Students (pictured) are backpacking and traveling by choice. Sadly, millions of people are forced from their homelands, taking only what they can carry.
It's reasonable to expect that everyone reading this has a roof over their head, food on their table and a passport or identity document with their name on it. But 20.8 million people in the world aren't so lucky.
Today is International Refugee Day. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), 8.4 million people have left their countries because of war, ethnic, tribal and religious violence; they cannot return home. Another 6.6 million people are internally displaced - forced to flee their homes, but without crossing their country's borders.
"Stateless" people total 2.4 million worldwide, with another 1.6 million considered returnees (i.e. Palestinian refugees who fled their homes in 1948 and have recently returned to the West Bank). Another 773,000 people are asylum seekers, fleeing war or difficult circumstances in their own countries and trying to remain in Western countries. And 960,000 more people fall outside these categories, but are considered by aid workers to be "of concern."
So many heartbreaking true stories exist about refugees forced to flee their homes. In Africa, the Middle East, in Asia, in parts of Europe, in Central and South America - the stories are multiple and varied, but with a common thread - each person had a home once; each person - either compelled by unhappy choice or by force - lost that home and has been forced to seek shelter and asylum elsewhere.
I have a friend whose mother was working with the Queen of Libya and her father for an American oil company in Tripoli. They woke up one morning to find Muammar Qaddafi's tanks surrounding their house. They escaped with just the clothes on their backs, making their way to Malta and eventually Jordan. Today they have Jordanian passports and have rebuilt their lives in their adopted country.
I personally know many stories of Palestinians who have lived all their lives in refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon; camps with one-room schoolhouses, basic housing structures made of concrete blocks and corrugated tin roofs held down by stones and children playing next to raw sewage running through the streets. In recent years, those conditions have improved, but not enough. I also know stories about those who returned home only to find their towns had been renamed and their houses replaced by newly-built settlements, no Arabs allowed. The Greek director Costa-Gavras explored this issue in his film Hannah K.
Paris is filled with refugees and asylum seekers from Africa and North Africa. You've seen stories in the news about the poor conditions in which many of them live. You've read news reports about refugees killed by fire in government-sponsored temporary housing in seedy hotels near some of the world's most expensive real estate. You've heard about weeks of rioting sparked by angry, disaffected and unemployed immigrant youths in the banlieues or suburbs.
You're well aware of the refugees from Mexico and Central America who risk their lives trying to cross the Mexican border into the United States to what they imagine is a better life. You may prefer the term "illegal immigrant." But what do we know of the terrible conditions; the unstable political climate from whence they came?
So we all know refugees; they're all around us. The question is, what are we doing to help them? How can we make certain that every person has a roof over his head; a valid passport or identity card; food on the table and in general, benefits from basic human rights? For information about ways to help the world's refugees, go here.
Photo of Liberians returning from Sierra Leone courtesy of UNHCR
Thank you Tara for this post!
Posted by: Catalina | 21 June 2006 at 13:33
I have a mother who fled her home as a child only to be captured and forced into a work camp during last world war!She is the only survivor of a family of 13..the horrors
she endured..too many! Very sad TO KNOW travesties still going on around the globe!! Living in a country of "freedoms" we should ALL count our simple blessings!!
Posted by: naturegirl | 21 June 2006 at 12:20
Thanks for those sobering statistics. It's so easy as an American with a cushy life to forget what life is like in much of the world. So hard to reconcile the vision of humanity we get from our daily lives, to the realities of the brutality our species is capable of. What are we? It's my feeling we're just smart bipedal mammals with varying degrees of education, and the scariest part is how so many humans don't see that: they think we're the end-all-be-all of creation, the top dogs. I don't wish us off the planet, but think how much better off the planet would be without our big brains!
Posted by: Laini | 21 June 2006 at 07:42
we certainly tend to take it all for granted don't we
Posted by: jennifer | 21 June 2006 at 06:44
Evening now and I'm visiting again, Tara.
I just finished watching Anderson 360 on CNN. Tonight's show featured a special report centering on Angelina Jolie and her work with refugees. She is one impressive woman. If I had disposable wealth, there would be at least two hospitals that would be getting my help. They do so much and have so little.
Posted by: AnnieElf | 21 June 2006 at 06:29
This is so true. We so often go about our day happy with all the things we have forgetting to be thankful for our good fortune and the simple fact we have a roof over our heads and food to eat on our table.
Now that it is summer many more homeless line our streets than in the cooler months although it is a constant site year after year it never fails to jolt me into the reality of what others less fortunate than I are going through.
Tara, thank you so much for your caring reminder that life passes for us easily however for others it does not.
Posted by: Kristen Robinson | 20 June 2006 at 20:54
Thank you for the reminder of just how lucky we are. I read of these things and I just livid. It is not acceptable we even have to struggle with such problems.
Posted by: Shannon (Sentimental) | 20 June 2006 at 20:53
Tara, I came in from my stressful day to read blogs... my day is no longer stressful... this hit me like a ton of bricks..
thank you for forcing me to think in reality...
Posted by: diana | 20 June 2006 at 19:57
The more "civilized" we become, the more things stay the same. But we must always remember and speak out. Thank you for doing so.
Posted by: Colette | 20 June 2006 at 19:54
Tara,
This is such a thought provoking post and another reminder of all we have to be grateful for here in the west.
yolanda
Posted by: yolanda | 20 June 2006 at 19:45
GOOG God! These things make me feel so mad and helpless!! And damn lucky, too. Because it is just luck that we were born in the west.
What is it that is said? "From those to whom much is given, much is expected"... It begs the question, why are we not doing more...
Posted by: a | 20 June 2006 at 18:41
Dear Tara,
I'm glad you wrote this very informative and moving post. It is of great importance to make people aware of the plight of millions of refugees in todays world. And if we cannot help them, atleast we will consider them as individuals and human beings and not judge them as illegal immigrants or worse.
Posted by: jinxthegypsy | 20 June 2006 at 18:00
hi Tara,
Thank you so much for reminding all of us about the less fortunate among us...perhaps it will inspire us to do more to help build the lives of the homeless in a foreign land or sometimes within their own lands.
Posted by: abhay | 20 June 2006 at 17:46
Good morning Tara. Yet another urgent reminder of what must be fixed in the world so that these tragedies do not continue.
I saw the Costa Gravas film recently. Deeply moving and compelling.
Posted by: AnnieElf | 20 June 2006 at 14:55