thing about the Treaty is that it recognized the sovereignty of the nation state. With that came the concept of citizenship and the notion of people belonging to a nation and being protected by it.
Of course, warfare seeming to be a hard-
In 1685, the Edict of Fontainebleau in France outlawed the Protestant religion. With their churches being pulled down and their schools closed the Protestants took to their heels and became the first recognized instance of refugees.
Twentieth Century Produces
Huge Numbers of Refugees
Wars continued and the refugee numbers rose so, in 1920, the League of Nations set up the High Commission for Refugees. It had the job of helping more than a million Russians who were trying to find a refuge from that country’s Communist Revolution.
The Second World War displaced 55 million people, such as these children in Germany
(right). The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was created
to offer help. This group was folded into the International Refugee Organization
in 1945.
Five years later, on December 14, 1950 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was set up by the UN General Assembly.
Looking for Durable Solutions for Refugees
The mandate of the UNHCR is to “protect and support refugees at the request of a government or the UN itself and assists in their voluntary repatriation, local integration, or resettlement to a third country.”
The UNHCR seeks what it calls “durable solutions” to refugee populations. These are: voluntary repatriation to the country of origin; local integration into the country of asylum; and, resettlement to a third country.
Some Resettlement Successes
After the Balkan Wars of 1991 to 1995, hundreds of thousands of people were successfully resettled, mostly within their own ethnic enclaves. However, a decade and a half after the end of the fighting, there are still 100,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Former Yugoslavia, most of them in Bosnia.
The hostilities in Sri Lanka (1983-
Now that the fighting has stopped, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has reported an increase in the number of refugees assisted in returning to Sri Lanka. The agency says it aided more than 2,000 people to return home in 2010, while thousands more went back on their own.
Many Refugees Find their Status is Permanent
As a result of the Arab-
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that in May 2010 “the fighting intensified in [Somalia] and displaced more than 270,000 people, causing the number of internally displaced persons to reach 1.5 million people.” Add these to another half million living across borders in neighbouring countries.
And, a horrible war has been going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo for 15 years. In 2006, Time Magazine called the conflict “The Deadliest War in the World” with estimates of the number of people killed topping five million. There are 2.3 million IDPs and little prospect for any of them to be returning home soon.
Sadly, this permanent exile from home appears to be the fate of most of the world’s 40 million refugees and internally displaced persons.
Sources
United Nations Human Development Report 2009.
“History of Refugees.” Modulus Media.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
“The Deadliest War in the World.” Simon Robinson, Time, May 28, 2006.
“Crisis on Italian Island Swamped by Refugees: UN.” Associated Press, March 21, 2011.
© Canada and the World, March 2011
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NORTH
AFRICAN EXODUS
In March 2011 Associated Press reported that “Italy is facing a humanitarian and sanitation crisis on the tiny island of Lampedusa following the arrival of some 15,000 Tunisian boat people amid fears more migrants will flee there following coalition airstrikes on Libya...”
Lampedusa is 113 km east of Tunisia and a slightly longer distance north of Libya. It has a permanent population of only 5,000.
Fred Csasznik
Palestinians leave the newly created state of Israel in 1948. The United Nations
Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) defines a Palestinian refugee as someone “whose normal
place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their
homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-
Women and children are the most vulnerable of refugees and often make up as much as 80 percent of any refugees’ population.