Ahead of World Refugee Day on June 20, UN agencies and NGOs note a rise in the number of refugees around the globe are on the rise and further forces of destabilization that put people more at risk.
The following article was published in the May-June 2024 issue of NewsNotes.
The UN has designated June 20 as World Refugee Day. This event “celebrates the strength and courage of people who have been forced to flee their home country to escape conflict and persecution.”
In 2023, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported that 114 million people were displaced due to war, violence, persecution, and climate-induced disasters. According to the UNHCR’s Global Refugee Forum (GRF), held in Geneva in December 2023, the number is estimated to rise to 130 million by the end of 2024.
At the GRF, nations and other stakeholders gather every four years to share good practices, take stock of the challenges and opportunities and contribute finances, technical expertise, material support, and policy commitments to help attain the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) goals.
The following are GCR objectives: to ease pressure on host countries, enhance refugee self-reliance, expand access to third-country solutions, and support conditions in countries of origin for return in safety and dignity. The GRF made multi-stakeholder commitments that are cross-cutting. They concluded that “every refugee represents a failure of peace and security.” Refugees’ needs and despair impact every one of us. Governments and civil societies need to understand the migration drivers, routes, and asylum outcomes to grasp the complete picture of migration and displacement.
Challenges faced by refugees and displaced people are complex and multi-dimensional. For instance, the Rohingya refugees in Cox Bazar in Bangladesh face disease, human trafficking, insecurity, police and gang violence, fire hazards, cyclones, flooding, landslides, and hunger – living on “30 cents a day.” By December 2023, the World Food Program reported that they had a US$60 budget gap to provide an adequate ration of food to the Rohingya refugees. The Bangladeshi government does not allow refugees to work or move freely, rendering them dependent on insufficient humanitarian aid. In December 2023, the UNHCR reported that two rickety boats carrying about 400 Rohingyas were stranded in the Andaman Sea. They were fleeing gang violence, extortion and other dehumanizing conditions in the refugee camps in Bangladesh.
In Europe, refugees are facing unfathomable hostilities and challenges. In 2015, the world was shell-shocked when photos of a drowned Syrian toddler inundated the media.
Despite global outcry for compassion, migrants continue to die in droves on the high seas while trying to seek safety.
On April 10, the European Union Parliament signed the New Pact on Migration and Asylum. The pact has been in the works since 2015. The pact’s four pillars are: secure eternal borders, fast and efficient procedures, efficient systems of solidarity and responsibility and embedding migration in international partnerships.
The pact supposedly addresses the migration crisis within the EU bloc by speeding up the asylum process and boosting the deportation of irregular migrants. Given that a processing period of only 3 months and an undefined “low chance of asylum acceptance” coupled with expedited forceful removal, the policy is susceptible to abuse, and could lead to the denial of asylum or refugee status to deserving candidates. In fact, many NGOs, such as Amnesty International, have said that such a policy would lead to a “surge in the suffering of refugees.”
The UK parliament passed a law in April to pave the way for Britain to send asylum seekers who arrive without permission to Rwanda, which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says will deter migrants from making the dangerous journey to Britain in small boats. The human rights group Asylum Aid said on May 3 that it had launched a legal challenge against the British government’s policy, which they described as failing to consider individual cases against removal to Rwanda, including on the grounds that they would be returned from Rwanda to the place they fled.
In recent years, there have been many social media posts promoting migration have significantly accelerated movement to the U.S. along dangerous routes such as the Darien gap, the treacherous path through the Panama jungle.
The movement has expanded to populations not seen previously. For instance, “in the first nine months of 2023, the US Border Patrol made 22,187 arrests of Chinese nationals entering the country from Mexico. A figure 13 times the number from the same period in 2022.” The US Customs and Border Control has continued to require people seeking entry to the U.S. from the southern border to use the mobile app called CBP One. Although the app has been improved to be user-friendly, many people running for their lives have not successfully used it, leaving many of them to be exploited by the cartels and criminal actors.
Addressing such challenges will require multilateral cooperation to develop sustainable solutions and humane policies that do not dehumanize refugees.
Photo of Cuban migrants in the waters south of Key West, Florida, interdicted in January 2015, by the US Coast Guard.