Here’s my daily routine: I wake up every morning at 7 am, have breakfast, and go to school. I spend seven hours complaining about being tired and having too much homework while secretly enjoying most of the things we do in class, and then I go home. I have lunch, take a nap, and get down to business, completing assignments and preparing for exams. In late afternoon I take a shower, watch a couple of episodes of…whatever, and then go to bed at an ungodly hour. I’m willing to bet your life is more or less the same. Now here’s another picture: imagine waking up feeling cold and damp inside a tent possibly invaded by mud. You exit the tent – body aching and bruised – and are greeted with the sight of hundreds of identical forms of housing, each one worn by harsh weather conditions and flooded with rain water. Clothes hang from string lines, garbage piles rise steadily as time passes, sickness spreads sneakily. During the day you either eat little or not at all, there’s not enough food for all of you. At night, it’s cold and the ground is rough and you have nightmares. On top of that, you’re homesick. That may not be your life, but I assure you it’s someone else’s.
Refugees have been an increasingly pressing issue for the Modern World for a while now. For one thing, what is a refugee? The Cambridge Dictionary presents us with the following definition: “a person who has escaped from their own country for political, religious, or economic reasons or because of a war”. Refugees are people seeking shelter in other countries. And their numbers have been steadily rising. The global number of displaced individuals has doubled in less than a decade, going from less than 50 million in 2012 to nearly 100 million in 2022 (including internal refugees), according to an UNHCR research. Statistics show that over 70% of people fleeing their countries originate from either the Syrian Arab Republic (6.8 million refugees, 27%), Venezuela, Ukraine, Afghanistan, or South Sudan. Large numbers find refuge in Turkey, Pakistan, or Colombia, while 75% of refugees are sheltered in low or middle-income countries. On top of that, about 30 million are children and over a million are born as refugees per year.
Here’s an important question: why? Well, the short version would be that, despite the passing of time, wars don’t appear to be stopping, food scarcity is a constant problem, and on top of everything we’ve managed to turn the planet against us and it is discretely trying to kill us. Climate change and weather-related disasters have unexpectedly driven large numbers of people from their homes. The Ukrainian crisis, meaning the war, has produced over 8 million refugees up until now, that have fleeted across Europe and have highly surpassed the originally expected numbers.
Having established that people are justifiably leaving, it is important to talk about where they are going and how they are treated there. The term “refugee camp” has become a common one for host countries and, while large numbers of refugees manage to get settled in rural areas, such establishments have been rapidly springing up across the world. Such camps are usually provided as a temporary solution to the large flow of refugees entering the country, where displaced individuals will be provided basic housing and nutrition, as well as necessary physical and mental health services. Generally, refugees are kept sheltered until they can return to their countries of origin, slowly be integrated in the host country’s population, or be safely transferred to other possible host countries. This outlook however, one that is reassuring governments that refugee camps are temporary solutions, often leads to neglect of their proper provision and preservation, especially given the fact that host countries are more often than not already facing internal economic difficulties. Despite the effort put into creating a safe haven for displaced individuals, refugees tend to face various hunger, poverty, security, and education-related challenges.
In the past few years, Greece has developed into a key host country for asylum-seekers hoping to enter Europe. Over 800 thousand people were added to its growing refugee population in 2015 alone, when the inflow reached its peak. The country is being challenged with having to hold over 1.2 million in total, out of which large numbers are concentrated on the Greek islands bordering Turkey. The increasing concentration of displaced individuals in the nation is largely due to the shutdown of Balkan borders that was announced in 2016, when North Macedonia, Croatia and Slovenia refused – or, at least, imposed a lot of strict conditions for – access to refugees who were hoping to make the crossing to Northern European countries. Such an act divided the EU and put Greece in a tough spot, as roughly one hundred new asylum seekers enter the country by sea on the daily, yet are unable to legally cross over to the rest of Europe. As a result, the economically struggling nation attempts to provide shelter, but is incapable of meeting all the required criteria for refugee-protection.
Despite the evidently dire nature of the situation, there’s a bright side to all this. Refugees may pose a grappling matter for host countries – without being, of course, responsible for the issues this worldwide phenomenon causes – but various researches have suggested that, when handled properly, accepting and integrating asylum seekers can prove to be beneficial for the countries that attempt to help. Displaced individuals that manage to successfully rebuild their lives in a foreign country have been said to have the opportunity to not only bring new skills into the labor market and aid in refreshing the economy, but also to enrich a region’s culture and replace the aging population. Of course, that initially requires a lot of support from host countries – resettlement in areas where there are jobs, training programs, language classes, and healthcare – but, with proper management, it can be done. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has helped over 50 million refugees in less than a century, by ensuring education and financial support as well as aiding in their resettlement. Resettlement is the transfer of refugees from an asylum country to another State that has agreed to admit them and ultimately grant them permanent residence, as stated on the UNHCR’s website. On top of that, in 2022 alone, give or take 162,300 refugees returned to their countries of origin during the first six months, while 42,300 were resettled.
So, yes, things are looking glum and this is in no way a situation to be regarded lightly. In 2022, 103 million people worldwide were driven from their homes and seeking asylum. They still are. This is a worldwide humanitarian crisis, and the world’s nations need to collaborate and stand together to face it, instead of pointing fingers at one another. It’s a difficult thing to do, we know, but when part of humanity is suffering, the whole humanity is suffering. And we need to do something about it.