WHY REFUGEES NEED A GLOBAL RESPONSE
There is no one solution, or one policy for the world’s millions of refugees.
In June, Amnesty International reported that “the global refugee crisis will not be solved unless the international community recognizes that it is a global problem and deals with it as such.”
Two months later, the horrifying deaths of 71 refugees in an abandoned truck in Austria and the haunting image of 3-yearold Alan Kurdi on a beach in Turkey riveted the world and moved many to action.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country would take hundreds of thousands of refugees annually for years to come. Border rules were eased, allowing thousands of Syrians to seek refuge in Germany.
But her swift action was met with an equally swift backlash. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban denounced the surge of refugees crossing into his country from the Balkans, accusing them of having “rebelled against Hungarian legal order.”
Border controls in Europe were reinstated and an emergency effort led by Germany to mandate refugee quotas for EU states collapsed.
The strife this week suggests more camps like Dadaab will be built, and will endure.
The first refugees at Dadaab did not envision still being there 25 years later and they may be there for 25 more if peace in Somalia is the only way to close the camp.
“You’ve got to differentiate the refugees. You’ve got to stop treating them as a mass of people and you’ve got to realize there are many different groups who have come at different points, who have different options back home, who have different levels of income and education,” says Ben Rawlence, the author of City of Thorns, a book about Dadaab to be released in January.
Refugees can leave Dadaab in three ways: return home (to Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia or other countries), resettle in a third country, or obtain citizenship in Kenya.
Although many of the residents were born and raised in Kenya, speak Swahili and identify as Kenyan, few will attain citizenship.
Kenyans of Somali heritage have long complained about discrimination by security forces and immigration officials, and the Kenyan government is not eager to grant Somalis a permanent home.
Finding settlement elsewhere is just as difficult. Most countries that were once generous in accepting refugees, including Canada, are turning away thousands of applicants. Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board statistics show a steady decline in the number of those settled. In 2011, the board approved 12,932 refugees. Last year, just 5,846 were accepted.
Only 3,338 Somali refugees have voluntarily returned home since the agreement to help facilitate repatriations was signed by the UN refugee agency and the Somali and Kenyan governments in 2013.
Many refugees complained that in addition to security concerns, they were being encouraged to return to places they may no longer recognize — their homes, livestock or businesses long gone. “They give you about $100, enough for a bus ticket,” was a comment often heard.
The UN refugee agency has an acronym to describe refugees in Dadaab — “P.R.A.”
It means “protracted refugee situation” and is defined as a group of more than 25,000 refugees, from one country, being encamped for more than five years.
It is estimated that two-thirds of the global refugee population is in this category.
That number is expected to rise.