Where will the refugees call home?
By Betty Holford, Barbados Advocate
June 25, 2004 — One of the deepest cravings of the human spirit is a sense of belonging. Most Barbadians are keenly aware of this fact. Perhaps that is why no matter where we roam, we tend to boast long and loudly about our colourful heritage. Last Sunday was World Refugee Day, and the theme, “A Place to Call Home”, was a poignant reminder that millions of people worldwide are not blessed with the peace and freedoms, which we sometimes take for granted. Through the immediacy of satellite, we come face to face once again with the anguish and powerlessness of the victims of another heinous example of man’s inhumanity to man, as we were given a glimpse of the refugee crisis unfolding in Sudan’s Darfur region.
According to news reports, Arab militias, supported by the Sudanese government, have been pillaging villages after a rebellion that was mounted last year by fighters who insisted that the local black African population was being oppressed. Historically, tension has been rife between the two groups over land and grazing rights. Several human rights groups have issued indictments against the militias for atrocities including murders, looting and rape of the non-Arab residents of Darfur.
Some international commentators are adamant that the insurrection is not simply about land but revolves around racial and ethnic cleansing and genocide on a scale that pales the Balkans into insignificance. They accuse the British and American governments of being indifferent to the plight of black Africa. Britain they argue, as a former coloniser is responsible for some of the feud and faction that is ripping Africa apart, and should from a sense of duty, intervene as it has done in Iraq. Another school of thought contends that it is time for the other African states to mobilise and prevent genocide reminiscent of Rwanda.
As usual, the United Nations has come under fire as being inept in ensuring human rights. Sudan is a member of the UN Human Rights Commission and the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has been appealing to the Arab world to help stop the Darfur debacle.
Currently, it is estimated that more than one million people have been internally displaced by the Darfur conflict and several thousand have been killed. At least 150 000 have sought refuge in neighbouring Chad and the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, has been deploying large amounts of aid to the region. It is also rushing to relocate thousands of refugees camped along a 600km stretch of the border and vulnerable to attacks from Sudan, before the onset of seasonal rains in a few weeks’ time. The director of UNICEF has warned that a humanitarian disaster is looming and the United Nations has appealed for $55.8 million to help the refugees.
In his message to mark World Refugee Day, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Rudd Lubbers, mused, “All of us need a place to call home – a place where we “belong”. For millions of refugees and displaced persons around the world today, however, this is little more than a distant dream. Commissioner Lubbers observed that refugees flee persecution and conflict, often with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, and are separated from all that is familiar – family, friends, work, community and culture. “Faced with an uncertain future in a strange land,” he maintained, “the sense of loss and alienation can be overwhelming. To lose one’s home can be to lose one’s identity.”
Interestingly enough, the UNHCR disclosed that the number of refugees worldwide has dropped to the lowest level in at least a decade. This ha been attributed to international efforts to help uprooted people. Rudd deemed the statistics encouraging. At present 9.7 million people globally are regarded as refugees. The UNHCR cited the return of refugees to Afghanistan as one of the main reasons for the decline in the latest figures. More than half of the 1.1 million Afghan refugees repatriated last year returned to their homeland.
The older I become, the closer I seem to live to tears. I feel profound fear for the fleeing Darfur refugees, especially the children, and continue to petition the universe for a more caring world in which the worth of every human being, regardless of race, religion, gender or class is recognised. We all need a place to call home!