Refugee crisis

A refugee crisis can refer to difficulties and dangerous situations in the reception of large groups of forcibly displaced persons. These could be either internally displaced, refugees, asylum seekers or any other huge groups of migrants.

A crisis could occur within the country, while attempting to leave, or while on the move to a safe country, or even after arrival in a country of asylum. A situation can be called a crisis, either from the perspective of the forcibly displaced persons, or from the perspective of the receiving state, or both.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, as of January 2019, 70.8 million (41.3 million internally, 25.9 million registered (20.4 million under UNHCR, 5.5 million under UNRWA), 3.5 million asylum seekers) had been displaced worldwide.

In 2016, an estimated 362,000 refugees crossed the Mediterranean Sea in attempts to reach Europe due to dangers in their home countries. In the first half of 2017, over 105,000 refugees and migrants entered Europe through the Mediterranean. Between 2014 and 2021, at least 158,000 people tried to cross the Mediterranean towards Europe and at least 22,845 people died during the attempt.

Definition

Crisis of refugees can refer to large groups of displaced people, who could be either internally displaced persons, refugees or other migrants, the incidents in their country of origin, or to problems while on the move, or it can refer to problems in the hosting countries after arrival involving large groups of displaced peoples, asylum seekers or refugees.

Causes

Causes for the crisis of the refugees can include war and civil war, human rights violations, environment and climate issues, and economic hardship.

War and civil war

In June 2015 the UN refugee agency reported that wars and persecutions are the main reasons behind the refugee crises all over the world. A decade earlier, six people were forced to leave their homes every 60 seconds, but in 2015 wars drove 24 people on average away from their homes each minute. In its ''Border Wars'' series, the Transnational Institute examines the role of the arms industry in creating and profting from forced displacement, underscoring that "some of the beneficiaries of border security contracts are some of the biggest arms sellers to the Middle-East and North-Africa, fuelling the conflicts in the region that have led refugees to flee their homes. In other words, the companies contributing to the refugee crisis are now profiting from the consequences."

Human rights violations

Discrimination and inequality can also lead many individuals and families to move away from their homelands to other countries or regions (for example Europe, Nigeria, Canada or North America and Australia).

Environment and climate

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". The term 'environmental refugee' is also commonly used and an estimated 25 million people can currently be classified as such. The alarming predictions by the UN, charities and some environmentalists, that between 200 million and 1 billion people (that's a lot) could flood across international borders to escape the impacts of climate change in the next 40 years are realistic. Case studies from Bolivia, Senegal and Tanzania, three countries that are said to be prone to suffering the effects of climate change, show that people affected by environmental degradation rarely move across borders. Instead, they adapt to new circumstances by moving short distances for short periods, often to cities. Millions of people live in places that are vulnerable to the effects of climate change. They face extreme weather conditions such as droughts or floods. Their lives and livelihoods might be threatened in new ways and create new vulnerabilities.

Following the effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the term ''refugee'' was sometimes used to describe people displaced by the storm and the aftereffects. There was an outcry that the term should not be used to describe Americans displaced within their own county, and the term ''evacuee'' was substituted in its place. The UNHCR similarly opposes the use of the term ''refugee'' in reference to environmental migrants, as this term has a strict legal definition.

Economic hardship

A forcibly displaced person is distinguished from an economic migrant. In 2008, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs suggested a better term for migrants who fled for the purpose of their and their dependents' basic survival was "forced humanitarian migrants". These economic migrants fall outside the mandates of the support structures offered by governments and non-governmental organizations for refugees.

Even economic migration requires a certain level of 'wealth' as migration is always a selective process - and the poorest and most vulnerable people are often excluded as they will find it almost impossible to move due to a lack of necessary funds or social support.

An example is the 2008-2009 mass movement of Zimbabweans to neighboring countries. Most migrants did not fit in either category and had more general needs that fell outside the specific mandate of the UNHCR.

Gender based violence

Women and children refugees face a disproportionate threat of violence throughout their migratory journeys and within refugee camps. Violence targeting women who travel alone and women who travel with children is an example of Gender-Based Violence. The most common forms of Gender-Based Violence include rape and other forms of sexual assault, human trafficking, and forced sex, often in exchange for passage to Europe via human smugglers.

Moria Refugee Camp is Europe's largest refugee camp and is located on Lesvos Island, Greece. Moria Refugee Camp was originally designed for 3,500 people, however it currently holds more than 20,000 people. Moria Refugee Camp is considered by many in the international community as an unsafe environment for women and children. On 29 September 2019 a deadly fire broke out in Moria Refugee Camp killing at least one person. Following the fire, inhabitants of the camp began protesting the inhumane conditions of Moria Refugee Camp and
riot
broke out leaving one woman and child dead. Multiple Non-Government Organizations continue to work within Moria Refugee Camp in response to the dangerous conditions that disproportionately affect women and children with the goal of reducing gender-based violence from the refugee camp.

Exploits of displaced people

Large groups of displaced persons could be abused as 'weapons' to threaten or political enemies or neighbouring countries. Refugees as Weapons is mass exodus of refugees from a state to a hostile state as a "weapon" against an enemy. Weaponized migration occurs when a challenging state or non-state actor exploits human migration—whether voluntary or forced—in order to achieve political, military, and/or economic objectives. The concept is categorized into infiltration, coercive, dispossessive, exportive, fifth Column.

Political responses

Since the establishment of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, instances of population displacement have been identified by registered non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in countries where local governments fail to provide or protect the economic means and social rights of their citizens. In 1963, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, then Deputy High Commissioner, stated – after visiting Africa – that some refugees are "a by product" and will probably "not have much of a chance to return to their country".

The Aga Khan Development Network, led by the current Ismaili imam, the Aga Khan IV, is engaged in "enhanced cooperation" with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to "help broaden the way the international community responds to crises today".

Preventing the root causes of migration

The flow of migrants can be reduced by removing the causes of migration like wars, for example. The United Nations urge to make more efforts for achieving this type of solutions.

The European Union has many tools for addressing the root causes of the crisis: "such as the trust funds for Africa and for the Syrian refugee crisis, the Facility for Refugees in Turkey and the EU's External Investment Plan" However, as the Transnational Institute criticised in a 2021 report, "Europe is creating refugees through its arms trade. If the EU and its member states genuinely want to address what they perceive as a “migration crisis”, they must curb arms exports, improve accountability mechanisms, and end the unbridled lobbying efforts of arms companies in the corridors of power in Brussels and other European capitals."

Germany is trying to prevent the root causes of the migrant crisis in Africa. It created a "Marshall Plan with Africa" (Eckpunkte für einen Marshallplan mit Afrika). The main objectives of the plan are: "increasing trade and development on the continent and hopefully reducing mass migration flows north across the Mediterranean". It will concentrate on " fair trade, increased private investment, bottom-up economic development, entrepreneurship, and job creation and employment". The European Union offered an aid package to Mali in return for taking back her refugees. Among other ways, it is trying to reduce the migrant flow from Ghana by helping the population to find employment in this country

Another example of addressing the root causes of the crisis is The Mesopotamian Ecology Movement (MEM) attempts to conserve the water resources of the region by different methods, including "returning to traditional water-conserving cultivation techniques", as well as "communal economy". Political stability and peace in the region are important to achieve the target Kurdistan is an area relatively rich in water, especially for the Middle East region. Large part of the water of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey come from it. It means that water resource conservation in it, is important to the water supply of the region, what can help prevent wars and reach stability. Kurdistan has hosted 2,250,000 refugees fleeing conflict zones elsewhere in Iraq and Syria, by 2015. This can help prevent refugee waves to Europe and United States.

Forecasting refugee trends

Various methods have been proposed and implemented to forecast refugee trends to and from various countries, including aspect structuring and the Bayesian semiparametric approach. Forecasting refugee trends is useful for national and international immigration policies, relief efforts, and economic projections including unemployment rates.

Migratory routes and methods of fleeing

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.

f 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.

There are three Mediterranean refugee routes: Eastern, Central and Western route. Since 2015 more than 700.000 refugees and other migrants used these routes (i.e. the Eastern Balkan route and the Western Balkan route) from Greece through the Balkan to enter central European countries. Since March 2016 the Eastern route is almost closed, but the Western route is still busy.

Modern and contemporary refugee crises

Global population of concern

, 70.8 million individuals have been forcibly displaced worldwide because of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations, per the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Of these, 5.5 million were Palestinian refugees, which are not under UNHCR but under UNRWA’s mandate.

Since 2007, the refugee estimates include not only refugees per the narrow 1951 UN definition, but also people in refugee-like situations, so figures prior to 2007 are not fully comparable. The figure also includes internally displaced persons (IDP) within their country and people in IDP-like situations, which is descriptive and includes groups of persons who are inside their country of nationality or habitual residence and who face protection risks similar to those of IDPs but who, for practical or other reasons, could not be reported as such and stateless persons.

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 number of refugees in Africa increased from 860,000 in 1968 to 6,775,000 by 1992. By the end of 2004, that number had dropped to 2,748,400 refugees, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. (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. The largest number of refugees in 2004 are from Sudan and have fled either the longstanding and recently concluded Sudanese Civil War or the War in Darfur and are located mainly in Chad, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya.

Algeria

The International Organization for Migration has stated that refugee migration into Algeria has markedly increased since 2014, with most refugees arriving from Niger. According to the Associated Press over 14,000 refugees were expelled from Algeria between August 2017 and June 2018, with refugees forced to walk on foot through the Sahara to small towns in Niger. The AP reported that as many as 30,000 refugees had died in the desert in Algeria, Niger and nearby countries since 2014.

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 people 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.

The Lord's Resistance Army insurgency forced many civilians to live in internally displaced person camps.

Great Lakes

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

An estimated 2.5 million people, 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 war in Darfur in western Sudan since roughly 2003.

Nigeria

Following Boko Haram's violence thousands of Nigerians fled to Niger and Cameroon.

Central African Republic

Sudan

There are tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees in Egypt, most of them seeking refuge from ongoing military conflicts in their home country of Sudan. Their official status as refugees is highly disputed, and they have been subject to racial discrimination and police violence. They live among a much larger population of Sudanese migrants in Egypt, more than two million people of Sudanese nationality (by most estimates; a full range is 750,000 to 4 million (FMRS 2006:5) who live in Egypt. The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants believes many more of these migrants are in fact refugees, but see little benefit in seeking recognition.

South Sudan

Somalia

Following the outbreak of civil war in Somalia, many of the country's residents left in search of asylum. According to the UNHCR, there were around 976,500 registered refugees from the nation in adjacent states as of 2016. The majority of these individuals were registered in Kenya (413,170: 326,611 in Dadaab, 54,550 in Kakuma, 32,009 in Nairobi), Yemen (253,876 in UNHCR centers and urban areas), and Ethiopia (213,775 in five camps in Dollo Ado). Additionally, 1.1 million people were internally displaced persons (IDPs). Most of the IDPs were Bantus and other ethnic minorities originating from the southern regions, including those displaced in the north. An estimated 60% of the IDPs were children. Causes of the displacement included armed violence, diverted aid flows and natural disasters, which hindered the IDPs' access to safe shelter and resources. IDP settlements were concentrated in south-central Somalia (893,000), followed by the northern Puntland (129,000) and Somaliland (84,000) regions. Additionally, there were around 9,356 registered refugees and 11,157 registered asylum seekers in Somalia. Most of these foreign nationals emigrated from Yemen to northern Somalia after the Houthi insurgency in 2015.

Western Sahara

It is estimated that between 165,000 – 200,000 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.

Libya

Refugees of the 2011 Libyan civil war are the people, predominantly of Libyan nationality, who fled or were expelled from their homes during the 2011 Libyan civil war, from within the borders of Libya to the neighbouring states of Tunisia, Egypt and Chad, as well as to European countries, across the Mediterranean, as Boat people. The majority of Libyan refugees are Arabs and Berbers, though many of other ethnicities, temporarily living in Libya, originated from sub-Saharan Africa, were also among the first refugee waves to exit the country. The total Libyan refugee numbers are estimated at near one million as of June 2011. About half of them had returned to Libyan territory during summer 2011, though large refugee camps on Tunisian and Chad border kept being overpopulated.

Americas

El Salvador

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.

Guatemala

There was also a large exodus of Guatemalans during the 1980s, trying to escape from the civil war there as well. These people went to Southern Mexico and the U.S.

Haiti

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.

Cuba

The victory of the forces led by Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution led to a large exodus of Cubans between 1959 and 1980. Thousands 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. government instituted a wet feet, dry feet policy allowing refuge to those travelers who manage to complete their journey, and the Cuban government has periodically allowed for mass migration by organizing leaving posts. The most famous of these agreed migrations was the Mariel boatlift of 1980.

Colombia

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 U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants that there are about 150,000 Colombians in "refugee-like situations" in the United States, not recognized as refugees or subject to any formal protection.

United States

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, nine 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, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and World Relief.

Jesuit Refugee Service/USA (JRS/USA) has worked to help resettle Bhutanese refugees in the United States. The mission of JRS/USA is to accompany, serve and defend the rights of refugees and other forcibly displaced persons. JRS/USA is one of 10 geographic regions of Jesuit Refugee Service, an international Catholic organization sponsored by the Society of Jesus. In coordination with JRS's International Office in Rome, JRS/USA provides advocacy, financial and human resources for JRS regions throughout the world.

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, Maryland, 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.

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. The question of Jewish, Christian and other refugees from Arab and Muslim countries was introduced in March 2007 in the US Congress.

In 2016, the Obama administration announced a commitment to increase the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. to 110,000 in 2017, from the rate of 85,000 in the 2016 fiscal year, in addition to a private sector call to action in the Partnership for Refugees.

Venezuela

The Venezuelan diaspora is the large-scale emigration of millions of Venezuelans following the establishment of Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution and its continuation through Chávez's successor, Nicolás Maduro. The Bolivarian government's policies resulted in increased crime, poverty, food shortages, and widespread corruption, all of which culminated into the crisis in Bolivarian Venezuela. The diaspora resulted in the largest recorded refugee crisis in the Americas. Between 1998 and 2018, about 4 million Venezuelans —over 10% of Venezuela's entire population— had emigrated from the Latin American country due to the crisis.

Asia

Afghanistan

From the Soviet invasion in 1979 until the late 2001 U.S.-led invasion, a total of six million citizens of Afghanistan have migrated to neighboring parts of Pakistan and Iran. Since early 2002, however, more than 4 million of these Afghan refugees have voluntarily repatriated through the UNHCR from Pakistan to Afghanistan.Voluntary Repatriation Update
(UNHCR Nov. 2016)

As of late 2016, some 1.3 million registered Afghan refugees still remain in Pakistan. Most of these were born and raised in Pakistan during the last 35 years but are still counted as citizens of Afghanistan. They were allowed to reside and work in Pakistan until the end of 2018.

In the meantime, about a million Afghans refugees remain in Iran, which include the many who were born inside Iran during the last 35 years. The number of Afghan refugees is decreasing significantly every year due to voluntary repatriation. For instance, in 2017 alone, over half a million of them returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan and Iran.

The 2011 industrialized country asylum data notes a 30% increase in applications from Afghans from 2010 to 2011, primarily towards Germany and Turkey.

Pakistan

Since the beginning US military intervention against the Taliban in Pakistan over 1.2 million people have been displaced in across the country, joined by a further 555,000 Pakistanis uprooted by fighting since August 2008.

India

=The Partition of 1947

=

The partition of the British Raj provinces of Punjab and Bengal and the subsequent independence of Pakistan and one day later of India in 1947 resulted in the largest human movement in history. In this population exchange, approximately 7 million Hindus and Sikhs from Bangladesh and Pakistan moved to India while approximately 7 million Muslims from India moved to Pakistan. Approximately one million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs died during this event.

=Bangladeshis

=
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 are known as '" Chakmas"' in India. Other than chakmas there are Bengali Hindu refugee are also there who remain in India after war.

=Sri Lankans

=

The civil war in Sri Lanka, from 1983 to 2009 had generated thousands of internally displaced people as well as refugees most of them being the Tamils. Many Sri Lankans have fled to neighbourly India and western countries such as Canada, France, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

While successive policies of discrimination and intimidation of the Tamils drove thousands to flee seeking asylum, the brutal end to the Civil War and the ongoing repression have forced a wave of thousands of refugees migrate, to countries like Canada, the UK and especially Australia. Australia in particular, receives hundreds of refugees every month.

About 69,000 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees live in 112 camps in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

=Jammu and Kashmir

=

According to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), about 300,000 Hindu Kashmiri Pandits have been forced to leave the state of Jammu and Kashmir due to Islamic militancy and religious discrimination from the Muslim majority, making them refugees in their own country. Some have found refuge in Jammu and its adjoining areas, while others in camps in Delhi and others in other states of India and other countries too. Kashmiri groups peg the number of migrants closer to 500,000.

Biharis

During the period of united Pakistan (1947–1971), the Urdu

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases