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RefugeesOverviewofTopic.pdf

■ Introduction Refugees are migrants who leave their countries of ori- gin for asylum, or a safe place to live, because of ongo- ing armed conflict or fear of persecution based on their religion, race, nationality, political affiliation, or mem- bership in a persecuted social group, or a combination of these items, within their home countries. Refugees are either unwilling or unable to return to their coun- tries of origin. The types of persecution that refugees fear include cruel and inhumane treatment, unjust pun- ishments, and threats of torture or death.

Unlike immigrants, who leave their home countries seeking economic, educational, or social opportunities, refugees seek to escape persecution and harm. Like inter- nally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees are displaced from their home because of safety and other humanitarian concerns. IDPs remain in their country, however, under the protection of their own government, while refugees leave theirs. Refugees displaced outside of their home coun- tries usually cannot return home, in contrast to immigrants, who typically have the ability to return home without fear of intimidation and oppression.

Causes of Displacement One major reason why refugees are displaced is because they live in a war zone caused by conflicts between their home country and other countries. Other refugees leave their homes because they face internal conflicts such as civil wars or terrorism, and still others leave because of turmoil caused by armed conflicts between neighboring states. Refugees also flee due to agricultural problems and food scarcity caused by water shortages and deserti- fication, as well as by natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes. (Desertification is the process of productive agricultural land being turned into desert through deforestation, industrial ag- riculture, or drought, or a combination of such items.)

Additionally, an economic collapse within a country or fluctuations in local or international financial markets can cause people to leave a country for safety and jobs elsewhere. Some people live in fragile nations governed by unpredictable dictators or weak or illegitimate political systems, and these refugees choose to leave because of fear of persecution or systemic instability. Finally, dangerous cultural conflicts involving persecution over religion, lan- guage, education, sexual orientation, and other factors also cause people to flee their homes and seek asylum elsewhere.

International Understanding of Refugee Status Whatever the causes of refugees’ flight, their status is defined and protected by international laws endorsed by the members of the United Nations (UN), a body of diplomatic representatives from countries around the world. One such law, Article 1 of the Universal Declara- tion of Human Rights (1948), states that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” and “should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifies a number of human rights relevant to the plight of refu- gees, including the right to leave or return to their home country (Article 13) and the right to seek asylum, or pro- tection, from other countries if faced with persecution in their own country (Article 14). Although this declaration respects each country’s sovereignty, or right to govern itself without outside interference, it obliges each UN-member state to protect persons seeking asylum because denying a refugee asylum can mean great harm or death to that person. In the 21st century, this obligation has come to be known as the responsibility to protect (R2P). According to Thomas G. Weiss (1946–), professor of international rela- tions and global governance at the City University of New York, R2P implies that “if a state is unwilling or unable to honor its responsibility, or itself becomes a perpetrator of

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atrocities,” then the international community takes on those protective responsibilities on behalf of refugees.

Refugees’ Journeys from Home According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as of 2016, the world faced a global refugee crisis greater than any experienced in the past, with almost 21.3 million refugees worldwide, more than half of whom were children under 18 years old. When fleeing their troubled home countries, refugees often make dangerous journeys, sometimes paying for the assistance of smugglers, some of whom run unau- thorized, for-profit businesses to provide transportation (including boats, rafts, trains, bicycles, and trucks), as well as food, water, and maps for refugees. Although refugees turn to smugglers for help, the smugglers are not always primarily concerned with refugees’ safety. Smugglers sometimes neglect to provide basic necessi- ties for the journey, hold refugees hostage for additional payments, create forged documents, or harm the refu- gees physically or sexually before their arrival in the host country.

On arrival, refugees may find that the asylum country is not prepared to receive large influxes of people in crisis, but the refugees still must be resettled by the asylum coun- try with assistance from the UN and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which provide international hu- manitarian aid (basic human necessities such as water, food, and shelter). The primary goal of the UN and other groups who work with refugees is to find a long-term solution for them, such as permanent residency (legal and permanent resettlement in the asylum country), naturalization (citizen- ship within the asylum country), or voluntary repatriation (a return, of their own free will, to their home country).

■ Historical Background Refugees leave their home countries for various reasons, not knowing what they will experience along their jour- ney to safer environments. Many are welcomed while others are rejected, but laws were created to protect refugees from unfavorable and harmful behaviors and protocols put in place to ensure aid and asylum.

WORDS TO KNOW

ASYLUM: The protection given by a nation to a refugee who has fled his or her native country in order to escape harm.

DEPORTATION: The forced removal of a foreign national from a country, often resulting in the return of the person to his or her home country.

DESERTIFICATION: The process of turning productive agricultural land into desert through deforestation, industrial agriculture, or drought; one of the environmental causes of displacement.

INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSON (IDP): A person who has been forced to leave his or her home, often due to natural disaster or violent conflict, but remains within the borders of his or her country of origin.

NATURALIZATION: In the context of immigration, naturaliza- tion refers to the process by which immigrants are granted citizenship in their adoptive country.

1951 REFUGEE CONVENTION: Also known as the Conven- tion Relating to the Status of Refugees; the United Na- tions High Commissioner for Refugees’ key legal docu- ment signed by 155 states. This document contains a definition of the term refugee as well as rights of the displaced and the obligations of governments to protect them.

NON-REFOULEMENT: The basic principle on which the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention rests, requir- ing asylum nations not to return or expel refugees to countries in which their lives are in danger, their freedoms might be or have been threatened, or they might be or have been physically harmed.

RESETTLEMENT: The multipart process of housing and help- ing refugees in an asylum country, often by the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations acting in cooperation with the host country.

SOVEREIGNTY: A country’s right to govern itself without outside interference; in general, this right cannot be violated by another nation under international law un- less conditions for war are met.

SURVIVAL MIGRATION: A term used by aid workers, United Nations officials, and scholars interested in refugee issues to describe the complex causes of displace- ment that derive from both persecution and deprivation.

VOLUNTARY REPATRIATION: The voluntary and willing return of refugees to their home countries after asylum; usually involves help from the United Nations.

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Refugees’ Experience after World War II During World War II (1939–1945), millions of Euro- pean people lost their families, their homes, their coun- tries, and even their lives because of genocide, wide- spread violence, and destruction. When the war ended, millions of refugees were left in its wake. Various refu- gees were treated ruthlessly by countries in which they had sought asylum during the war. Some host countries reclaimed property, replaced refugees in camps, or de- ported them. Not only had many refugees lost their financial stability through the loss of their homes and livelihoods, but they also suffered from psychological distresses (such as depression and anxiety) because of trauma from war, the shock of being uprooted, the loss of family ties, and the challenges of adapting to a new culture.

As a result of this crisis, leaders of the UN first pro- claimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 to protect all people, and then adopted the 1951 Refugee Convention (also known as the Convention Relat- ing to the Status of Refugees) specifically to protect refu- gees in Western Europe in the years just following World War II. In addition to defining a refugee’s human rights,

the 1951 convention established international laws regard- ing countries’ responsibilities to protect refugees from harm. The convention also set an initial three-year time limit on addressing the plight of Western European refu- gees after the end of World War II.

In the 1950s refugee crises began to arise in other parts of the world, including Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. During this time, world leaders reevaluated their un- derstanding of refugee status. One major event that caused this reassessment happened in Hungary in 1956, when more than 200,000 refugees fled their home country for Austria and Yugoslavia in a short time during the Hungar- ian Revolution against the pro-Soviet government. With help from the UN, Austria and Yugoslavia were able to of- fer the Hungarian refugees asylum in a more orderly, ef- ficient, and welcoming way than the manner in which refu- gees were received after World War II in Western Europe.

As with other refugees, Hungarians experienced eco- nomic distress because of leaving their homes and jobs behind, and they faced difficulties resettling in countries with different social, cultural, and political systems. They, too, experienced psychological suffering (such as delusions and suicide attempts). As a result of this and other refugee crises, in 1967 UN leaders created a new set of laws called the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, which redefined the geographical boundaries for refugee resettlement. The protocol also extended the original time limitations so that all refugees (beyond Western Europeans, who were specifically identified during the 1951 Refugee Convention) could be provided with humanitarian aid and asylum during times of armed conflict.

Asylum Countries’ Responsibilities Through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1951 Refugee Convention, and the 1967 protocol, the participating countries legally bound themselves to protect all people fleeing their home countries in distress. The main concern of the UN after World War II was to restore and protect the dignity and equal rights of people who had been denied theirs by authori- tarian states or because of the wartime devastation of their home countries. The primary responsibility of the asylum countries was to protect vulnerable refugees based on the principle of non-refoulement, which comes from a French concept meaning “nonreturn.” Non- refoulement requires that asylum nations refrain from returning refugees to countries in which their lives would be in danger, their freedoms might be or have been threatened, or they might be or were previously physically or psychologically harmed.

With the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN sought to assist asylum countries receiving refugees, so the leaders established what was to be a temporary, three-year Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees to oversee the work of humanitarian aid and to encourage countries to adhere to the laws. As of 2017, this office, the UNHCR, not only assisted refugees in most aspects of the naturaliza-

Refugee population (number and percentage) by region, 2015

* Does not include Northern Africa

SOURCE: Adapted from "Table 1: Refugee Populations by UNHCR Regions 2015." Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2015. UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, June 20, 2016. http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/statistics/unhcrstats/576408cd7/ unhcr-global-trends-2015.html.

Middle East and Northern Africa

2,739,500 17%

Asia and Pacific 3,830,200

24%

Europe 4,391,400

27%

Total Africa* 4,413,500

27%

Americas 746,800 5%

Figures from UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency show Europe and Africa (excluding Northern Africa) being nearly tied in the number of refugees in those regions. Asia and the Pacific are close behind with the Americas having the least.

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tion process, helping them to settle permanently and safely in their asylum country, but also assisted those who wished to return to their country of origin in the process of volun- tary repatriation.

One key way the UNHCR supports naturalization is by keeping records on each refugee and cross-checking these with other databases, which helps countries as they consider accepting refugees for asylum. The UNHCR also keeps numeric data about the movement of refugees around the globe, assisting participating countries and NGOs with tracking refugee flows and coordinating re- sponses to emerging crises and ongoing demands for food, water, shelter, other basic needs, and additional protections. Rather than concluding its work with refugees just three years after it was established, the UNHCR has increased its role since the 1950s to become a crucial part of the process of helping millions of refugees around the world find safety and build new lives for themselves in asylum countries or back in their home countries.

■ Impacts and Issues War, poverty, and the lack of education and health care continue to dominate the lives of many people through- out the world and are primary reasons for the escalating number of people fleeing their home countries. The

overall impact is far-reaching and complex. In December 2015 António Guterres (1949–), the UN High Com- missioner for Refugees from 2005 to 2015, noted in a speech to the UN that there is an international struggle to respond appropriately to refugee crises because of the “staggering escalation” in the number of people seeking asylum and the growing number of complex causes for displacement.

The magnitude of the refugee crisis as of 2016 is exem- plified, in part, by the plight of refugees from the civil war in Syria, from which more than 4.8 million people have fled to other countries, primarily Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt, according to the November 2016 “Syria Re- gional Refugee Response” report by the UNHCR. A simi- lar November 2016 report, “South Sudan Situation,” by the same office also notes that more than 1 million refugees and asylum seekers have fled South Sudan since December 2013 to go to Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya be- cause of armed conflict and political strife within the country.

Other areas of the world are also experiencing high numbers of refugee flight, including countries in the Middle East (such as Iraq), Africa (including Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and Asia (such as Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Myanmar [also known as Burma]). A large number of refugees had requested asylum in countries around the world in the mid-2010s, but their

Germany emerged as a leader within the European Union for taking in refugees. This street art in Berlin, shown in September 2015, features poor refugees. Various artists in Europe have used graffiti to raise awareness of the refugee crisis. © Radiokafka/Shutterstock.com.

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needs were not simple and included not only aid for basic survival but also psychological aid, health care, and educa- tion among other things.

The Challenges of Resettlement Refugees usually seek asylum in nations neighboring their home countries because those countries are geo- graphically closer and easier to travel to. Such asylum countries, however, are not always stable themselves. For example, in 2016, while Turkey faced its own seri- ous political and economic challenges, including an at- tempted government takeover by factions within its military in July 2016, it was also providing asylum for over 2.7 million refugees from Syria, according to a UN report.

On arrival in an asylum country, refugees such as those from Syria are often first known as asylum seekers, and they face a long resettlement process that begins with ap- plications, security screenings, and interviews. If the asylum seeker is not listed for deportation from the host country and is accepted as having a legitimate claim for asylum, the person is then considered to be a refugee and receives

placement and orientation in the new country. The refugee can also receive UN-sanctioned aid in refugee camps in less stable countries (such as Turkey or Greece) or transition assistance such as money, health care, psychological services, and job training to help them reestablish themselves in neighborhoods within more stable countries (such as the United States or Germany).

The resettlement process is not easy for refugees, who face the permanent loss of their homes, families, communi- ties, and countries and can be confronted with residual problems of physical or psychological trauma. Once in the asylum country, they must also learn new languages, follow the unfamiliar practices and customs of everyday life in new social and cultural environments, and, in some cases, en- dure the challenging conditions of life in crowded refugee camps, which can include living in tents for extended peri- ods through harsh weather.

Although the UN, the asylum countries, and the NGOs express a shared goal of helping refugees find a permanent solution to their homelessness, not all asylum countries welcome refugees. This occurs because of social or political prejudices against refugees or because of the host governments’ inability to maintain efficient resettle-

Another group of asylum seekers are Rohingya Muslims, shown here sorting scrap collected from a dump yard for their daily livelihood during the holy month of Ramadan in the old city of Hyderabad, India, in June 2016. Fleeing sectarian violence and bloodshed in 2012 between the Rohingya and Buddhist population, more than 1,200 Rohingya Muslims left Myanmar (also known as Burma) and settled in Hyderabad. These asylum-seeking refugees work as daily wagers and live crammed into cheap quarters. According to the United Nations (UN) at that time, clashes between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims had left 115,000 people displaced and several dead. The Rohingyas have been described by the UN as one of the world’s most persecuted refugee groups. © NOAH SEELAM/Getty Images.

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ment processes for large influxes of people, making refugees one of the most vulnerable populations of people worldwide. This type of refusal occurred in the April 2016 case of 200 Pakistani and Bangladeshi refugees being re- jected from European nations and sent to Turkey. This type of situation adds additional stress to refugees’ lives and a layer of complexity to the international agreement to protect all refugees.

Survival Migration: Refugee Persecution and Deprivation By the 2010s, aid workers, scholars, humanitarians, UN officials, and others working closely with refugees around the world noticed that direct forms of persecu- tion are no longer the only major cause of displacement of people outside of their home countries. More people are fleeing their homes because of deprivation, which is a lack of basic needs (such as food, water, and shelter) or the absence of basic services (such as education and health care). An example of deprivation is the problem of food scarcity, Between 2004 and 2014, food scarcity caused “millions of persons [to abandon] their homes in countries such as North Korea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, and Somalia, hoping that by moving they could find the nourishment needed to survive,” according to a 2014 article by James C. Hathaway, the director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law at the Univer- sity of Michigan Law School. Although people experi- encing deprivation may not be persecuted through threats of torture, unjust punishment, or violent death, they are desperate, in fear for their lives, and may be in need of international assistance and protection.

Because of this shift in the causes of displacement, the UN began to consider adding deprivation as a primary cause of displacement, in addition to the cause of persecution. Alexander Betts, a scholar at the Refugee Stud- ies Centre at the University of Oxford in the United King- dom, uses the term survival migration to refer to the range of causes of displacement that fall under both persecution and deprivation. As a result of the challenges of deprivation and persecution, in late 2015, Guterres asked global lead- ers to develop a new international response to the refugee crisis and to redefine refugee status so that the international community might provide better aid and relief for all refugees.

SEE ALSO Citizenship; Deportation; Education; Forced Migration; Health and Health Care; Human Rights; Human Trafficking and Human Smuggling; Internal Migration; Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs); Naturalization; Refugee Camps; Refugee Fatigue; Refugees, Afghan; Refugees, Central American; Refugees, Iraqi; Refugees, Sudanese and South Sudanese; Refugees, Syrian; UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency; United Nations (UN); War

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

B o o k s

Betts, Alexander. Survival Migration: Failed Governance and the Crisis of Displacement. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013.

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Elena, Gil Loescher, Katy Long, and Nando Sigona, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Hollenbach, David, ed. Driven from Home: Protecting the Rights of Forced Migrants. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010.

Weiss, Thomas G. “Reinserting ‘Never’ into ‘Never Again’: Political Innovations and the Responsibility to Protect.” In Driven from Home: Protecting the Rights of Forced Migrants, edited by David Hollen- bach, 207–227. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010.

P e r i o d i c a l s

Cohon, J. Donald, Jr. “Psychological Adaptation and Dysfunction among Refugees.” International Migration Review 15, no. 1/2 (Spring–Summer 1981): 255–275.

Hathaway, James C. “Food Deprivation: A Basis for Refugee Status?” Social Research 81, no. 2 (Sum- mer 2014): 327–329. This article can also be found online at http://repository.law.umich.edu /cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2075&context =articles (accessed March 5, 2017).

We b s i t e s

“Desperate Journeys: Refugees and Migrants Entering and Crossing Europe Via the Mediterranean and Western Balkans Routes.” UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, February 2017. http://www .unhcr.org/en-us/news/updates/2017/2 /58b449f54/desperate-journeys-refugees-migrants -entering-crossing-europe-via-mediterranean.html ?query=number%20of%20refugees%202016 (ac- cessed March 3, 2017).

Goodwin-Gill, Guy S. “Introductory Note to Conven- tion Relating to the Status of Refugees, Geneva, 28 July 1951 and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, New York, 31 January 1967.” United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law. http://legal.un.org/avl/ha/prsr/prsr.html (ac- cessed March 5, 2017).

Guterres, António. “High Commissioner’s Dialogue on Protection Challenges: Understanding and Ad- dressing Root Causes of Displacement. Closing Remarks.” Speech delivered at a United Nations Meeting, Geneva, Switzerland, December 17,

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2015. http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/admin /hcspeeches/567971969/high-commissioners -dialogue-protection-challenges-understanding -addressing.html (accessed March 5, 2017).

“Migrant Crisis: Migration to Europe Explained in Seven Charts.” BBC News, March 4, 2016. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe -34131911 (accessed March 5, 2017).

“The 1951 Refugee Convention.” UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency. http://www.unhcr.org/pages /49da0e466.html (accessed March 5, 2017).

“South Sudan Situation: Information Sharing Portal.” UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency. http://data .unhcr.org/SouthSudan/regional.php (accessed March 5, 2017).

“Syria Regional Refugee Response.” UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency. http://data.unhcr.org/ syrianrefugees/regional.php (accessed March 5, 2017).

Mary O’Shan Overton

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