Professional Documents
Culture Documents
world refugee problem is perhaps the most complex. Harto Hakovitra, The Global Refugee Problem: A Model and its Implication, International Political Science Review (1993) vol. 14, No. 1, P. 35 Unaccepted where they are, unable to return whence they came Leon Gordenker, Refugees in International Politics (Beckenham: Croom Helm, 1987), p. 213. The problem of refugees in a world of states is important in the real world, consequential for our understanding of a current issue that significantly affects lives. Today, the problems of refugees raise not only humanitarian and human rights concerns but also fundamental issues of international peace and security. The problem of the world's refugees and internally displaced is among the most complicated issues before the world community today.
Definition: UN Convention defined a refugee as any person who owing to a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country (UN 1951, I.1.A [2]). the OAU definition includes anyone who through aggression, occupation, foreign domination, or events gravely disturbing public order in part, or in all of his country of origin, or the country of which he has nationality, is obliged to leave his usual place of residence to seek refuge outside this country. (OAU 1969, Article 1) Refugees and Displaced persons: Human rights law tends to distinguish between refugees who are considered to have crossed an international border, and displaced persons who flee or are forced to leave their homes but remain within the confines of their national borders. Parliamentary Assembly, Council of Europe, The problem of environmental refugees 23 October 2006
Kunzs Typology of refugees: In order to explain how refugees can be classified, Kunz (1981, p. 44) divided them into three distinct groups, derived from refugees attitudes towards their displacement. Majority identified refugees: Those refugees whose opposition to political and social events at home is shared by their compatriots, both refugees and those who remain in home areas. Events related refugees: Refugees who have left their home areas because of active or latent discrimination against the group to which they belong. These refugees, who feel irreconcilably alienated from their fellow citizens, Kunz calls. Self-alienated refugees: A third type of refugee includes people who decided to leave their home country for a variety of individual reasons. These self-alienated refugees feel alienated from their society not by any active policy of that society, but rather by some personal philosophy.
Rights of Refugees and asylum seekers: A person who is a refugee has a number of important rights under the Refugee Convention, including: y y y y y y y the right to seek asylum in a country outside their country of origin which has agreed to be bound by the Refugee Convention; the right not to be returned to the country where they have a well-founded fear of persecution; the right not to be discriminated against or penalised because they are a refugee; the right to equal access to the courts; freedom of religion and movement; the right to education and employment; and access to travel documents.
Article 31 of the Refugee Convention prohibits penalising asylum seekers based on the manner of their arrival into the country from which they are seeking protection.
Causes: a) civil war or disturbance in the country: The problem of the worlds refugees continuously escalating since decades is primarily a direct consequence of the increasing number and intensity of wars and violent conflicts. Racism: Recently, a series of expert papers presented to the First Preparatory Committee for the World Conference Against Racism have named racism as one of the root causes of refugee flows.[4]
Economic crisis: Poverty inevitably compounds ethnic and communal tensions, with minority groups often providing convenient targets. More than one billion people worldwide live in absolute poverty. Economic deprivation is a major factor in the instibility of conflict situations which produce refugees. Famine: When the conditions of daily life, precarious to begin with, are disrupted by war, the ensuing famine and disease often become greater threats to the population then the fighting itself (Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia).
Causes:
Bad or non-existing governance is indeed often presented as the core of all root causes be it poverty, scarcity of resources, (national) inequality, chaotic and insecure living conditions, human rights violations, discrimination or violent conflict and even natural disasters as they often stem from exploitative and damaging environmental policies. This approach has been criticized for its emphasis on the internal aspects of root causes while neglecting external influences such as colonialism, unfair trade regulations, global inequality, the impact of transnational corporations on the local economy and the environment, arms trade and development cooperation itself, particularly the role of the International Financial Institutions and their structural adjustment programs.[5]
The four major root causes of refugee outflows are now well known:
1. Politics ----------At base, this is persecution based on who a refugee is (race, nationality, membership of particular social group) or what he or she believes (religion or political opinion). Persecution usually takes place in the context of fundamental political disputes over who controls the state, how society organizes itself and who commands the power and privilege that go with political control.
These disputes often erupt during periods of intense change, when entire social classes or ethnic groups may be perceived to hold political opinions in opposition to the state (the professional classes in Cambodia under Pol Pot or the Kurds in Iraq under Saddam Hussein).
A recent and alarming trend is for the majority of the refugee producing conflicts in the world to take places within states rather than between them (Mozambique, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda).
Weak states are especially prone to internal violence, lacking as they often do, representative political institutions, credible mechanisms for resolving conflicts peacefully, impartial law enforcement or free elections.
The vast majority of refugees today, as in the past, are fleeing not from targeted acts of individual persecution but from generalised violence that endangers civilians and radically disrupts everyday life.
3. Environment -------------Millions of people have been forced to leave their homes because the land on which they live has become uninhabitable or is no longer able to support them. In some cases, the cause is natural disaster; in others, the catastrophe is caused by humans. The disruption to habitat may be sudden (Chernobyl or Mt Pinatubo) or as gradual as the spreading of a desert or the retreat of a forest.
The terminology for describing environmentally induced migration is controversial. People displaced by environmental degradation or natural disaster need help, ideally from their own government. They do not necessarily require the kind of international protection implied in the word "refugee".
Occasionally, the destruction of habitat can equate with persecution - if it occurs as the result of deliberate governmental action or gross negligence and no effort is made to assist or compensate the victims.
In extreme cases, for example in Iraqui Kurdistan, destruction of a habitat may be used as a deliberate weapon of war. Long-term strategies of prevention should address environmental damage as a potential contributor to refugee flows.
4. Ethnic tensions -----------------Conflicts between ethnic groups have proliferated in recent years. Armenia and Azerbaijan, Bhutan, Burma, Ethiopia, Georgia, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Sudan and former Yugoslavia are examples. The 190 or so
independent states currently in existence contain at least 5000 ethnic groups. Predictably they do not always live together harmoniously.
Ethnic tensions can be seen as a root cause of refugee flows for two reasons. First, they are highly suspectible to political exploitation. Second, in extreme nationalistic regimes, a minority ethnic group can be seen as an obstacle to nation-building, incapable of fitting into a homogeneous national identity (e.g. ethnic Albanians and Bosnian Moslems in conflict with "greater Serbia"). Members of the minority group may be exposed to discrimination, forced assimilation, persecution, expulsion or even genocide.
Coerced departure is a violation of the human right to remain peacefully in one's home. In Iraq, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Myanmar, Guatemala and Rwanda, human rights violations - enforced military conscription, arbitrary arrest, detention without trial, torture, rape and murder - have been at the core of major humanitarian emergencies. The refugee's need for protection arises from the violation of his or her rights combined with his or her home government's failure to defend its citizens against such violations. This failure by government is now frequently, and correctly, seen as a threat to international peace and security. The would's twenty million refugees are part of a complex migratory phenomenon. Global migration proceeds across a spectrum of motivation ranging from those fleeing persecution and serious danger, to those trying to escape misery and those who wish to leave behind a lack of opportunity.
The most privileged move for reasons of personal preference. Others flee for their lives. The distinction between refugees and economic migrants is most difficult to distinguish when people flee from countries where poverty is perpetuated through the political system.
Since it emerged as a modern problem it became clear that the refugee issue was beyond the capacity of any one government to deal with effectively.
Effects: 1. Burden to the receiving country: 2. Needs financial aids from UN: 3. Trouble with the local population: 4. Health problem:
Solution of refugee problem: Refugee camps: Resettling them to third countries: Right to return: