Refugee Deeply Background Summary
After reading the background information from the Refugee Deeply website I have a better understanding about the history and definition of refugees. The Great War was the first major refugee crisis of the 20th century. Many fled because of troops invaded their home, but also people were forced out of their own country by the government. By 1951, the United Nations General Assembly created the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. Their job is to legally proctect the refugees during the continuing refugee crisis. Seeking asylum and being a refugee are not the same. A refugee is a person that is unable to return to their country because they will be harmed because of their religion, nationality, race, political opinion, or membership of a social group. If a person is seeking asylum it is because they have a fear of returning to their home country, but this does not qualify them as a refugee. For example, if you are abroad and while you are away your home country becomes unsafe then you are allowed to claim asylum. A person seeking refuge cannot claim himself or herself like claiming asylum. There is a Refugee Status Determination that is conducted by a government agency or by the UNCHR to figure out if the person should be a refugee. This consists of an interview process and then a background check on the country to see if the person actually needs to seek refuge.
Research
Syria Crisis Summary 9/22/16
Anti-government demonstrations started back in March of 2011, and by July there was a Free Syrian Army. Many civilians joined the army to fight back against the government. Over the course of the five years, 250,000 people have been killed, and they say about half of them were civilians. 6.6 million are internally displaced and about 12 million people need humanitarian assistance. Most of the humanitarian aid was cut off in 2015 when the fighting intensified in cities like Aleppo, which was a main aid route. Syrian Refugees were fleeing mostly to Jordan and Lebanon. In 2013 they were fleeing to Northern Iraq because the border was open. Now refugees are traveling to Turkey, and the Mercy Corps is trying their best to work with host cities there to provide aid. Families try to escape by walking at night to avoid being shot and prevent the young men in the family to be taken to join the regime. There are 4.8 million Syrian refugees under the United Nations, which is the largest population ever. It is also the worst exodus since Rwanda. About half of the Syrian refugees are children under the age of 18, and most have not been in school for several years since the crisis started.
Migrant Crisis: BBC News Article 9/29/16
This news article explains how migrants and refugees are crossing into Europe using data from 2015. Syria still had the highest number of citizens seeking refuge in Europe with over 350,000 people. The second highest was Afghanistan with 175,000, but compared to Syria, it makes up only half. Most of them come by sea, but some arrive on land through Turkey and Albania. About 1,011,700 people arrived by sea and 34,900 arrived on land in 2015 alone. This has increased immensely to the 280,000 total arrivals in 2014. The numbers used however are only the people that were detected. If they were to include the people who came through undetected there would be a total of about 1,800,000 arriving to Europe in 2015. German received the highest number of asylum applications in 2015. Germany received 476,000 asylum applications, but German officials have counted that more than one million people have been counted in Germany's "EASY" system. In all of Europe there was a total of 292,540 refugees offered asylum out of over the one million that applied. The voyage is extremely dangerous, with 3,770 migrants dying in 2015 trying to cross the Mediterranean. The highest death rates are in the summer months like August because they are the busiest times to make the voyage. Disasters on the sea tend to happen because the boats are overcrowded, which causes them to capsize.
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"Why I bought Four Syrian Children Off a Beirut Street" Summary 9/29/16
This article was about an American man describing his experience in Beirut when he encountered a Syrian woman with four children with her. The woman was a neighbor to the four children in Aleppo, and the children lost their parents in the war. The woman brought the children all the way to Lebanon but could no longer take care of them, and she was afraid to register with the UNHCR because she had no identification. The American man bought the the children for $600 and he took them back to his apartment. He planned on taking care of the children until he could find a proper care taker. However, his efforts did not amount to anything so he continued to take care of the children with his friend. The four kids are happy in his neighborhood and have met other Syrian children to play with.
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The experiences this American talks about in this article are very sad and graphic, and he takes the reader through his thought process for buying the children. He uses statistics in the article about the Syrian Refugee Crisis. There are 14 million people in Syria that need urgent assistance, and more than half are children. These children are getting sick from malnourishment, and they are also being abused and exploited. He mentions that there was a statistic that 20 children died from starvation and babies also died because there mothers were too ill to produce milk. He also mentions how he thought about all the children he sees wandering the streets in Beirut everyday looking for food. Many cars pull up to where the children are and molest them or abuse them. Sometimes the cars even take the children with them. The police do not do anything about it because they have too many other incidents to deal with. Woman have to sell themselves for sex in order to provide for their children because they can make more money doing that then working a 14 hour day. To summarize, this man brought in these children to protect them from the horrors they have to live everyday, and he advises other people to do everything they can so the children can have a better life.
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http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/15/why-i-bought-four-syrian-children-off-a-beirut-street/
Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders: Sudan (10/3)
MSF access in Sudan is very restricted, which creates a greater challenge for them to provide aid for those severely in need. MSF is responding to disease outbreaks, armed conflict, and health care exclusion in Sudan. Particularly, they are assisting in areas such as North Darfur, West Darfur, White Nile, and Al-Gedaref. North Darfur is a gold mining area, and there has been tribal clashes causing many people to need medical assistance. MSF is proving basic health care, impatient ward, and emergency surgeries to those in need in the area. In 2015, there were 54,000 outpatient consultations provided in North Darfur and 33,800 in West Darfur. There was an outbreak of viral hemorrhagic fever in West Darfur in 2015, and MSF set up an isolation ward and two mobile clinics. They treated 3,000 people with a fever and found that 1,000 of them had malaria, and they found that five of those people had the viral hemorrhagic fever. The MSF also provided health care to South Sudanese refugees. There 80,000 refugees living in three camps in the area. They had 44,300 consultants just within the three camps of the area. Unfortunately, MSF hospital in Frandala was bombed by Sudanese government forces back in january of 2015, so they had to close down. Bombings like this are an example why it is so difficult to provide relief to people in these areas.
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EXODUS: #CROSSING MEXICO The Forgotten Border in the South (10/4)
This article talks about the long journey for people living in Central America trying to make it through Mexico to the United States. Many people are trying to seek asylum from Central America because the terribly high amount of gang violence in countries like Honduras and Salvador makes living there unsafe. Only 25% of all applicants seeking asylum in Mexico were accepted between 2009 to 2013. This shows how ineffective the asylum application process has been for people trying to escape gang violence in Central America. Getting through Guatemala and Belize is the first step in the journey through Mexico. There is about 1,149 kilometers of rainforest, rivers, and mountains to get through before people even start their journey though Mexico. Once they get into Mexico they have to watch out for security forces trying to catch them. They also need to be on the look out for organized crime members and crooks that will try to mug them on their way through Mexico. Based on MSF, which treats people along their route, said that six out of every ten people they treat have encountered violence along the route. Much of the violence consists of mugging, theft, and verbal threats. However, women have to face many sexual aggressions along the route, and children also are in danger of kidnapping. Most migrants try to board "The Beast" which is a train that can take them most of the way through Mexico to the U.S border. The train does reach all towns so people have to walk for hours to make it to a town where the train will let people board. Once they reach a stop, migrants wait for hours or even days for the train to leave. Mexican government does not want the migrants on the train because they claim it makes them more vulnerable. However, the migrants boarding the train are not the ones causing the problems, it is the crooks and thieves that take advantage of the migrants on the train that make it dangerous. By the time migrants reach the U.S border many of them realize they cannot get in, and others are caught sneaking in and are put in jail or denied access to the country.
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Junior Harry: This is My Story (Youtube video) 10/6
Junior Harry is a young refugee from Liberia that came to the United States in 2004. He was born in Liberia but at only 8 months old he was taken to the Ivory Coast where he lived until he came to the United States. In 2007, when he was only 16 years old he was arrested for statutory rape of his girlfriend and the mother of his child. His girlfriend and her grandmother both claimed that they did not sign the papers for Junior to be arrested. The problem was that when Junior came to the United States they marked him down as an eighteen year old instead of a sixteen year old. The culture is very different in Liberia, and when Junior and his family first came over they did not speak English well, so there was a mix up when they did their documentations. He should not have been tried as an adult, and he should not have been sent to a prison if he was only 16. This discouraged the family because they made it out of the war zone and violence in Liberia with all their family members, but then they lost Junior once in the United States. In 2008, after one year in jail, Junior was ruled as a juvenile and was released. Junior was able to finish high school and attend college in 2010. This was a great milestone in his life because no one in his family had accomplished what he had done. He learned how to take care of himself and his family, so they could have the opportunity to succeed in the United States.
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One Family's Story from the Dem. Republic of Congo 10/6
Clement and Aline Shabani tell their story about life in the DRC. Within the first few minutes they mention that boys in the DRC are allowed to go to school but girls are not. Women are violated by the national army and civilian men. Aline explains that the women are often used as prostitutes to provide for the family. They are victim to HIV because of this. As part of the non-profit organization for human rights, Aline and Clement focused on the rights of women in the DRC and tried to help them find new homes and new hope. They also tried to bring the girls back to school and take care of their needs. In this story, like many others, the army acts as the super power that controls everyone, and cannot be stopped. The army men violate the women, abuse anyone that goes against what they say, and take whatever they want. The people of DRC needed justice, so Clement and Aline tried to get justice for the people. Then the army broke into their house and threatened them to stop trying to help people. While Clement is talking about the second time the army broke into their home you can see that Aline is upset hearing about the awful things that happened on that night. Their family had to leave the country and ended up in Uganda, and eventually they were able to get help from an Italian missionary. They were taken to Thailand once they had their travel paper work completed, and they stayed their for five years and nine months before coming to the United Sates. Life in Bangkok, Thailand was very difficult because they did not know english yet and they were unable to work and send their children to school because they were not citizens.
However, Clement says they were very lucky and truly grateful for the help they received to escape the injustices in the DRC. It was noticeable that this event was not easy for Clement and Aline because the memories were still fresh. Typically we have seen that refugees are not comfortable thinking back to the struggles they went through not too long ago. Hearing Clement and Aline talk about their story is similar to the other refugees around the world because they are all trying to escape the corrupt government, and they all have very little resources to use to get out of the country.