REFUGEES From Harm to Home

Thanks This is another book, which is talking about Refugees life in different countries especially in Africa and some part of the world. By taking this great opportunity of sharing my ideas with you guys its nice to understand and to comment and to spread the words to your colleagues, classmate, co-workers and other people who can share their ideas about Human Right. As today we have millions of refugees worldwide that are under malnourished. In this book you will find different story from refugees and other UNHCR agent who are there to share their ideas with us. Thanks again for the biggest interest of reading this book and to show how care about other people. And many thanks to The Almighty God who created Heaven and Earth and everything that include in it. I want to thanks my parents Remy and Lena for their big support and contribution to this book and my brothers and sisters I love yall guys. I want to thanks all my friends and other people who shared their information in this book. Special Thanks for all the student of the: University of Virginia Mountain State University I want to thanks again the staff at the US Consulate in Hong Kong for releasing some information about kids in Hong Kong and other part of the China Republic. Also I want to thanks all the staff of Hope Life Now International, which is A Student Campaign to Fight Poverty, Malnutrition and AIDS in Africa and Asia. Thanks again, Remy Masemo Peter Author

Tables Who is a Refugee? War and Conflict Child Abuse United Nations History of Refugee First Refugee in the World African Refugees Hope Life Now International Life in a Refugee Camp History of Poverty Schools in a Refugee Camp Major Organization in Refugee Camp Major Sponsor Countries G8 Countries and Refugees

All these materials are protected and all the information based in this book is materials that have been shared with Refugees Agencies and Refugees. These papers provide a means for UN staff, consultants, interns and associates, as well as external researchers, to publish the preliminary results of their research on refugee-related Issues. The papers do not represent the official views of UNHCR. They are also available online under publications of many International organization that support Refugees. Everyday there are millions of refugees dying with Hunger while other people are starving with it. What can we do to make thing or our world better? In this book you will get more information on how Refugees live and how they can become better people in our community. Everyone is count in this world. You cant build your house by yourself; you will need to tell other people to help you to build it. Thats what it is the Refugees are calling you to help them so they can become like us. One world one people lets become together and build a better place to call home. No Place like Home, I hope this book will help you a lot with more information regarding Life of REFUGEES in the refugee CAMP.

INTRODUCTION Established in 1950, UNHCR was charged by the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees with the protection of their interests: full political and economic rights in the country of asylum, with the hope of eventual voluntary repatriation. As a brutal testament To its contemporary failure, at least 3.5 million of those refugees currently struggle for survival in sprawling camps in Africa and Asia If it was originally a guarantor of refugee rights, UNHCR has since mutated into a patron of these prisons of the stateless: a network of huge camps that can never meet any plausible humanitarian standard, and yet somehow justify international funding for the agency. 1 In an article published in the New Left Review, quoted in the preceding paragraph, Jacob Stevens provides a scathing critique of UNHCR. According to his analysis, the organizations primary interest lies in its own size and status, and not in the welfare of the refugees it is mandated to protect. By pursuing these interests, the article suggests, UNHCR has been complicit in the perpetuation of refugee situations that might otherwise have been brought to a speedy and satisfactory end.

2 The analysis presented in this paper, which focuses primarily but not exclusively on Africa, where the problem of protracted refugee problems has assumed the most serious dimensions, reaches a different conclusion. The paper argues that humanitarian agencies in general, and UNHCR in particular, have been placed in the position of establishing and assuming responsibility for such sprawling camps in order to fill gaps in the international refugee regime that were not envisaged at the time of its establishment after the Second World War. 3 It goes on to suggest that the UNs refugee agency has been limited in its ability to address the problem of protracted refugee situations, mainly because of the intractable nature of contemporary armed conflicts and the policies pursued by other actors, but also because of the other issues which the organization has chosen to prioritize and the limited amount of attention which it devoted to this issue during the 1990s. The paper concludes by examining the organizations more recent and current efforts to tackle the issue of protracted refugee situations, and identifies some of the key principles on which such efforts might most effectively be based. 1 REFUGEE-HOSTING COUNTRIES UNHCRs relationship with host states, and the division of responsibilities it has established with refugee-hosting states, has varied over time and differed significantly from country to country. However, certain patterns of UNHCR engagement have emerged in the four decades since the 1960s, when large-scale refugee movements first began to take place in Africa and other developing regions. According to the predominant model of refugee protection and assistance that has prevailed throughout that period, UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations have assumed a primary role in the delivery and coordination of support to refugees, initially by means of emergency relief operations and subsequently through long-term care and maintenance programmer.

Host country involvement has generally been quite limited, focused primarily on the admission and recognition of refugees on their territory; respect for the principle of non refoulement (which prevents refugees from being returned to a country where their life or liberty would be at danger); and the provision of security to refugees and humanitarian personnel. Under the terms of this arrangement, the notion of state responsibility (i.e. the principle that governments have primary responsibility for the welfare of refugees on their territory) has become weak in its application, while UNHCR and its humanitarian Partners have assumed a progressively wider range of long-term refugee responsibilities; even in countries, which are signatories to the 1951, Refugee Convention and which are members of the organizations governing body, the Executive Committee. Such tasks have included those of registering refugees and providing them with personal documentation; ensuring that they have access to shelter, food, water, health care and education; administering and managing the camps where they are usually accommodated; And establishing policing and justice mechanisms that enable refugees to benefit from some approximation to the rule of law. In these respects, it can be argued, UNHCR has been transformed from a humanitarian organization to one that shares certain features of a state. How did this situation arise? Primarily, this paper suggests, because the international refugee regime was forged in the specific historical context of the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the international communitys primary concern was to address refugee problems in Europe associated with the Second World War and its Cold War aftermath. Despite the devastation caused by conflict with Nazism and fascism, the states most directly concerned with those problems had considerable resources at their disposal. And in their efforts to address the refugee problem, they were assisted by the fact that large numbers of refugees in and from Europe were able to find a solution to their plight elsewhere in

the world, by means of resettlement programs to Australia, Canada, the USA, and to a lesser extent South Africa and South America. When the focus of the refugee problem shifted from Europe to the developing regions in the 1960s, and when the international refugee regime was extended to those regions by means of the 1967 Protocol to the Refugee Convention, the circumstances were quite different. On one hand, the states most directly affected by the refugee problem had relatively few resources at their disposal, most of them being former colonial territories with typically dependent and underdeveloped economies. On the other hand, only a small (and privileged) minority of the worlds refugees could expect to benefit from the solution of third country resettlement. This was particularly the case in Africa, which between the 1960s and 1980s witnessed a succession of major new refugee emergencies, but which did not benefit from the large-scale resettlement programs established for refugees from Indo-China. In the initial phase of the post-colonial period, the people and politicians of Africa demonstrated a significant degree of hospitality towards people who were fleeing from conflict in nearby and neighboring states. Many of the new arrivals came from countries That were locked in struggles for national liberation and independence - struggles that received strong support from the countries to which they fled, and which played a central role in the emergence of pan-African ideologies and the establishment of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963. Symbolizing this sense of solidarity, in 1969 the OAU established its own Refugee Convention, which broadened the refugee definition included in the 1951 Refugee Convention and made it more relevant to the political circumstances of the African continent. Thus the 1951 Convention limited refugee status to people who had left their own country because of a wellfounded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. By way of contrast, the OAU Convention stated, the term refugee shall also apply to every person who, owing to

external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole of his country of origin or nationality, is compelled to leave his place of habitual residence. By the time that the OAU Refugee Convention came into force in 1974, the political and material conditions that had underpinned such expressions of solidarity with the continents refugees were already being undermined. First, significant changes were taking place in the number of refugees that the continent was obliged to accommodate. While there were only around a million refugees in Africa at the beginning of the decade, the figure climbed inexorably in the years to come, reaching approximately six million by the end of the 1980s. Throughout this period, the speed and scale of the continents refugee movements also increased, placing additional strains on the countries and communities where the new arrivals settled. Second, the capacity of those countries to accommodate an ever-growing number of refugees was declining. While their relative prosperity in the early years of independence had allowed them to exercise a degree of generosity to refugees, the newly independent states of Africa now began to suffer from a wide range of interrelated ills: unfavorable movements in the terms of trade for raw materials and oil, high levels of population growth combined with low rates of economic growth; the progressive introduction of structural adjustment programs that curtailed public services and employment; environmental degradation, the emergence of the HIV-AIDS pandemic; as well as the economic mismanagement and political instability that were both a cause and a consequence of such problems. Third, the refugee movements witnessed in Africa and other developing regions began to assume a new character.

No longer the victims of liberation struggles, a growing proportion of the worlds refugees were now forced from their homes by

armed conflicts and power struggles taking place within (and to a lesser extent between) independent states. Rather than being considered as victims of external aggression, occupation and foreign domination, refugees were increasingly regarded as a source of political instability and social tension, particularly when, as a result of their nationality, ethnic origins or political allegiance, they were associated with one of the parties to the conflict, which had forced them to flee. Finally, the last two decades of the 20th century witnessed a growing sense amongst the developing countries that they were obliged to bear a disproportionate share of responsibility for the global refugee problem. During the Cold War years, donor countries regarded generous humanitarian assistance programmers as a means of supporting client states and elites, while simultaneously winning the hearts and minds of recipient populations. But in the unexpectedly tumultuous period that followed the demise of the bipolar world, the refugee policies of donor states were, as the following section explains, driven by other considerations.

THE INDUSTRIALIZED STATES During the 1980s and 1990s, the industrialized states became increasingly preoccupied with the task of reducing the number of people from other parts of the world that were seeking to enter and remain on their territory. Unable to enjoy security or sustainable livelihoods in their own countries, and deprived of any opportunity to move to the industrialized states in a legal and safe manner, growing numbers of citizens in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and European countries outside of the European Union attempted to enter the worlds more prosperous states, many of them submitting asylum applications once they had reached their destination. In response to these developments, the countries of Western Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region introduced a vast array of measures specifically designed to prevent or dissuade the arrival of these

would-be refugees: visa restrictions, carrier sanctions, interdiction and detention, limitations on social welfare and the right to work, as well as restrictive interpretations of the 1951 Refugee Convention. While a limited number of the industrialized states (essentially Australia, Canada and the USA) continued to admit refugees by means of organized resettlement programmer, these countries were the exception that proved the rule. As far as the states of the South were concerned, the countries of the North had turned their back on the notion of burden sharing (or as many humanitarian organizations prefer it to be known, responsibility sharing), a principle that had hitherto underpinned the international refugee protection regime. Such concerns were reinforced when the industrialized states began to express growing interest in notions such as regional solutions, protection in regions of origin and extra-territorial processing, all of which could be (and were) interpreted as efforts to ensure that refugees and asylum seekers were confined to the poorer and less stable regions of the world that were already accommodating the vast majority of displaced and exiled people. In this context, it was no coincidence that developing countries also began to introduce more restrictive refugee policies. Confronted with the circumstances described above, countries of asylum in Africa and other developing regions responded in a number of related ways: by restricting the rights of refugees on their territory, by accommodating them in closed and semiclosed camps rather than open rural settlements; by depriving them of opportunities to become self-reliant and to benefit from the solution of local integration; and, most significantly for the analysis presented in this paper, by suggesting that they would only admit and refrain from the refoulement of refugees if the needs of such populations were fully met by the international community. By the mid-1990s, UNHCR was, as Jacobs suggests, left to run a network of huge camps, the inhabitants of which had little or no prospect of finding an early solution to their plight, primarily because the armed conflicts, which had driven them from their homes, went

unresolved. And they went unresolved for two principal reasons. First, because they were symptomatic of a new and intractable form of warfare that had emerged in many of the worlds failed and fragile states a form of warfare in which communal identities and the struggle for land and resources played a more important role than ideological differences, and in which militias, warlords and bandit groups replaced conventional armies and military formations. Often described as internal armed conflicts, such wars actually involved a mixture of local, national, regional and international protagonists. This trend has been witnessed most graphically in the central portion of sub-Saharan Africa, which for much of the past decade has been afflicted by an interlocking series of conflicts, stretching from Somalia and Sudan in the east to Liberia and Sierra Leone in the west. A second reason for the failure to resolve such conflicts is to be found in the selective application of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention. Coming to prominence in the years that followed the end of the Cold War, this doctrine suggested that traditional notions of state sovereignty could no longer stand in the way of international action in situations where large numbers of civilians had been placed at risk by human rights violations, armed conflicts and complex political emergencies. In practice, however, the worlds most powerful states were generally reluctant to invoke this principle in the deadly conflicts that afflicted Africa. As one of the authors of this paper has pointed out elsewhere: An instructive comparison can be made with Northern Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor - four armed conflicts which produced (eventually) a decisive response from the worlds more prosperous states, enabling large-scale and relatively speedy repatriation movements to take place. In each of these situations, the US and its allies had strategic interests to defend, not least a desire to avert the destabilizing consequences of mass population displacements. In Africa, however, the geopolitical and economic stakes have generally been much lower for the industrialized states, with the result that armed conflicts - and the refugee situations created by those conflicts - have been allowed to persist for years on end.

THE ROLE OF UNHCR Hitherto, this paper has suggested that the worlds protracted refugee situations are to a large extent the outcome of actions taken and not taken by states - both those in developing regions that host the vast majority of the worlds refugees, and those in the industrialized world that play a leading role in the United Nations and the international refugee protection regime. But what role the leading multilateral actor in that regime, namely UNHCR, has played in this scenario? The allegation made by Stevens - that the derelictions of UNHCR have actively contributed to the problem of protracted refugee situations is one that deserves to be taken seriously, despite the intemperate language in which it is written. It would be nave to ignore the fact that the organizational culture of the UN can be one that encourages safety first approaches that are acceptable to states, and which provides inadequate incentives for the rethinking and reorientation of long-established activities. It is the contention of this paper, however, that the role assumed by UNHCR in protracted refugee situations is to be found primarily in other factors. Competing priorities as indicated by the title of the book published by former High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata, the 1990s constituted the turbulent decade for UNHCR. During this period, throughout which she directed the organization, UNHCR was confronted with three enormous and simultaneous challenges. The first was to assist with the return and reintegration of the many refugees who had been forced into exile during conflicts that were rooted in Cold War politics, but which had now come to an end, such as Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Nicaragua and South Africa. The second was to respond to the spate of new crises and refugee emergencies provoked by the unexpectedly violent nature of the post-Cold War world, including those witnessed in the Balkans, the Great Lakes region of Africa and West Africa. The

third was to address the rapid growth in the number of people from poorer and less stable parts of the world who were moving to and seeking asylum in the industrialized states, and who were generally unwanted by the receiving states. The common feature of these challenges was that they all entailed movements of people movements that were large, rapid and highly visible, and which therefore attracted a great deal of attention from the international community and the global media. With their attention focused on these high-profile and highly politicized situations, UNHCR and other humanitarian actors were able to give less attention to protracted situations in which refugees were moving in no direction, but who had effectively become trapped in long term camps and settlements. FUNDING The relatively low priority given to protracted refugee situations in the years that followed the end of the Cold War was reflected in and reinforced by funding patterns. Reluctant to intervene militarily in many of the worlds most serious refugee-producing crises, eager to ensure that refugees and asylum seekers remained within their regions of origin, and under popular pressure to do something about the emergencies that were being played out on television screens across the industrialized world, donor states were now prepared to make unprecedented amounts of funding available to the humanitarian community. But relatively little of that funding was earmarked for the more stable and static refugee situations that existed in Africa and other parts of the world, a problem that was in some senses compounded by the fundraising and media relations strategies pursued by the humanitarian community. Images of destitute refugees seeking urgent protection and assistance in countries of asylum proved to be an effective means of attracting international attention and resources, as did images of exiled communities who were going home to begin a peaceful and productive life in their country of origin. By way of contrast, relatively little attention was given to those refugees whose immediate past and indefinite future

entailed the monotony of life in a camp. Time for solutions? A logical response to this scenario above would have been for the international community to recognize the semi-permanence of many refugee situations in the developing world, to assist the populations concerned to attain progressively higher levels of self-reliance during their time in exile, and to promote a process of local development that provided opportunities and brought benefits to refugees and citizens alike. In reality, however, this approach proved very difficult to implement. 1 With the number of refugees in low-income regions of the world steadily expanding, from the 1970s onwards, UNHCR made repeated efforts to promote a developmental and solutions-oriented approach to refugee assistance, incorporating the principles outlined in the preceding paragraph. Perhaps the most prominent example of such efforts was to be found in ICARA 2 (Second International Conference on Assistance to Refugees in Africa), an initiative co-sponsored by UNHCR and UNDP in 1984, under the evocative slogan Time for solutions. But such initiatives met with very limited success. Host governments were generally eager to retain the visibility of the refugee populations they hosted and to discourage those people from settling permanently on their territory. They consequently preferred the exiles to be segregated from the local population, in camps funded by donor states and administered by UNHCR. They were concerned that if development aid were to be targeted at refugee situations, it would lead to reduction in the level of international assistance available for their regular development programs and that it would imply their agreement to the long-term or permanent settlement of the refugees concerned. Meanwhile, such states were still struggling to respond to a succession of new humanitarian emergencies, such as that

caused by the 1984 famine in the Horn of Africa, which occurred almost immediately after the ICARA 2 conference. At a time when massive numbers of people were on the move and in urgent need of life-saving assistance, the notion of Time for solutions began to seem very optimistic. This situation was reinforced by the administrative structures to be found in most donor states, which embodies a clear separation between humanitarian assistance on one hand, and development aid on the other. For these countries, refugee crises such as that witnessed in the Horn of Africa were primarily humanitarian in terms of their nature and required response. As a result, even if those crises persisted for years and transmuted in the process from refugee emergencies to protracted refugee situations, they were generally addressed from the limited perspective of emergency relief. PROGRAMME OBJECTIVES AND DESIGN As a result of the considerations outlined above, in the 1990s the objectives and design of the worlds long-term refugee programs received relatively little attention. Indeed, the concept commonly employed to describe these operations, namely care and maintenance programs, was indicative of the rather low level of ambition which the international community brought to the issue of protracted refugee situations during this period. A defining characteristic of the care and maintenance model was the extent to which it endowed UNHCR with responsibility for the establishment of systems and services for refugees that were parallel to, separate from, and in many cases better resourced than those available to the local population.6 In doing so, this model created a widespread Perception that the organization was a surrogate state, complete with its own territory (refugee camps), citizens (refugees), public services (education, health care, water, sanitation, etc.) and even ideology (community participation, gender equality). Not surprisingly in these circumstances, the notion of state responsibility was weakened further, while UNHCR assumed

(and was perceived to assume) an increasingly important and even preeminent role. Some interesting evidence in this respect can be found in the work of two anthropologists who worked amongst Burundian Hutu refugees in Tanzania. Undertaking research in the Kigoma region of the country, Liisa Malkki found that the refugees lionized UNHCR and demonized the Tanzanian authorities and host population, practically equating their hosts with their Tutsi opponents in Burundis civil war. In their discourse, the Hutus drew parallels between UNHCR and the Belgians in Burundi, perceiving them both as benign foreigners that would shield them from their enemies. Simon Turner, who undertook fieldwork amongst Burundian refugees living in Tanzanias Lukole camp, witnessed somewhat similar dynamics. According to Turner, UNHCRs identity had blended with that of wazungu (white people) and the international community at large. Refugee women are quoted as saying that UNHCR is a better husband, in the sense that the organization provides for the household what a Hutu man would normally provide for his family. Turner goes on to argue that traditional social structures often break down in this context, with UNHCR assuming the role of the patriarch. According to one refugee man he interviewed, there is a change. People are not taking care of their own life. They are just living like babies in UNHCRs arms. These circumstances created some serious dilemmas for UNHCR. If the organization was to compensate for the limited capacity of host states by assuming a wide range of responsibilities, it could help to ensure that refugees received the protection and assistance to which they were entitled, but it could also absolve host states of their international obligations. But if UNHCR was to insist upon the principle of state responsibility and to limit it own operational involvement in protracted refugee situations, how could it safeguard the welfare of the people it was mandated to protect? As a senior UNHCR official remarked in a personal communication with the authors, many a UNHCR manager has pushed so hard to get reticent and phlegmatic governments

involved in refugee administration that in the end they throw their hands up in the air with frustration. Indeed, much of the refugee legislation adopted by host states in Africa and other developing regions throughout the period under review, as well as the practical arrangements established for protection activities such as refugee registration, documentation and status determination, are the result of UNHCRs gap-filling efforts. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS As the preceding section of this paper has explained, UNHCR became involved in a growing number of protracted refugee situations during the 1990s, many of which involved the confinement of refugees to camps where they enjoyed little freedom of movement and had few opportunities to establish sustainable livelihoods. For the majority of people who found themselves in such situations, the options of voluntary repatriation, local integration and third country resettlement all remained a distant dream. Regrettably, that continues to be the case for large numbers of refugees around the world. Since the turn of the new millennium, however, three related factors have enabled UNHCR and other members of the international community to become more engaged with the problem of protracted refugee situations and to ask whether it can be approached in alternative ways. First, while a number of new refugee emergencies erupted (most notably those involving Iraq and the Darfur region of Sudan), the scale and frequency of such crises generally diminished from 2000 onwards. This trend, combined with large-scale voluntary repatriation movements to countries such as Afghanistan, Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Somaliland, led to a progressive reduction in the size of the worlds refugee population and enabled UNHCR to refocus its attention on issues such as protracted refugee situations which had assumed a lower priority during the previous decade. Second, UNHCR was confronted with growing evidence with respect to the

negative consequences of protracted refugee situations, especially those in which the populations concerned experienced deteriorating conditions of life and could not look forward to a brighter future. Refugees who found themselves in such situations were more likely to engage in onward movements, leaving their camps in order to take up residence in an urban area or to seek asylum in more distant parts of the world. They were more likely to be susceptible to exploitation and to engage in negative survival strategies such as theft and other forms of criminality, the manipulation of assistance programme, and by becoming victims of sexual exploitation. And they were also more likely to become attracted to political and military movements whose activities conflicted with the strictly humanitarian nature of refugee status and of UNHCRs mandate. Third, the issue of protracted refugee situations became the subject of new research and lobbying efforts, led by UNHCR. Thus in 1999, the organizations Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit launched a Protracted Refugee Situations Project, which published a wide range of reports and papers on this issue. This led in turn to the establishment of a web based initiative titled the Refugee Livelihoods Network, which encouraged practitioners and researchers to share ideas and information on the steps that could be taken to promote self-reliance in long-term refugee situations. Nine Similar themes were subsequently taken us by other organizations, including the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, which launched a vigorous anti-warehousing campaign, and by a number of academic groups, which established research projects on similar themes. Prompted by these developments, from 2000 onwards, UNHCR began to adopt a more assertive and proactive role in relation to the protracted refugee situations than had been possible during the previous decade. A new High Commissioner, former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, launched a series of initiatives (Convention Plus, Development Assistance to Refugees and Development through Local Integration) all of which were indicative of a new institutional focus on the durable solutions dimension of the

organizations mandate. At the same time, UNHCR brought the issue to the attention of the agencys governing body, the Executive Committee, organized a special meeting of African states to consider how the problem might be more effectively addressed, and began for the first time to collect and publish statistics on protracted refugee situations. These initiatives had a number of important operational outcomes. Working in cooperation with the governments concerned, UNHCR established a Self-Reliance Strategy for refugees in Uganda and launched the development-oriented Zambia Initiative for refugees living in that country. The organization sought to reinforce the rights and improve the material circumstances of long-term refugees in countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and Thailand by means of a new Strengthening Protection Capacities Project. Under the leadership of another new High Commissioner, Antonio Guterres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal, UNHCR also began to explore the opportunities for local integration for refugees in areas such as West Africa, a solution that had been largely ignored in the preceding decades. While these different initiatives have not been an immediate or unqualified success, and have indeed attracted some criticism, they nevertheless provide some tangible evidence of a new commitment on UNHCRs part to addressing the problem of protracted refugee situations.

ELEMENTS OF A HUMANITARIAN STRATEGY Now that the plight of the worlds long-term exiles has assumed a more central place on the international humanitarian agenda, what can be done to formulate a more effective and equitable response to the issue of protracted refugee situations? The final section of this paper offers some suggestions with respect to the approaches that might be pursued if this question is to be answered in a positive manner.

Promoting interaction between refugees and local populations First and foremost, here is a continued need to revisit established approaches to refugee protection and assistance, especially the care and maintenance model, which tends to maximize the role of UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations, but which minimizes that of host states and other actors. Ideally, exiled populations should not be obliged to live an isolated existence in internationally administered enclaves, but should be able to engage in positive interactions with people and communities living in the same area. Of course, the establishment of safe and demilitarized areas where refugees can benefit from life-saving forms of protection and assistance may be required in the early days of an emergency, but the negative aspects of separation often begin to outweigh the advantages as time goes on. The adoption of alternative approaches to the administration of protracted refugee situations will not be easy. As earlier sections of this paper have suggested, large and long-term refugee camps have become the norm in many parts of the world because of the interacting priorities of host governments, donor states and humanitarian organizations. Recent advocacy efforts intended to challenge the practice of warehousing have also tended to gloss over the fact that refugees themselves are sometimes averse to leaving their camps or to forging closer connections with the local population. Refugee camps, even if the services they offer are minimal, provide an important safety net for many refugees, especially the more vulnerable members of the population. Remaining in a camp may also have perceived benefits for refugees who hope to participate in an organized resettlement or voluntary repatriation programme, as well as for political activists who wish to mobilize the refugee population in support of their cause or to give their cause greater international visibility. Despite these constraints, a number of steps could be taken to approach the issue of protracted refugee situations in a more constructive manner. The delivery of services to refugees and local people

could be structured in a way that avoids the establishment of separate and parallel systems, thereby improving the interaction that takes place between the two groups. Refugees could be offered better access to local markets for both the sale and purchase of goods, an approach that would boost the local economy and demonstrate the positive impact of the refugees presence. As was recognized as long ago as the ICARA 2 conference, refugee-populated areas as a whole should be properly incorporated into national and local development plans, so as to avert the establishment of camps that are disconnected from the surrounding state and society. Humanitarian and human rights agencies might organize bridge-building seminars between refugee and local populations and, if necessary, conduct conflictresolution sessions between the two groups. There is a common assumption that such initiatives are not needed and that refugees in developing regions invariably share the language and culture of their local hosts. But this is not always the case. Moreover, refugees and local Populations may actually have complex histories and strained social or political relations as a result of their proximity. In such situations, a process of mutual adaptation will be required, supported by efforts to ensure that the local community is receptive to the refugees presence, and that the refugees themselves feel secure in their country of asylum. Such efforts need not entail a great deal of expense, but they do require some initiative on the part of the humanitarian community and some political will on the part of the host Country authorities. Refugees in Ghana, for example, have been issued photo identity cards, bearing the seal of both the authorities and UNHCR. As a result, they state that they feel more secure in the country and more confident in their interactions with the host community and local officials. They also experience less harassment when they encounter the police, which has facilitated their freedom of movement outside their camp and boosted their potential for self-reliance. Supporting the role of the state

As the preceding example demonstrates, UNHCR and other humanitarian actors should be instrumental in supporting the role of the authorities in relation to protracted refugee situations. Of course, such a role must be based on a strict respect for the principles of refugee protection, and must therefore be supported by practical initiatives that encourage and enable host states to uphold their obligations under international and regional refugee law, as well as human rights and customary law. As noted earlier, UNHCR has a Particularly important role to play in the establishment of national refugee legislation that is in accordance with the 1951 Refugee Convention, and in supporting capacity-building efforts that enable the agents of the state, including the police, military, judiciary and local government officials, to adhere to such legislation. More generally, UNHCR should lose no opportunity to underline the twin principles of state responsibility and international solidarity, pointing out that the latter is a necessary condition of the former in low-income countries with significant refugee populations. Humanitarian actors could play a more active role in ensuring that relevant stakeholders understand the responsibilities and authority of the state, which has admitted them to its territory. The ubiquity of UNHCRs personnel, offices, vehicles and logo in many long term refugee camps often leads to confusion on this matter, a situation exacerbated by the fact that many government assets also carry the prominent inscription, donated by UNHCR. When coupled with the physical separation of refugee camps, it is hardly surprising that refugees, local people and government officials should perceive such locations as extra-territorial entities, administered by an international organization with greater visibility, resources - and even legitimacy - than the state. Recognizing the difficulties and dangers associated with this situation, in 2003, Kenyas newly appointed Home Affairs Minister Moody Awori referred to the hands-off refugee policy pursued by the previous administration, observing that this approach caused more harm to our hospitable people. It should, he said, be the

responsibility of the Government to undertake refugee issues seriously. In many countries, the failure of governments to undertake refugee issues seriously has been based on an assumption that exiled populations do not strive to meet their own needs and invariably have damaging consequences for the local economy, environment and security, and that to avert such outcomes refugees should be induced to return to their country of origin, even if it is not safe for them to do so. Rather than reinforcing such assumptions by references to the dependency syndrome and the negative impact of refugee movements, UNHCR and its humanitarian partners should challenge and change them by means of public and private advocacy efforts. In this respect, the collection and analysis of empirical data is essential. UNHCR could, for example, devote more effort to supporting research on the efforts that refugees make to establish their own livelihoods, on the difficulties that they encounter in this process, and on the opportunities that are opened up when host government policies provide refugees with greater freedom of movement, better access to land and increased opportunities to engage in the local economy. Communicating UNHCRs capacities and limitations Efforts to reorient UNHCRs role in protracted refugee situations must also, as one of the organizations staff members has suggested, be based on a clear statement of the limits of humanitarian action. Such an approach, he goes on to suggest, may help governments understand (and even assume) their political responsibilities. If it is to pursue such an approach and is to engage in the careful management of the expectations placed on it, UNHCR must recognize the dangers of overstating its own capabilities. In the competition for brand recognition and market share, UNHCR has emphasized the extent to which the worlds refugees rely on the services, which it provides. Given the realities of humanitarian funding, UNHCR will have to tell both sides of the story. The organization should underline its

strengths and successes, while simultaneously acknowledging its limitations and emphasizing the need for other actors to play their part in addressing the problem of protracted refugee situations. Such efforts should be directed not only at host governments, donor states and the international media, but also at refugees themselves. In many long-term refugee situations, there is an information vacuum which breeds misinformation and inflated expectations. It should become a high priority for UNHCR to communicate systematically and clearly to refugees the terms of their rights, entitlements, obligations and future options, as well as the extent to which the organization can realistically support them in these respects. Working with other actors In order to address the outsized role of UNHCR in protracted refugee situations, there must be a broader recognition that the organization is not the only member of the humanitarian community or the UN system that has a substantive role to play in this area. When people flee from their own country, cross an international border and acquire the status of refugee, they naturally become of direct and immediate concern to UNHCR. But in becoming refugees, they do not cease to be of concern to other actors within and outside the UN - actors whose mandate and activities lie in areas other than humanitarian relief, such as socio-economic and community development, education and training, agriculture and micro-finance. The search for effective responses to protracted refugee situations should not be regarded as the fiefdom of UNHCR, but as a responsibility to be shared with - and amongst - these other actors. Hitherto, UNHCRs ability to engage with these other actors has been limited. As explained in an earlier section of this paper, this is partly because of the artificial way in which the international aid machinery is structured. But it also derives from UNHCRs mandate-driven preference to retain the leading role in refugee situations. Thus when the UNs Emergency Relief

Coordinator established an ambitious process of humanitarian reform in 2005, designed to establish a better-coordinated response and a more effective division of labor amongst the organizations concerned, UNHCR successfully insisted that refugee situations be excluded from the exercise. UNHCR has an obligation to uphold its protection mandate, and thus has a legitimate concern to avoid any coordination arrangements that might compromise that mandate. At the same time, the organization cannot act in isolation from the rest of the UN system and humanitarian community. The humanitarian reform initiative has already led to a new inter-agency coordination model in non-refugee emergencies, whereby designated organizations within and outside the UN assume responsibility for specific sectors or clusters. UNHCR has agreed to lead three of those clusters (protection, camp management and camp coordination, and emergency shelter) in situations involving internally displaced persons (IDPs). If the Cluster Approach really does enable the international community to pool and deploy its resources more effectively in IDP situations, then perhaps a similar arrangement could be established in relation to refugees, thereby enabling a wider range of actors to be involved in the search for solutions to their plight? The dynamics of the UN system would appear to be pointing in that direction. In addition to the introduction of the Cluster Approach, there is growing international support for the One UN concept, which requires the different United Nations agencies to function in a more integrated manner at the country level, with a common programme and budgetary framework. At the same time, the UN has become increasingly committed to the establishment of integrated missions in war-affected and postconflict situations, bringing together the humanitarian, human rights, development, peacekeeping and political functions of the world body under the overall authority of the Secretary-General. These developments have an evident relevance to the task of resolving the problem of Protracted refugee situations, both in supporting countries of asylum that have large numbers of

refugees on their territory, and in supporting countries of origin from which those people have fled, and to which many will eventually return. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees The United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees is an international convention that defines who is a refugee, and sets out the rights of individuals who are granted asylum and the responsibilities of nations that grant asylum. The convention also sets out which people do not qualify as refugees, such as war criminals. The Convention also provides for some visa-free travel for holders of travel documents issued under the convention. History The convention was approved at a special United Nations conference on 28 July 1951. It entered into force on 22 April 1954. It was initially limited to protecting European refugees after World War II but a 1967 Protocol removed the geographical and time limits, expanding the Convention's scope. Because the convention was approved in Geneva, it is often referred to as "the Geneva Convention," though it is not one of the Geneva Conventions specifically dealing with allowable behavior in time of war. Denmark was the first state to ratify the treaty (on 4 December 1952). As of April 1, 2011 there were 147 signatories to either the Convention or the Protocol or to both. Subsequently, the President of Nauru, Marcus Stephen, signed both the Convention and the Protocol on June 17, 2011. Definition of a refugee Article 1 of the Convention as amended by the 1967 Protocol provides the definition of a refugee:

"A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.." Additional definitions based on the Convention Several groups have built upon the 1951 Convention and attempted to create a more objective definition. While their terms differ to that of the 1951 Convention, the Convention has significantly shaped these new, more objective definitions. The Organization of African Unity (OAU) Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa adopted a regional treaty based on the Convention, adding to the definition that a refugee is Any person compelled to leave his/her country owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole of his country of origin or nationality. In 1984, a group of Latin American governments adopted the Cartagena Declaration, which like the OAU Convention, added more objectivity based on significant consideration to the 1951 Convention. The Cartagena Declaration determine that a 'refugee' includes: Persons who flee their countries because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order. Responsibilities of States Parties to the Refugee Convention In the general principle of international law, treaties in force are binding upon the parties to it and must be performed in good faith. Countries that have ratified the Refugee Convention are obliged to protect refugees that are on their territory, in accordance with its terms

There are a number of provisions that States who are parties of the Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol must adhere to. Among them are: Cooperation With the UNHCR: Under Article 35 of the Refugee Convention and Article II of the 1967 Protocol, states agree to cooperate with UNHCR in the exercise of its functions and to help UNHCR supervise the implementation of the provisions in the Convention. Information On National Legislation: parties to the Convention agree to inform the United Nations Secretary-General about the laws and regulations they may adopt to ensure the application of the Convention. Exemption from Reciprocity: The notion of reciprocity- where, according to a country's law, the granting of a right to an alien is subject to the granting of similar treatment by the alien's country of nationality- does not apply to refugees. This notion does not apply to refugees because refugees do not enjoy the protection of their home state. Innocence of refugees unlawfully entering the country of refuge A refugee has the right to be free from penalties pertaining to the illegality of their entry to or presence within a country, if it can be shown that they acted in good faith- that is, if the refugee believes that there was ample cause for their illegal entry/presence, i.e. to escape threats upon their life or freedom, and if they swiftly declare their presence. This right is protected in Article 31: "The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence. (Article 31, (1) The principle of non-refoulement

A refugee's right to be protected against forcible return, or refoulement, is set out in the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees: "No Contracting State shall expel or return ('refouler') a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social or political opinion" (Article 33(1)) It is widely accepted that the prohibition of forcible return is part of customary international law. This means that even States that are not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention must respect the principle of non-refoulement. Therefore, States are obligated under the Convention and under customary international law to respect the principle of non-refoulement. If and when this principle is threatened, UNHCR can respond by intervening with relevant authorities, and if it deems necessary, will inform the public. REFUGEE A refugee is a person who has been pushed away from their home and seek refuge elsewhere. Under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951, a refugee is more narrowly defined (in Article 1A) as a person who "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country". The concept of a refugee was expanded by the Convention's 1967 Protocol and by regional conventions in Africa and Latin America to include persons who had fled war or other violence in their home country. Refugee women and children represent an additional subsection of refugees that need special attention. For the refugee system to work successfully, countries must be prepared to allow Open borders for people fleeing conflict, particularly for

countries closest to the conflict. The term refugee is often used to include displaced persons who may fall outside the legal definition in the Convention, either because they have left their home countries because of war and not because of a fear of persecution, or because they have been forced to migrate within their home countries. The Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, adopted by the Organization of African Unity in 1969, employs a definition expanded from the Convention's, including people who left their countries of origin not only because of persecution but also due to acts of external aggression, occupation, domination by foreign powers or serious disturbances of public order. Refugees were defined as a legal group in response to the large numbers of people fleeing Eastern Europe following World War II. The lead international agency coordinating refugee protection is the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which counted 8,400,000 refugees worldwide at the beginning of 2006. This was the lowest number since 1980. The major exception is the 4,600,000 Palestinian refugees under the authority of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), who are the only group to be granted refugee status to the descendants of refugees according to the above definition. The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants gives the world total as 62,000,000 refugees and estimates there are over 34,000,000 displaced by war, including internally displaced persons, who remain within the same national borders. The majority of refugees who leave their country seek asylum in countries neighboring their country of nationality. The "durable solutions" to refugee populations, as defined by UNHCR and governments, are: voluntary repatriation to the country of origin; local integration into the country of asylum; and resettlement to a third country. As of December 31, 2005, the largest source countries of refugees are Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Sudan, and the Palestinian Territories The country with the largest number of

IDPs is Sudan, with over 5 million. As of 2006, with 800,000 refugees and IDPs, Azerbaijan had the highest per capita IDP population in the world. The notion that a person who sought sanctuary in a holy place could not be harmed without inviting divine retribution was familiar to the ancient Greeks and ancient Egyptians. However, the right to seek asylum in a church or other holy place was first codified in law by King Ethelbert of Kent in about 600 A.D. Similar laws were implemented throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. The related concept of political exile also has a long history: Ovid was sent to Tomis; Voltaire was sent to England. Through the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, nations recognized each others sovereignty. However, it was not until the advent of romantic nationalism in late 18th century Europe that nationalism gained sufficient prevalence for the phrase 'country of nationality' to become practically meaningful, and for people crossing borders to be required to provide identification.

One million Armenians fled Turkey between 1915 and 1923 to escape persecution and genocide. The term 'refugee' is sometimes applied to people who may have fit the definition outlined by the 1951 Convention, were it to be applied retroactively. There are many candidates. For example,

after the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685 outlawed Protestantism in France, hundreds of thousands of Huguenots fled to England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, South Africa, Germany and Prussia. The repeated waves of pogroms that swept Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th century prompted mass Jewish emigration (more than 2 million Russian Jews emigrated in the period 18811920). From the 19th century, a large portion of the Muslim peoples (termed 'Muhacir' under a general definition) of the Balkans, Caucasus, Crimea and Crete took refuge in present-day Turkey and shaped that country's fundamental features. The Balkan Wars of 19121913 caused 800,000 people to leave their homes. Various groups of people were officially designated refugees beginning in World War I. League of Nations The first international co-ordination on refugee affairs came with the League of Nations' appointment of Fridtjof Nansen to the newly created post of High Commissioner for Refugees. This position, and the attendant Commission, was set up in 1921 to assist the approximately 1,500,000 people who fled the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent civil war (19171921), most of them aristocrats fleeing the Communist government. In 1923, the mandate of the Commission was expanded to include the more than one million Armenians who left Turkish Asia Minor in 1915 and 1923 due to a series of events now known as the Armenian Genocide. Over the next several years, the mandate was expanded to include Assyrians and Turkish refugees. In all of these cases, a refugee was defined as a person in a group for which the League of Nations had approved a mandate, as opposed to a person to whom a general definition applied. The 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey involved some two million people, most forcibly made refugees and de jure denaturalized from homelands of centuries or millennia, in a treaty promoted and overseen by the international community as part of the Treaty of Lausanne.

The U.S. Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924. The Immigration Act of 1924 was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially Jews, Italians and Slavs, who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s. Most of the European refugees (principally Jews and Slavs) fleeing Stalin, the Nazis and World War II were barred from coming to the United States. In 1930, the Nansen International Office for Refugees was established as a successor agency to the Commission. Its most notable achievement was the Nansen passport, a passport for refugees, for which it was awarded the 1938 Nobel Peace Prize. The Nansen Office was plagued by problems of financing, an increase in refugee numbers, and a lack of co-operation from some member states, which led to mixed success overall. However, it managed to lead fourteen nations to ratify the Refugee Convention of 1933, an early, and relatively modest, attempt at a human rights charter, and in general assisted around one million refugees worldwide.

Children preparing for evacuation from Spain during the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. The rise of Nazism led to such a severe increase in the number of refugees from Germany that in 1933 the League created a High Commission for Refugees Coming from Germany. On July

4, 1936 an agreement was signed under League auspices that defined a refugee coming from Germany as "any person who was settled in that country, who does not possess any nationality other than German nationality, and in respect of whom it is established that in law or in fact he or she does not enjoy the protection of the Government of the Reich" (article 1). The mandate of this High Commission was subsequently expanded to include persons from Austria and Sudetenland. 150,000 Czechs were displaced after October 1, 1938, when the German army entered the border regions of Czechoslovakia surrendered in accordance with the Munich Agreement. On 31 December 1938, both the Nansen Office and High Commission were dissolved and replaced by the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees under the Protection of the League. This coincided with the flight of several hundred thousand Spanish Republicans to France after their loss to the Nationalists in 1939 in the Spanish Civil War. World War II and UNHCR The conflict and political instability during World War II led to massive amounts of enforced migration (see World War II evacuation and expulsion). By the end of World War II, Europe had more than 40 million refugees. In 1943, the Allies created the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) to provide aid to areas liberated from Axis powers, including parts of Europe and China. This included returning over seven million refugees, then commonly referred to as displaced persons or DPs, to their country of origin and setting up displaced persons camps for one million refugees who refused to be repatriated. In the last months of World War II some five million German civilians from the German provinces of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia fled the onslaught of the Red Army and became refugees in Mecklenburg, Brandenburg and Saxony. After the capitulation of the Wehrmacht in May 1945 the Allies occupied Germany in the borders as they were on 31 December 1937, as agreed to in the Berlin declaration of 5 June 1945. Since the

spring of 1945 the Poles had been forcefully expelling the remaining German population in these provinces in a program of ethnic cleansing. When the Allies met in Potsdam on 17 July 1945 at the Potsdam Conference, a chaotic refugee situation faced the occupying powers. On 2 August 1945, they established the Potsdam protocol. Article IX placed one fourth of Germany's territory under provisional Polish administration and Article XIII ordered that the remaining German populations in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary be transferred west in an "orderly and humane" manner. Although not approved by Allies at Potsdam, hundreds of thousands of ethnic German living in Yugoslavia and Romania were deported to slave labor in the Soviet Union, to Alliedoccupied Germany, and subsequently to the German Democratic Republic, Austria and the Federal Republic of Germany. This entailed the largest population transfer in history. In all 15 million Germans were affected, and more than two million perished during the expulsion of the German population. (See German exodus from Eastern Europe.) Between the end of World War II and the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, more than 563,700 refugees from East Germany traveled to West Germany for asylum from the Soviet occupation. During the same period, millions of former Russian citizens were forcefully repatriated against their will into the USSR. On 11 February 1945, at the conclusion of the Yalta Conference, the United States and United Kingdom signed a Repatriation Agreement with the USSR. The interpretation of this Agreement resulted in the forcible repatriation of all Soviets regardless of their wishes. When the war ended in May 1945, British and U.S. civilian authorities ordered their military forces in Europe to deport to the Soviet Union millions of former residents of the USSR, including many persons who had left Russia and established different citizenship decades before. The forced repatriation operations took place from 1945 to 1947. At the end of World War II, there were more than 5 million "displaced persons" from the Soviet Union in the Western

Europe. About 3 million had been forced laborers (Ostarbeiters) in Germany and occupied territories. The Soviet POWs and the Vlasov men were put under the jurisdiction of SMERSH (Death to Spies). Of the 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war captured by the Germans, 3.5 million had died while in German captivity by the end of the war. The survivors on their return to the USSR were treated as traitors (see Order No. 270). Over 1.5 million surviving Red Army soldiers imprisoned by the Nazis were sent to the Gulag. Poland and Soviet Ukraine conducted population exchanges Poles who resided east of the newly established Poland-Soviet border were deported to Poland (ca. 2,100,000 persons) (see Repatriation of Poles) and Ukrainians residing west of the new border were deported to Soviet Ukraine. Population transfer to Soviet Ukraine occurred from September 1944 to May 1946 (ca. 450,000 persons) (see Repatriation of Ukrainians). Some Ukrainians (ca. 200,000 persons) left southeast Poland more or less voluntarily (between 1944 and 1945). The UNRRA was shut down in 1947, at which time it was taken over by the newly instituted International Refugee Organization. While the handover was originally planned to take place at the beginning of 1947, it did not occur until July 1947. The International Refugee Organization was a temporary organization of the United Nations (UN), which itself had been founded in 1945, with a mandate to largely finish the UNRRA's work of repatriating or resettling European refugees. It was dissolved in 1952 after resettling about one million refugees. The definition of a refugee at this time was an individual with either a Nansen passport or a "Certificate of Eligibility" issued by the International Refugee Organization. UNHCR Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (established

December 14, 1950) protects and supports refugees at the request of a government or the United Nations and assists in their return or resettlement. All refugees in the world are under the UNHCR mandate except Palestinian Arabs, who fled the future Jewish state between 1947 and 1949 (see below), and their descendants. However, Palestinian Arabs, who fled the West Bank and Gaza after 1949 (for example, during the 1967 Six Day war) are under the jurisdiction of the UNHCR. UNHCR provides protection and assistance not only to refugees, but also to other categories of displaced or needy people. These include asylum seekers, refugees who have returned home but still need help in rebuilding their lives, local civilian communities directly affected by the movements of refugees, stateless people and so-called internally displaced people (IDPs). IDPs are civilians who have been forced to flee their homes, but who have not reached a neighboring country and therefore, unlike refugees, are not protected by international law and may find it hard to receive any form of assistance. As the nature of war has changed in the last few decades, with more and more internal conflicts replacing interstate wars, the number of IDPs has increased significantly to an estimated 5 million people worldwide. It succeeded the earlier International Refugee Organization and the even earlier United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (which itself succeeded the League of Nations' Commissions for Refugees). UNHCR was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954 and 1981. The agency is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well being of refugees. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country. Many celebrities are associated with the agency as UNHCR Goodwill Ambassadors, currently including Angelina Jolie,

Giorgio Armani and others. The individual who has raised the most money in benefit performances and volunteer work on behalf of UNHCR was Luciano Pavarotti. UNHCR's mandate has gradually been expanded to include protecting and providing humanitarian assistance to what it describes as other persons "of concern," including internallydisplaced persons (IDPs) who would fit the legal definition of a refugee under the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol, the 1969 Organization for African Unity Convention, or some other treaty if they left their country, but who presently remain in their country of origin. UNHCR thus has missions in Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Serbia and Montenegro and Cte d'Ivoire to assist and provide services to IDPs. Asia 8,603,600 Africa 5,169,300 Europe 3,666,700 Latin America and Caribbean 2,513,000 North America 716,800 Oceania 82,500. International attitude Law Under international law, refugees are individuals who: Are outside their country of nationality or habitual residence; Have a well-founded fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion; and Are unable or unwilling to avail them of the protection of that country, or to return there, for fear of persecution. Refugee law encompasses customary law, peremptory norms, and international legal instruments. These include: The 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees; also referred to as the Geneva Convention; The 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees; The 1969 OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of

Refugee Problems in Africa World Refugee Day World Refugee Day occurs on June 20. A special United Nations General Assembly Resolution created the day in 2000. June 20 had previously been commemorated as African Refugee Day in a number of African countries. In the United Kingdom World Refugee Day is celebrated as part of Refugee Week. Refugee Week is a nationwide festival designed to promote understanding and to celebrate the cultural contributions of refugees, and features many events such as music, dance and theatre. In the Roman Catholic Church, the World Day of Migrants and Refugees is celebrated in January each year, having been instituted in 1914 by Pope Pius X. "Nothing at all" is a folk song by Bob Thomas and Huw Pudner about the plight of a refugee being forced back to his own country against his will. Reasons for refugee crises Asylum seekers "Asylum seeker" redirects here. For other uses "Seeking asylum" redirects here. For the 1979 Italian film, According to international refugee law, a refugee is someone who seeks refuge in a foreign country because of war and violence, or out of fear of persecution. The United States recognizes persecution "on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group" as grounds for seeking asylum. Until a request for refuge has been accepted, the person is referred to as an asylum seeker. Only after the recognition of the asylum seeker's protection needs, he

or she is officially referred to as a refugee and enjoys refugee status, which carries certain rights and obligations according to the legislation of the receiving country. The practical determination of whether a person is a refugee or not is most often left to certain government agencies within the host country. This can lead to a situation where the country will neither recognize the refugee status of the asylum seekers nor see them as legitimate migrants and treat them as illegal aliens. On the other hand, fraudulent requests in an environment of lax enforcement could lead to improper classification as refugee, resulting in the diversion of resources from those with a genuine need the percentage of asylum/refugee seekers who do not meet the international standards of special-needs refugee, and for whom resettlement is deemed proper, varies from country to country. Failed asylum applicants are most often deported, sometimes after imprisonment or detention, as in the United Kingdom.:) A claim for asylum may also be made onshore, usually after making an unauthorized arrival. Some governments are tolerant and accepting of onshore asylum claims; other governments arrest or detain those who attempt to seek asylum; sometimes while processing their claims. Non-governmental organizations concerned with refugees and asylum seekers have pointed out difficulties for displaced persons to seek asylum in industrialized countries. As their immigration policy often focuses on the fight of irregular migration and the strengthening of border controls it deters displaced persons from entering territory in which they could lodge an asylum claim. The lack of opportunities to legally access the asylum procedures can force asylum seekers to undertake often expensive and hazardous attempts at illegal entry. Concerns over arbitrariness in asylum adjudication in the United States have led some commentators to describe the process as refugee roulette; that is, a system in which the identity of the

adjudicator, rather than the strength of the asylum seeker's claim, is the determining factor in winning an asylum claim. Climate

Map showing where natural disasters caused/aggravated by climate change can occur, and where possibly environmental refugees will be created 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 estimate 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 could flood across international borders to escape the impacts of climate change in the next 40 years are unrealistic. Case studies from Bolivia, Senegal and Tanzania, three countries extremely prone to 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. Migration is in many developing countries a coping strategy to mitigate poverty and is already happening independent of the effects of climate change and environmental degradation. It is 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. Resettlement State Quota (2001) Year established

United 80,000 1980 States Canada 11,000 1978 Australia 15,000 Unknown Norway 1,500 Unknown Sweden 1,375 1950 New 750 1979 Zealand Finland 750 1979 Denmark 517 1989 Netherlan 500 1984 ds Resettlement involves the assisted movement of refugees who are unable to return home to safe third countries. The UNHCR has traditionally seen resettlement as the least preferable of the "durable solutions" to refugee situations. However, in April 2000 the then UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, stated: Resettlement can no longer be seen as the least-preferred durable solution; in many cases it is the only solution for refugees Sadako Ogata, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, April 2000 UNHCR referred more than 121,000 refugees for consideration for resettlement in 2008. This was the highest number for 15 years. In 2007, 98,999 people were referred. UNHCR referred 33,512 refugees from Iraq, 30,388 from Burma/Myanmar and 23,516 from Bhutan in 2008. In terms of resettlement departures, in 2008, 65,548 refugees were resettled in 26 countries, up from 49,868 in 2007. The largest number of UNHCR-assisted departures was from Thailand (16,807), Nepal (8,165), Syria (7,153), Jordan (6,704)

and Malaysia (5,865). Note that these are the countries that refugees were resettled from, not their countries of origin. A number of third countries run specific resettlement programs in co-operation with UNHCR. The size of these programs is shown in the table. The largest programs are run by the United States, Canada and Australia. A number of European countries run smaller schemes and in 2004 the United Kingdom established its own scheme, known as the Gateway Protection Programme[58] with an initial annual quota of 500, which rose to 750 in the financial year 2008/09. In September 2009, the European Commission unveiled plans for new Joint EU Resettlement Programme. The scheme would involve EU member states deciding together each year which refugees should be given priority. Member states would receive 4,000 from the European Refugee Fund per refugee resettled. Between 1981, when Japan ratified the U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and 2002, Japan recognized only 305 persons as refugees. According to the UNHCR, in 2006 Japan accepted 26 refugees for resettlement. Right of return Even in a supposedly "post-conflict" environment, it is not a simple process for refugees to return home. The UN Pinheiro Principles are guided by the idea that not only people have the right to return home, but also to the same property. It seeks to return to the pre-conflict status quo and ensure that no one profits from the violence. Yet this is a very complex issue and every situation is different, conflict is a highly transformative force and the pre-war status quo can never be reestablished completely, even if that were desirable (it may have caused the conflict in the first place). Therefore, the following are of particular importance to the right to return: May never have had property (e.g. in Afghanistan); Cannot access what property they have (Colombia,

Guatemala, South Africa and Sudan); Ownership is unclear as families have expanded or split and division of the land becomes an issue; Death of owner may leave dependents without clear claim to the land; People settled on the land know it is not theirs but have nowhere else to go (as in Colombia, Rwanda and TimorLeste); and Have competing claims with others, including the state and its foreign or local business partners (as in Aceh, Angola, Colombia, Liberia and Sudan). Historical and contemporary crises Movements in 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 division of Africa into European colonies in 1885, along which lines the newly independent nations of the 1950s and 1960s drew their borders, has been cited as a major reason why Africa has been so plagued with intrastate warfare. 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. Countries in Africa from where 5,000 or more refugees originated as of the end of 2004, arranged in descending order of numbers

of refugees are listed below. The largest number of refugees are from Sudan and have fled either the longstanding and recently concluded Sudanese Civil War or the Darfur conflict and are located mainly in Chad, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Angola: 228,838 Burundi: 485,764 Cameroon: 7,629 Central African Republic: 31,069 Chad: 52,663 Cte d'Ivoire: 23,655 Democratic Republic of Congo: 462,203 Eritrea: 131,119 Ethiopia: 63,105 Ghana: 14,767 Liberia: 335,467 Nigeria: 23,888 Republic of the Congo: 28,152 Rwanda: 63,808 Senegal: 8,332 Sierra Leone: 41,801 Somalia: 389,272 Sudan: 930,612 Togo: 10,819 Uganda: 31,963 Zimbabwe: 9,568

Angola Decolonization 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 (19752002), one of the largest and deadliest Cold War conflicts, erupted shortly after and spread out across the newly-independent country. At least one million persons 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. Great Lakes crisis

Refugee camp in Zaire, 1994 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 Darfur conflict in western Sudan since roughly 2003.

African refugees in Israel Since 2003, an estimated 10,000 illegal immigrants from various African countries have crossed into Israel. Some 600 refugees from the Darfur region of Sudan have been granted temporary resident status to be renewed every year, though not official refugee state. Another 2,000 refugees from the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia have been granted temporary resident status on humanitarian grounds. Israel prefers not to recognize them as refugees so as not to offend Eritrea and Ethiopia, though Sudanese, who are from an enemy state, are also not recognized as refugees. In 2007, Israel deported 48 refugees back to Egypt after they succeeded in crossing the border, of which twenty were deported back to Sudan by Egyptian authorities, according to Amnesty International. In August 2008 the Israel Defense Forces deported at least another 91 African asylum seekers at the border. Throughout this year, Egyptian police have shot dead 20 African asylum seekers attempting to enter Israel. Western Sahara conflict 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. Algerian War The Algerian War of Independence (19541962) uprooted more than 2 million Algerians, who were forced to relocate in French camps or to flee to Morocco, Tunisia, and into the Algerian hinterland. European-descended population, Pieds-Noirs, accounted for 10.4% of the total population of Algeria in 1962. In just a few months in 1962, 900,000 of them fled the country in the most

massive relocation of population to Europe since the World War II. A motto used in the FLN propaganda designating the Piednoirs community was "Suitcase or coffin" ("La valise ou le cercueil"). Libyan Civil War 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 neighboring 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. Movements in the Americas Latin Americans 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. There was also a large exodus of Guatemalans during the 1980s, trying to escape from the Civil War and genocide there as well. These people went to Southern Mexico and the U.S. From 1991 through 1994, following the military coup d'tat 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. 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 sixyear-old Elin Gonzlez brought the covert migration to international attention. Measures by both governments have attempted to address the issue; the U.S. instituted a wet feet, dry feet policy allowing refuge to those travelers who manage to complete their journey, and the Cuban government have periodically allowed for mass migration by organizing leaving posts. The most famous of these agreed migrations was the Mariel boatlift of 1980. 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, ten 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, World Relief and State of Iowa, Bureau of Refugee Services. 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 JRSs 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. Refugee Works, headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, is ORR's training and technical assistance arm for employment and selfsufficiency activities, for example. This nonprofit organization assists refugee service providers in their efforts to help refugees achieve self-sufficiency. Refugee Works publishes white papers, newsletters and reports on refugee employment topics. Movements in Asia Afghanistan From the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 until the late 2001 US-led invasion, about six million Afghan refugees have fled to neighboring Pakistan (mainly NWFP) and Iran, making Afghanistan the largest refugee-producing country. Since early 2002, more than 5 million Afghan refugees have repatriated through the UNHCR from both Pakistan and Iran back to their native country, Afghanistan. Approximately 3.5 million from Pakistan while the remaining 1.5 million from Iran. Since 2007

the Iranian government has forcibly deported mostly unregistered (and some registered) Afghan refugees back to Afghanistan, with 362,000 being deported in 2008. As of March 2009, some 1.7 million registered Afghan refugees still remain in Pakistan. This includes the many who were born in Pakistan during the last 30 years but still counted as citizens of Afghanistan. They are allowed to work and study until the end of 2012. 935,600 registered Afghans are living in Iran, which also include the ones born inside Iran. Dissolution of the British Raj, The Partition of 1947 and Independence The partition of the British Raj provinces of Panjab and Bangal 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 exhange 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 in India in 1971 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 known as '"Chakmas"' in India.

Pakistani Biharis in Bangladesh after 1971 During the period of united Pakistan (19471971), the Urduspeaking Biharis were not assimilated into the society of East Pakistan and remained a distinct cultural-linguistic group. Due to being a different linguistic group they were assaulted by Bengalis and the Indian Army in the 1971 war. Many atrocities took place against Biharis and even after the war they are still living in the same conditions. At the end of the war many Biharis took shelter in refugee camps in different cities, the biggest being the Geneva Camp in Dhaka. It is estimated that about 250,000 Biharis are living in those camps today, with problems like continuous atrocities by the local Bengali population, rape on young girls, malnutrition and poor hygiene and living conditions. Rohingyas in Bangladesh and Pakistan from Burma Bangladesh hosts more than 250,000 Muslim Rohingya refugees forced from western Burma (Myanmar) who fled in 1991-92 to escape persecution by the Burmese military junta. Many have lived there for close to twenty years. The Bangladeshi government divides the Rohingya into two categories recognized refugees living in official camps and unrecognized refugees living in unofficial sites or among Bangladeshi communities. Around 30,000 Rohingyas are residing in two camps in Nayapara and Kutupalong area of Cox's Bazar district in Bangladesh. These camp residents have access to basic services, those outside do not. With no changes inside Burma in sight, Bangladesh must come to terms with the long-term needs of all the Rohingya refugees in the country, and allow international organizations to expand services that benefit the Rohingya as well as local communities. The agency has been supporting Rohingya refugees staying in the camps. On the other hand, it is not receiving applications for refugee status from the newly arrived Rohingyas. This amounts to compromising of its mandate. The brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Arakan State by the Burmese military in

1991-92 thousands of people have been detained in crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh and tens of thousands have been repatriated to Burma to face further repression. There are widespread allegations of religious persecution, use of forced labor and denial of citizenship of many Rohingya forced to return to Burma since 1996. Many have fled again to Bangladesh to seek work or shelter, or flee from Burmese military oppression, and some are forced across the border by Burmese security forces. In the past few months, abuses against Rohingya in Arakan State has continued, including strict registration laws that continue to deny Rohingya citizenship, restrictions on movement, land confiscation and forced evictions to make way for Buddhist Burmese settlements, widespread forced labor in infrastructure projects and closure of some mosques, including nine in North Buthidaung Township of Western Arakan State in the last half of 2006. There are also large numbers of Muslim Rohingya refugees in Pakistan. Most of them have made perilous journey across Bangladesh and India and have settled in Karachi. Himalayas After the 1959 Tibetan exodus, there are more than 150,000 Tibetans who live in India, many in settlements in Dharamsala and Mysore, and Nepal. These include people who have escaped over the Himalayas from Tibet, as well as their children and grandchildren. In India the overwhelming majority of Tibetans born in India are still stateless and carry a document called an Identity Card issued by the Indian government in lieu of a passport. This document states the nationality of the holder as Tibetan. It is a document that is frequently rejected as a valid travel document by many customs and immigrations departments. The Tibetan refugees also own a Green Book issued by the Tibetan Government in Exile for rights and duties towards this administration. In 199192, Bhutan expelled roughly 100,000 ethnic Nepalis known as Lhotshampas from the southern part of the country.

Most of them have been living in seven refugee camps run by UNHCR in eastern Nepal ever since; some of them resettled in India. In March 2008, this population began a multiyear resettlement to third countries including the United States, New Zealand, Denmark, Canada, Norway and Australia. At present, the United States is working towards resettling more than 60,000 of these refugees in the US as a third country settlement programme. Meanwhile, as many as 200,000 Nepalese were displaced during the Maoist insurgency and Nepalese Civil War which ended in 2006. More than 3 million Pakistani civilians have been displaced by War in Northwest Pakistan (2004present) between the Pakistani government and Taliban militants. Sri Lanka Sri Lankan diaspora and Sri Lankan IDP camps The civil war in Sri Lanka, from 1983 to 2009 had generated thousands of internally displaced people as well as refugees. Many Sri Lankans have fled to neighbourly India and western countries such as Canada, France, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Refugees travel through Malaysia and/or Thailand and Indonesia before moving into Australia or Canada by illegal means such as boat or plane. Kashmir According to the National Human Rights Commission, about 300,000 Kashmiri Pandits have been forced to leave Kashmir. But Kashmiri groups peg the number of migrants closer to 500,000. Tajikistan civil war Since 1991, much of the country's non-Muslim population, including Russians and Bukharian Jews, have fled Tajikistan due to severe poverty, instability and Tajikistan Civil War (1992 1997). In 1992, most of the countrys Jewish population was

evacuated to Israel.[101] By the end of the civil war Tajikistan was in a state of complete devastation. Around 1.2 million people were refugees inside and outside of the country. Uzbekistan In 1989, after bloody pogroms against the Meskhetian Turks in Central Asia's Ferghana Valley, nearly 90,000 Meskhetian Turks left Uzbekistan. The 2010 South Kyrgyzstan riots left some 300,000 people internally displaced. Another 100,000 refugees crossed the border into Uzbekistan. Southeast Asia (Vietnam War) Following the communist takeovers in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in 1975, about three million people attempted to escape in the subsequent decades. With massive influx of refugees daily, the resources of the receiving countries were severely strained. The plight of the boat people became an international humanitarian crisis. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) set up refugee camps in neighboring countries to process the boat people. The budget of the UNHCR increased from $80 million in 1975 to $500 million in 1980. Partly for its work in Indochina, the UNHCR was awarded the 1981 Nobel Peace Prize. Large numbers of Vietnamese refugees came into existence after 1975 when South Vietnam fell to the communist forces. Many tried to escape, some by boat, thus giving rise to the phrase "boat people". The Vietnamese refugees emigrated to Hong Kong, France, the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries, creating sizeable expatriate communities, notably in the United States. Since 1975, an estimated 1.4 million refugees from Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries have been resettled to the United States. Most Asian countries were unwilling to accept refugees. Survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia fled across

the border into Thailand after the Vietnamese invasion of 197879. Approximately 300,000 of these people were eventually resettled in the United States, France, Canada, and Australia between 1979 and 1992, when the camps were closed and the remaining people repatriated. Nearly 400,000 Laotians fled to Thailand after the Vietnam War and Communist Take over in 1975.Some left because of persecution by the government for religious or ethnic purposes. Most left between 19761985 and lived in refugee camps along the border between Thailand and Laos. They mostly settled in the United States, Canada, France, and Australia. In the United States they mostly settled in Washington State, California, Washington DC, Texas, Virginia, and Minnesota. The Mien or Yao recently lived in northern Vietnam, northern Laos and northern Thailand. In 1975, the Pathet Lao forces began seeking reprisal for the involvement of many Mien as soldiers in the CIA-sponsored Secret War in Laos. As a token of appreciation to the Mien and Hmong people who served in the CIA secret army, the United States accepted many of the refugees as naturalized citizens (Mien American). Many more Hmong continue to seek asylum in neighboring Thailand. Due to the persecution of the ethnic Karen, Karenni and other minority populations in Burma (Myanmar) significant numbers of refugees live along the Thai border in camps of up to 100,000 people. Muslim ethnic groups from Burma, the Rohingya and other Arakanese have been living in camps in Bangladesh since the 1990s. Movements in Europe World War II refugee issues

Jewish refugees Further information: Jewish refugees

Between the first and second world wars, Jewish immigration to the British Mandate for Palestine was encouraged by the nascent Zionist movement, but was restricted by the British Mandate government, under the pressure of Arab nationalists. In Europe, Nazi persecution culminated in the Holocaust and the mass murder of millions of European Jews. The Evian Conference, Bermuda Conference, and others failed to resolve the problem of finding a home for large numbers of Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe. Following its formation in 1948, according to 1947 UN Partition Plan, Israel adopted the Law of Return, granting Israeli citizenship to any Jewish immigrant. European Union According to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, a network of European refugee-assisting non-governmental organizations (NGOs), huge differences exist between national asylum systems in Europe, making the asylum system a 'lottery' for refugees. For example, Iraqis who flee their home country and end up in Germany have an 85% chance of being recognized as a refugee and those who apply for asylum in Slovenia do not get a protection status at all. Hungary In 195657 following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 nearly 200,000 persons, about two percent of the population of Hungary, fled as refugees to Austria and West Germany. Czechoslovakia The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was followed by a wave of emigration, unseen before and stopped shortly after (estimate: 70,000 immediately, 300,000 in total), typic Balkans Following the Greek Civil War (19461949) hundreds of thousands of Greeks and Ethnic Macedonians were expelled or

fled the country. The number of refugees ranged from 35,000 to over 213,000. The Partisans evacuated over 28,000 children to the Eastern Bloc and the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. This left thousands of Greeks and Aegean Macedonians spread across the world. The forced assimilation campaign of the late 1980s directed against ethnic Turks resulted in the emigration of some 300,000 Bulgarian Turks to Turkey. Beginning in 1991, political upheavals in the Balkans such as the breakup of Yugoslavia displaced about 2,700,000 people by mid-1992, of which over 700,000 of them sought asylum in Europe. In 1999, about one million Albanians escaped from Serbian persecution. Today there are still thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons in the Balkan Region who cannot return to their homes. Most of them are Serbs who cannot return to Kosovo, and who still live in refugee camps in Serbia today. Over 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanian minorities fled or were expelled from Kosovo after the Kosovo War in 1999. Refugees and IDPs in Serbia form between 7% and 7.5% of its population about half a million refugees sought refuge in the country following the series of Yugoslav wars (from Croatia mainly, to an extent Bosnia and Herzegovina too and the IDPs from Kosovo, which are the most numerous at over 200,000). Serbia has the largest refugee population in Europe. Refugee issues Medical problems Apart from physical wounds or starvation, a large percentage of refugees develop symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression. These long-term mental problems can severely impede the functionality of the person in everyday situations; it makes matters even worse for displaced persons who are confronted with a new environment and challenging situations. They are also at high risk for suicide.

 Among other symptoms, post-traumatic stress disorder involves anxiety, over-alertness, sleeplessness, chronic fatigue syndrome, motor difficulties, failing short-term memory, amnesia, nightmares and sleep-paralysis. Flashbacks are characteristic to the disorder: The patient experiences the traumatic event, or pieces of it, again and again. Depression is also characteristic for PTSD-patients and may also occur without accompanying PTSD. PTSD was diagnosed in 34.1% of Palestinian children, most of whom were refugees, males, and working. The participants were 1,000 children aged 12 to 16 years from governmental, private, and United Nations Relief Work Agency UNRWA schools in East Jerusalem and various governorates in the West Bank. Another study showed that 28.3% of Bosnian refugee women had symptoms of PTSD three or four years after their arrival in Sweden. These women also had significantly higher risks of symptoms of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress than Swedish-born women. For depression the odds ratio was 9.50 among Bosnian women. A study by the Department of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine demonstrated that twenty percent of Sudanese refugee minors living in the United States had a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder. They were also more likely to have worse scores on all the Child Health Questionnaire subscales. Many more studies illustrate the problem. One meta-study was conducted by the psychiatry Department of Oxford University at Warneford Hospital in the United Kingdom. Twenty surveys were analyzed, providing results for 6,743 adult refugees from seven countries. In the larger studies, 9% were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and 5% with major depression, with evidence of much psychiatric co-morbidity. Five surveys of 260 refugee children from three countries yielded a prevalence of 11%

for post-traumatic stress disorder. According to this study, refugees resettled in Western countries could be about ten times more likely to have PTSD than age-matched general populations in those countries. Worldwide, tens of thousands of refugees and former refugees resettled in Western countries probably have post-traumatic stress disorder. Exploitation Refugee populations consist of people who are terrified and are away from familiar surroundings. There can be instances of exploitation at the hands of enforcement officials, citizens of the host country, and even United Nations peacekeepers. Instances of human rights violations, child labor, mental and physical trauma/torture, violence-related trauma, and sexual exploitation, especially of children, are not entirely unknown. In many refugee camps in three war-torn West African countries, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, young girls were found to be exchanging sex for money, a handful of fruit, or even a bar of soap. Most of these girls were between 13 and 18 years of age. In most cases, if the girls had been forced to stay, they would have been forced into marriage. They became pregnant around the age of 15 on average. This happened as recently as in 2001. Parents tended to turn a blind eye because sexual exploitation had become a mechanism of survival in these camps. RIGHT OF ASYLUM Right of asylum (or political asylum, Greek: ) is an ancient juridical notion, under which a person persecuted for political opinions or religious beliefs in his or her own country may be protected by another sovereign authority, a foreign country, or Church sanctuaries (as in medieval times). This right has its roots in a longstanding Western traditionalthough it was

already recognized by the Egyptians, the Greeks and the HebrewsDescartes went to the Netherlands, Voltaire to England, Hobbes to France (followed by many English nobles during the English Civil War), etc.; each state offered protection to foreign persecuted persons. Political asylum is similar, but not identical, to modern refugee law, which deals with massive influx of population, while the right of asylum concerns individuals and is usually delivered in a case-to-case basis. There is overlap between the two because each refugee may demand political asylum on an individual basis. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Hebrews recognized a religious "right of asylum," protecting criminals (or those accused of crime) from legal action to some extent. The established Christian church later adopted this principle, and various rules developed to qualify for protection and just how much protection it was. According to the Council of Orleans in 511, in the presence of Clovis I, asylum was granted to anyone who took refuge in a church, in its dependences or in the house of a bishop. This protection was given to murderers, thieves or people accused of adultery. It also concerned the fugitive slave, who would however be handed back to his owner when his owner swore on the Bible not to be cruel. This Christian right of asylum was confirmed by all following councils. Medieval England In England, King Ethelbert made the first laws regulating sanctuary in about 600 AD. In the laws of king Ethelred, the term grith is used. By the Norman era after 1066, there had evolved two kinds of sanctuary: all churches had the lower-level kind (sanctuary within the church proper), but only churches licensed by the king had a broader version (sanctuary in a zone surrounding the church). There were at least twenty-two churches with charters for a broader kind of sanctuary, including

Battle Abbey, Beverley (see image, right), Colchester, Durham, Hexham, Norwich, Ripon, Wells, Winchester Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and York Minster. Sometimes the criminal had to get to the church itself to be protected, and might have to ring a certain bell there, or hold a certain ring or doorknocker, or sit on a certain chair ("frith-stool"), and some of these items survive at various churches. In other places, there was an area around the church or abbey, sometimes extending as much as a mile and a half, and there would be stone "sanctuary crosses" marking the boundary of the area; some of those still exist as well. Thus it could become a race between the felon and medieval law officers to the nearest sanctuary boundary, and could make the serving of justice upon the fleet of foot a difficult proposition. Church sanctuaries were regulated by common law. An asylum seeker was to confess sins, surrender weapons, and is placed under the supervision of the head of the church or abbey where they had fled. They then had forty days to make one of two choices: surrender to secular authorities and stand trial for the alleged crimes, or confess their guilt and be sent into exile (abjure the realm), by the shortest route and never return without the king's permission. Anyone who did come back could be executed by the law and/or excommunicated by the Church. If the suspect chose to confess their guilt and abjure, they would do so in a public ceremony, usually at the gate of the church grounds. They would surrender their possessions to the church, and any landed property to the crown. The coroner, a medieval official, would then choose a port city from which the fugitive should leave England (though the fugitive sometimes had this privilege). The fugitive would set out barefooted and bareheaded, carrying a wooden cross-staff as a symbol of protection under the church. Theoretically they would stay to the main highway, reach the port and take the first ship out of England. In practice, however, the fugitive could get a safe distance away, abandon the cross-staff and take off and start a new life. However, one can safely assume the friends and

relatives of the victim knew of this ploy and would do everything in their power to make sure this did not happen; or indeed that the fugitive never reached their intended port of call, becoming a victim of vigilante justice under the pretense of a fugitive who wandered too far off the main highway while trying to "escape." Knowing the grim options, some fugitives rejected both choices and opted for an escape from the asylum before the forty days were up. Others simply made no choice and did nothing. Since it was illegal for the victim's friends to break into an asylum, the church would deprive the fugitive of food and water until a decision was made. Henry VIII changed the rules of asylum, reducing to a short list the types of crimes which were allowed to claim asylum. The medieval system of asylum was finally abolished entirely by James I in 1623. During the Wars of the Roses, when the Yorkists or Lancastrians would suddenly get the upper hand by winning a battle, some adherents of the losing side might find themselves surrounded by adherents of the other side and not able to get back to their own side. Upon realizing this situation they would rush to sanctuary at the nearest church until it was safe to come out. A prime example is Queen Elizabeth Woodville, consort of Edward IV of England. In 1470, when the Lancastrians briefly restored Henry VI to the throne, queen Elizabeth was living in London with several young daughters. She moved with them into Westminster for sanctuary, living there in royal comfort until Edward IV was restored to the throne in 1471 and giving birth to their first son Edward V during that time. When King Edward IV died in 1483, Elizabeth (who was highly unpopular with even the Yorkists and probably did need protection) took her five daughters and youngest son (Richard, Duke of York) and again moved into sanctuary at Westminster. To be sure she had all the comforts of home, she brought so much furniture and so many chests that the workmen had to knock holes in some of the walls to get

everything in fast enough to suit her. Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution." The United Nations 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees guides national legislation concerning political asylum. Under these agreements, a refugee (or for cases where repressing base means has been applied directly or environmentally to the defoul refugee) is a person who is outside their own country's territory (or place of habitual residence if stateless) owing to fear of persecution on protected grounds. Protected grounds include race, nationality, religion, political opinions and membership and/or participation in any particular social group or social activities. These are the accepted terms and criteria as principles and a fundamental part in The U.N. 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees' non-refoulement order. Since the 1990s, sexual persecution has come to be accepted in some countries as a legitimate category for asylum claims, when the claimant can prove that the state is unable or unwilling to provide protection. Some believe that the development in the 20th century of bilateral extradition treaties has endangered the right of asylum, although international law considers that a sovereign state has no obligation to surrender an alleged criminal to a foreign state, as one principle of sovereignty is that every state has legal authority over the people within its borders. Indeed, a state granting the right of sanctuary to an asylee will summarily and categorically reject a request of the country they fled from to extradite them, regardless of any extradition treaty. This is due to the fact that to be granted sanctuary by a state indicates that the state granting sanctuary regards the asylee as being illegally persecuted by the nation they fled from. Rendering the true victim of persecution to their persecutor is a particularly odious violation of a principle called non-refoulement, part of the customary and trucial Law of Nations.

A corollary of this principle is that the granting of asylum is tantamount to accusing (or at least strongly implying that) the nation an asylee fled from is illegally persecuting the asylee, and thus the granting of asylum by one state to a citizen or citizens of a particular state may be considered an unfriendly deed by the country the asylee(s) fled from, and retaliation, through the exercise of the right of reciprocity or the right of reprisal may occur. For example, the Government of Cuba has granted asylum to a number of persons that the Federal Government of the United States considers domestic terrorists or criminals. This has caused outrage in the United States, and resulted in the Federal Government of the United States listing Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. Similar grievances exist on the Cuban side, with the United States having granted asylum to a number of individuals which the Government of Cuba considers criminals, traitors, or terrorists, possibly as an exercise of the right of reciprocity, or the right of reprisal; however, the Government of Cuba apparently has not added the United States to its list of state sponsors of terrorism. Right of Asylum in the European Union The asylum in the European Union was formed since a half-century in its Member States by application of the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 on the Status of Refugees. It evolved as a result of common policies appearing in the 1990s in connection with the creation of the Schengen Agreement on the suppression of internal borders. The EU has set up a common policy on asylum so that unsuccessful asylum seekers do not make a new application in another country. This common policy began with the Dublin Convention in 1990. It continued through the implementation of Eurodac and the Dublin Regulation in 2003, and continues today (October 2009 adoption of two proposals by the European Commission. Right of Asylum in France Political asylum is recognized in France (droit d'asile) by the 1958 Constitution. It has been restricted due to immigration

policies with the December 30, 1993 law, the Debr law of April 24, 1997, the May 11, 1998 law and the December 10, 2003 law. Henceforth, critics, including the Human Rights League (Ligue des droits de l'homme LDH) have opposed what they see as a practical abandonment of a longstanding European judicial tradition. Political asylum is also defined in France by the 1951 United Nations (UN) Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (ratified in 1952), the additional 1967 protocol; articles K1 and K2 of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty as well as the 1985 Schengen Agreement, which defined the European policy on immigration. Finally, right of asylum is defined by article 18 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. On a purely judicial level, only four conditions may be opposed to the accordance of political asylum to someone who has proven being subject to persecution in their country: the presence of the alien represents a serious threat to public order; the request should be addressed by another sovereign state; the request has already been accepted in another state; or the request is an abuse on the system of political asylum. The December 10, 2003 law has limited political asylum, giving two main restrictions: It invented the notion of "internal asylum": the request may be rejected if the foreigner may benefit from political asylum on a portion of the territory of the state The OFPRA (Office franais pour la protection des rfugis et apatrides French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons) now makes a list of allegedly "safe countries" which respect political rights and principles of liberty. If the demander of asylum comes from such a country, the request is treated in 15 days, and receives no social assistance protection. They may contest the decision, but this does not suspend any deportation order. The first list, enacted in July 2005, included as "safe countries" Benin, Cape Verde, Ghana, Mali, Mauritius Island, India, Senegal, Mongolia, Georgia, Ukraine, Bosnia

and Croatia. It had the effect of reducing in six months by about 80% the number of applicants from these countries. The second list, passed in July 2006, included Tanzania, Madagascar, Niger, Albania and Macedonia. Thus, although the right of political asylum has been conserved in France in spite of the various anti-immigration laws, it has been restricted to some extent. Some people claim that, apart from the purely judicial level, the bureaucratic process is also used to slow down and ultimately reject what might be considered as valid requests. According to Le Figaro, France granted 7,000 people the status of political refugee in 2006, out of a total of 35,000 requests; in 2005, the OFPRA in charge of examining the legitimacy of such requests granted less than 10,000 from a total of 50,000 requests. Numerous exiles from South American dictatorships, in particular from Augusto Pinochet's Chile and Argentina, were received in the 1970s-80s. As a current example, since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, tens of homeless Afghan asylum seekers have been sleeping in a park in Paris near the Gare de l'Est train station. Although their demands haven't been yet accepted, their presence has been tolerated. However, since the end of 2005, NGOs have been noting that the police separate Afghans from other migrants during raids, and expel in charters those who have just arrived at Gare de l'Est by train and haven't had time to make the demand for asylum (a May 30, 2005 decree requires them to pay for a translator for helping them in official formalities) Right of Asylum in the United Kingdom In the 19th century, the United Kingdom accorded political asylum to various persecuted people, among who were many members of the socialist movement (including Karl Marx). With the 1845 attempted bombing of the Greenwich Royal Observatory and the 1911 Siege of Sidney Street in the context of the propaganda of the deed anarchist actions, political asylum legislation was restricted.

Right of asylum in the United States The United States honors the right of asylum of individuals as specified by international and federal law. A specified number of legally defined refugees, who apply for refugee status overseas, as well as those applying for asylum after arriving in the U.S., are admitted annually. As noted in the article specifically about asylum and refugees in the United States, since World War II, more refugees have found homes in the U.S. than any other nation and more than two million refugees have arrived in the U.S. since 1980. During much of the 1990s, the United States accepted over 100,000 refugees per year, though this figure has recently decreased to around 50,000 per year in the first decade of the 21st century, due to greater security concerns. Still, of the top ten countries accepting resettled refugees in 2006, the United States accepted more than twice as many as the next nine countries combined. As for asylum seekers, the latest statistics show that 86,400 persons sought sanctuary in the United States in 2001. Prior to the September 11 attacks individuals asylum applicants were evaluated in private proceedings at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS). Despite this generosity, there are serious problems with the U.S. asylum and refugee determination processes. A recent empirical analysis by three legal scholars described the U.S. asylum process as a game of refugee roulette; that is to say that the outcome of asylum determinations depends in large part on the identity of the particular adjudicator to whom an application is randomly assigned, rather than on the merits of the case. The very low numbers of Iraqi refugees accepted between 2003 and 2007 exemplifies concerns about the United States' refugee processes. The Foreign Policy Association reported that "Perhaps the most perplexing component of the Iraq refugee crisis... has been the inability for the U.S. to absorb more Iraqis following the 2003 invasion of the country. To date, the U.S. has granted less than 800 Iraqis refugee status, just 133 in 2007. By contrast, the U.S. granted asylum to more than 100,000

Vietnamese refugees during the Vietnam War." The 2000 documentary film Well-Founded Fear, from filmmakers Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini marked the first time that a film crew was privy to the (above mentioned) private proceedings at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), where individual asylum officers ponder the often life-ordeath fate of the majority of immigrants seeking asylum. It provided the first high-profile, behind-the-scenes look at the process for seeking asylum in the United States. The film was featured at the Sundance Film Festival, documentary competition and was broadcast in June 2000 on PBS as part of POV. American citizens granted asylum abroad Holly Ann Collins, together with her three children, was the first Americans to be granted asylum in the Netherlands, in June 1994, on the grounds of abuse. The families were in transit to Netherlands when they deplaned in the country, and sought asylum. This was granted three years later, for humanitarian reasons. None of the American judges in Collins' case agreed with her accounts of alleged abuse and other key events in her case. Chere Lyn Tomayko has been granted asylum in June 2008 in Costa Rica for kidnapping Alexandria Camille Cyprian (born 1989) in 1997 for escaping alleged domestic violence. Tomayko's accounts of domestic violence were disputed by several accounts in the U.S.

SYNOPSIS According to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, of the worlds nearly 14 million refugees, more than 7 million have languished in refugee camps for ten years or more, some for generations. Although the international community tries to find durable solutions to their plight, less than 1% is ever offered a chance of resettlement. HOME ACROSS LANDS is a documentary that explores the journey of resettlement-- it tells the story of a small group of Kunama refugees and how they reestablish their sense of community in their new home in America. Considered to be some of the original inhabitants of Eritrea, the Kunama people are a marginalized minority populating the remote and fertile regions near the border of Ethiopia. In 1998, war between Eritrea and Ethiopia broke out in a conflict over these border lands forcing over 4,000 Kunama to flee across the border into Northern Ethiopia. In 2000, the war ended with the Eritrean government regaining control of the disputed area, separating thousands of Kunama from their homeland and way of life. Today the Kunama wait in desolation, 45 km from the disputed Eritrean/Ethiopian border, warehoused in the Shimelba Refugee Camp in Northern Ethiopia. Life in the camp is difficult and opportunities for a better life are nonexistent, but the Kunama remain committed to their strong sense of community and family in spite of their displacement. Unwanted in Ethiopia and unable to return to their homes safely, a small number of Kunama are given the opportunity for resettlement in the United States. HOME ACROSS LANDS chronicles the journey of these newly arrived Kunama as they strive to become self-reliant, invested participants in their new home. Guiding their transition is the resettlement agency, International Institute of Rhode Island, which connects them to the resources they need as they work to establish a new community and better life for their families.

Life in a refugee camp is a life of restricted mobility, enforced idleness and dependency-- a human warehouse where lives are on indefinite hold-- not unlike the punishment of a prison, though with the added injustice of never having committed a crime. THE KUNAMA The Shimelba Refugee Camp is located about 45 kilometers south of the Eritrean border in a semi-arid and rocky landscape dotted with trees and shrubs. Today about 14,300 Eritrean refugees live in the camp. The Kunama make up about 30% of the camp population; the rest are Tigrinya, another distinct cultural minority in Ethiopia and Eritrea. UNHCR reports that the Kunama are a more vulnerable population than the Tigrinya because they generally lack the outside financial support from family and friends that many Tigrinya enjoy. On the whole, the Kunama have less formal education than the Tigrinya and are less familiar with modern amenities. The Kunama have been referred to the United States for resettlement because there is no other durable solution to their plight. The human rights situation remains poor in Eritrea in general and for the Kunama in particular, and for this reason the UNHCR is not promoting repatriation. Nor does the organization consider local integration in Ethiopia a viable option, given Ethiopian government policy, which prohibits the Kunama from working for wages and restricts most of them to the refugee camp. Refugees found outside the camp without permits have been arrested and imprisoned. THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF Rhode Island Among the longest-running and largest programs in Rhode Island, they address the needs of new immigrants in the following areas: immigration law, refugee resettlement, minority health promotion, interpreting and translating, community outreach, and adult education including English as a Second

Language (ESL), family literacy, job readiness training, GED preparation, computer training, health, and citizenship preparation. IIRI provides resettlement assistance to close to 500 refugees annually from troubled regions all over the world. Between 150 and 200 new refugees arrive each year, primarily from Africa. The multilingual staff provides refugee families with cultural orientation, a first apartment, food, school enrollment, health screening, job training, and employment resources as well as ongoing advocacy, support, and referrals. Refugees often require intensive casework management as they work to achieve their goal of employment and self-sufficiency. IIRI is one of only two refugee resettlement agencies in the state currently resettling over 90% of the states refugees and the only refugee resettlement agency in the state to settle free case refugees those who do not have anchor families in the U.S. who would otherwise be able to assist with cultural orientation, housing, and finances. In the past five years, the characteristics of their newly arriving refugees have been skewed towards individuals and families in great distress and need. Many have spent many years in refugee camps, have experienced severe trauma and disruption, and, in some cases, have no literacy skills-- compounded by significant physical or mental health issues. Refugees arrive with little else besides the clothes on their backs and their documents, and are expected to achieve self-sufficiency within 180 days after arrival. Refugees receive only $425 per person from the federal government to help with basic needs. For nearly a century the International Institute of Rhode Island (IIRI) has provided comprehensive quality programs and services to empower Rhode Islands immigrant and refugee community. JOHN LAVALL - DIRECTOR / PRODUCER John Lavall is an Emmy Award-winning producer and director from Pawtucket, Rhode Island. His work has been broadcast

nationally, his films shown in festivals throughout the country. His company, Devlo Media, produces commercials, public service announcements, and documentary films. Recently completed projects include Big World, Small World, a short film about a community-based secretarial school in Ghana, West Africa, and Home Across Lands, a documentary that explores how a small group of resettled Kunama refugees find support and reestablish their sense of community in a small New England state. Lavall has two projects in development: ...a thousand papercuts, now in post-production, about Rhode Islands fight to protect their waterways and public safety from the proposed placement of liquefied natural gas terminals within the state, and in preproduction, of Leh Wi Tohk (Let Us Talk) that will tell the story of a Sierra Leone communitys transformation from war and poverty to peace and prosperity through the development and use of community-based radio. MARY COPP - EXECUTIVE PRODUCER / PRODUCER Mary Copp has extensive experience in the world of social purpose, non-profit organizations. She received a BA in Math and Psychology from Smith College. After earning her Masters in Public Health, she directed a health organization in the coalmining region of Appalachia. She was also director of a rape crisis center and has worked as an organizational consultant for the Management Assistant Group (DC) and United Way of South Eastern New England. Most recently, Mary developed and ran a small import business selling sustainable products from South America. Currently she is a director of The Partnership Foundation and a board member of the Wolf School. In 2008, Mary produced the documentary Home Across Lands and is currently in pre-production of Leh Wi Tohk (Let Us Talk) that will tell the story of a Sierra Leone communitys transformation from war and poverty to peace and prosperity through the development and use of community-based radio. JESSICA JENNINGS - CINEMATOGRAPHER / PRODUCER

Jessica Jennings is an Emmy Award winning producer, director and cinematographer based in Rhode Island. Jessicas work in documentary, commercial and feature films has been broadcast and shown at film festivals around the country and internationally. Her company Vision Wink Productions most recently produced BOY IN THE WORLD, a documentary about the inclusion of a boy with developmental disabilities in a regular education classroom and in his community. She received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BA from the University of Chicago. Current work includes a documentary on Eritrean refugees and their journey of resettlement in the United States, and BIG WORLD, SMALL WORLD, a film shot in Ghana, West Africa, about a community-based school that highlights the work of international social entrepreneurs. JULIE LEWIS - EDITOR / PRODUCER Julie Lewis is an independent video editor based in Providence, Rhode Island with 30 years of news and documentary production experience. Recent clients include Harvard Business School, WGBH, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and The History Channel. From 1990 to 1998 Julie was a staff editor for CBS News where she worked at 60 Minutes, Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt / Charles Osgood, and the Moscow bureau. Earlier assignments included ABC/Viacom, HBO, MTV, and The Public Agenda Foundation. In 1980 Julie joined CNN at its startup and continued through 1986 as the White House Field Producer / Editor. Julie has won several Cine Golden Eagle awards for her editing.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. What issues did Home Across Lands touch on regarding the plight of the Kunama living in refugee camps? 2. Life in a refugee camp is one of uncertainty. What are some

of the challenges facing refugees living in camps like the one shown in Home Across Lands? 3. Leaving a refugee camp, and potentially your family and community is bittersweet. What are some of the issues facing those who are leaving? What are some of the issues for those left behind? 4. What does resettlement mean beyond the physical act of moving? 5. What would the most difficult thing be in moving to a new country and starting anew? Using examples shown in Home Across Lands, name three you would find most challenging personally. 6. Home Across Lands details the long and at times difficult transition immigrants face when coming to the United States, in some ways at odds with the notion of arriving in a so-called "promised land." Were there any you were surprised to consider? 7. What, if anything, strikes you as being the biggest hurdle for Ibrahim in his transition into the working world? 8. The International Institute not only deals with the task of transporting a community and its culture, but also preparing that community for life in the U.S. as a participating citizen. Cite some examples of the more prosaic, or basic ways the International Institute prepares new immigrants for their new lives.

RESETTLEMENT A New Beginning in a Third Country Some refugees cannot go home or are unwilling to do so because they will face continued persecution. Many are also living in perilous situations or have specific needs that cannot be addressed in the country where they have sought protection. In

such circumstances, UNHCR helps resettle refugees in a third country as the only safe and viable durable solution. Of the 10.5 million refugees of concern to UNHCR around the world, only about 1 per cent are submitted by the agency for resettlement. Only a small number of states take part in UNHCR resettlement programmes. The United States is the world's top resettlement country, while Australia, Canada and the Nordic countries also provide a sizeable number of places annually. In recent years there has been an increase in the number of countries involved in resettlement in Europe and Latin America. The resettlement country provides the refugee with legal and physical protection, including access to civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights similar to those enjoyed by nationals. It should allow for refugees to become naturalized citizens. In 2010, UNHCR submitted the files of more than 108,000 refugees for consideration by resettlement countries. By nationality, the main beneficiaries of UNHCR-facilitated resettlement programmes were refugees from Iraq (26,700), Myanmar (Myanmar (24,400), and Bhutan (20,600). In the same year, some 73,000 refugees departed to 28 resettlement countries with UNHCR's assistance. The largest number of resettled refugees left from Nepal (14,800) followed by Thailand (11,400) and Malaysia (8,000). Resettlement is a life-changing experience. It is both challenging and rewarding. Refugees are often resettled to a country where the society, language and culture are completely different and new to them. Providing for their effective reception and integration is beneficial for both the resettled refugee and the receiving country. Governments and non-governmental organization partners provide services to facilitate integration, such as cultural orientation, language and vocational training as well as programmes to promote access to education and employment. Refugees and immigrants living in Clarkston are considered easy prey by criminals, said the citys police chief during a recent meeting about crime prevention. All of our violent crimes that weve dealt with in the past five

years have been [by people] from southwest and southeast Atlanta, said Clarkston Police Chief Tony Scipio to a group of apartment managers, refugees and community leaders who want to reduce the crimes against refugees and immigrants. What were finding out from interviewing these suspects and perpetrators is that all eyes are on Clarkston because of the large influx of refugees and immigrants, Scipio said. They are easily preyed [upon]. Scipio said that 69 percent of the crimes within the city limits are committed by nonresidents, many of whom live in the city of Atlanta. Many criminals plan their crime; they look at the area, they watch what you do every day, Scipio said. If you are not aware of your surroundings and your environment, and if you are not taking the necessary precautions, then eventually youre going to become a victim, especially late at night. Scipio said many of the victims in Clarkston during the past three months were out late at night, small in stature and carrying large sums of money. Hmmm! Out at night with large sums of money, what is that all about? ..and the Somali spokesman is paid for by youthe taxpayer! What a racket! Hertz had an agreement with the EEOC that Muslims would clock out to pray, but many refused. Always pushing, pushing, pushingthat is the stealth jihad. BTW, seventy per cent of Hertz shuttle-bus drivers at the Seattle-Tacoma airport are Somali Muslims (silly Hertz, really silly!). From the Seattle Times:

In the three years shes worked as a shuttle driver for Hertz at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Zainab Aweis, had always taken time out of her shift each day to pray. An observant Muslim, she prays five times a day with one, sometimes two of those prayer times falling during her shift. That was the one benefit of the job, the 20-year-old*** said. On Friday, she and 33 other drivers all of them Somali Muslims were suspended indefinitely from their jobs after they took religious breaks to pray while at work without first clocking out. A spokesman for Teamsters Local 117, which represents the workers, said it is trying to get the workers back on the job. Both the company and the union late Thursday said they were waiting to hear back from the other. While the drivers were allowed two, 10-minute breaks during their work shifts during which they could pray, Teamsters officials said managers had agreed in negotiations that workers would not have to clock out and in, though the contract itself does not address the matter. And the workers and their union said Hertz had previously not required that workers clock out for prayer. The union said it has filed an unfair-labor-practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against Hertz for failing to notify the union in advance of what it called a policy change. But Hertz said the rules arent new; that it had been trying for some time to enforce the terms of an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission settlement it reached with the workers two years ago that required them to clock out. A Hertz spokesman said the workers had been repeatedly told

they needed to clock out and that the 34 suspended workers had not complied. To add insult to injury, you pay the salary of the Somali mouthpieces. Mohamed Hassan, of the Somali Community Services Coalition, said the workers cannot afford to be away from their jobs. They need to pay rent and buy food for their children. Ive reported previously about Ethnic Community Based Organizations (they are called ECBOs in government mumbojumbo language)-we have a whole category on ECBOs. You can think of these organizations as mini-ACORNs geared specifically to particular ethnic groups. The Somali Community Services Coalition is an ECBO. They are funded almost exclusively by you! Then they teach their people how to access social service benefits and get jobs and if a political issue arises the mainstream media runs to them first for comment (as they have done here). I just checked the Somali Community Services Coalitions most recent Form 990, Although the IRS has changed the forms making it extremely hard sometimes to find the government share of an organizations income, it appears that this ECBO had an income of $282,830 that comes from government grants (federal for sure and probably some local or state grants). They paid out $193,363 in salaries ($40,000 plus of that went to an EX-director) and another $22,500 in some sort of contractor payment and $46,389 in rent (probably some inside deal with a landlord there too!). Note that over $100,000 of their income in 2009 came from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. So what did you pay for? You paid for a political mouthpiece organization.

*** Check out the strict driving requirements for teen drivers in Washington State. How on earth has she been driving a shuttle bus for three years if she is only 20 now? .. to establish a new resettlement hub! It basically works this way: refugee agency wears out its welcome somewhere nearby (no more jobs or housing, or the public gets overwhelmed with the refugee overload of social or education services), then they quietly scout out another site and set up an office before the public fully understands what is happening (and usually with the help of local publications or media which help soften the message to the community. (Gee, sounds like Hagerstown, MD in 2007!*) Below is a story (part of a long story) about Church World Service (one of the top 11 federal contractors) targeting State College, PA (I wonder if there are any meatpacking or warehouse jobs nearby?). As I said, this is a long article in Voices of Central Pennsylvania but I laughed to see that the most provocative information is near the end, and I especially liked this comment from an unnamed commenter to a local paper. This is exactly how the majority of people in small town America feel about the refugee program (once they learn it is happening to them). Why couldnt this Church World Service do something like this for a struggling American family? asked one respondent to a Centre Daily Times article about the arrival of the Alshekhkders. [Iraqi family that just arrived]. If they already do help American families, why not help more American families, until no more American families need help? When we get to that point, then they can go looking for publicity with a foreign family. [Because they are not paid by us to do that, there are NO big bucks and federal grants involved when caring for Americans!---ed]

Church World Service picked Iraqi Muslims for State College figuring that would be the best fit! They plan to resettle about 100 there this year. Jones [Phil Jones, the newly-hired Director of the CWS refugee resettlement office of State College] began preparing for the arrival of refugees in February. One of his first tasks was to determine which refugees the State College community could best accommodate. The three main needs now [in terms of refugee relocation] are for Bhutanese, Burmese and Iraqis, said Jones. Theres a fairly significant Arabic-speaking population here, theres a mosque here, theres both Sunni and Shiite populations, and Arabic language support, so it made sense that [Iraqis] would be the easiest population to start out with. Church World Services main office in New York told Jones that 50 Iraqi individuals, mostly young families, would arrive in July. According to Jones, the first family scheduled to come to State College in July was expecting a child in September. They had hoped to arrive before giving birth. However, after this family and several others had passed all the necessary clearances and were ready to schedule their flights, the Dept. of Homeland Security added an additional security check which delayed their arrival indefinitely. That security check was a response to an incident in Tennessee [I think they mean the Iraqi refugees arrested in Kentucky on terrorism charges relating to sending bomb-making material to Iraq---ed] in which two Iraqi refugees were arrested for raising funds for Al Qaeda. [....] One group that plans to play an active role in supporting Iraqi refugees is the Islamic Society of Central Pennsylvania. Along with assisting in translation, members plan to help the refugees with many of the daily needs that arise as families learn how to

navigate a new culture. [Church World Service got the Islamic Society of Western MD involved in the Hagerstown resettlement, but something went awry and they weren't much help.---ed] Another organization that will play a large role in helping refugees transition to State College life is Global Connections, a local nonprofit housed on Penn States campus that works to foster cultural understanding and exchange. Some in the community are not happy, but this publication tells us that only after we have waded through many column inches of gushy stuff. Some community members have expressed concerns regarding the arrival of the refugees, predominantly due to the lack of affordable housing in Centre County and the competition for jobs. In response to a Centre Daily Times article in January on CWSs refugee office opening in State College, one poster wrote, I appreciate what might be commendable efforts to help people in need, but this will make the problem of providing low cost housing to OUR own people more difficult. While the cultural environment of the Centre Region is attractive, the cost of living may be out of reach for these folks. Colby Woodring, Centre County Housing Case Manager, echoed the concern about finding suitable housing for the refugees. I imagine it could be just as difficult for the families CWS is helping relocate to find affordable permanent housing as anyone else in Centre County,she said. [However] it is helpful when those in need of housing assistance have support. I think its wonderful that CWS can offer that support for the refugee families needing assistance. [They only help until their federal money runs out, then it's up to the local community to find affordable housing for the refugees---ed].

Other residents have publically voiced worries about the pressures refugee families will place on social service agencies. CWS is gone from Hagerstown now and its a good thing because Washington Co., MD has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state. My first thought when I read this waswhere are the women? Arent they the ones being raped? The first three young men have arrived according to New Jersey Jewish News: After fleeing from the ravages of genocide in their native land, three refugees from Darfur are now crafting new lives in the MetroWest community with a large assist from the Jewish Vocational Service, a beneficiary agency of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ. Thanks to a $88,532 grant from the federal State Office of Refugee Resettlement, JVS has helped the men find transitional housing in the area, while providing caseworkers, translation services, English classes, vocational training, job coaching, and other support. The men are the first wave of Darfur is to arrive in New Jersey, ahead of several families and 25 young men expected to be coming to this area in the next few months. JVS and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society hope to resettle 25 or more refugees from Sudans Darfur region, which suffered under genocidal attacks by the Sudanese government. JVS is a subcontractor of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, one of the gang of ten (or eleven, but who is counting) major federal refugee contractors. That means that HIAS deals directly with the State Department and the Dept. of Health and Human Services then sends your bucks down the line to its subcontractors making it all very hard to follow the money. I had just written about HIAS here last month where I said this: I couldnt find any financials on the Hebrew Immigrant Aid

Society (if they are at the website they have it hidden well!) until I decided to try their initialsHIASand sure enough here is their most recent Form 990. Seems that HIAS (2009) had an income of $20,484,336 and $12,231,825 came from you-the taxpayer! .. But, here is the kickersalaries and benefits at this organization amounted to around $12 million dollars! HIASs CEO, Gideon Aronoff, racked in a cool $340,000 salary (with benefits) and the organization had at least another 8 executives making 6-figure salaries. Once again that old adage appliesdoing well by doing good! In case you are wondering, HIAS doesnt just resettle Jews anymoreMuslims, Hindus, Buddhists are all welcomed. So hopefully, the above informationHIAS has money! puts the begging for bucks and other donations in the rest of the NJ article in some context. One big concern the Darfuris and their hosts share is housing. There are major issues, said Fisher. Each refugee is given $1,100 from the federal government when they arrive in the United States. For a family of five, the $5,500 can tide them over. But for the single guys, the $1,100 is not enough. We need to find them transitional housing at reduced rates. Housing around here is not cheap. [In New Jersey---no kidding!---ed] To help out, JVS board members provided goods, services, and contributions for the refugees. The Sleepys mattress company donated five beds to a temporary housing facility in Newark for new arrivals. You see this mattress donation? HIAS is probably in the Match Grant program where they get a $2 match of taxpayer cash for every dollar of donated goods. Im over simplifying a bit and there are some other hoops, but say the mattress is worth $100 bucks, HIAS (if its signed up for the program) gets $200 in cash from you via the federal

government. If you saw my last post, I said that its virtually impossible to know just how much the refugee program costs and the Match Grant is just one more confusing factor. But, LOL! when I had a look at HIAS website I noticed their healthy marriage programguess they wont have to use any of that grant money on these single young Darfuri men they are bringing to NJ. Oh brother, here we go again! Readers may not know that the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement doles out federal grants to all sorts of agencies and church groups to care for abandoned immigrant minors who have either entered the country illegally on their own, or been dumped by illegal immigrant or refugee parents on the move. For more on ORRs programs for unaccompanied minors, go here. Turns out Texas has thousands of them (LOL! wanting a taxpayer supported college education Im sure, but thats another story). This story is about how a multi-million dollar federally funded Catholic Charities agency in Houston is in deep doo-doo after allegedly attempting to cover up a sexual abuse incident last summer. Here is some of the shocking report at the Houston Chronicle: Senior management with Catholic Charities attempted to mislead federal officials about a sexual assault at St. Michaels Home for Children, doctoring incident reports and failing to seek medical treatment for the child victim for days, according to a federal report. The report, obtained by the Houston Chronicle, and a letter from the director of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) detailed the findings of a federal investigation into a July 1 sexual assault at the north Houston shelter for immigrant children. Managers with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of

Galveston-Houston deliberately misled federal officials about the incident, which involved the anal penetration of a child at the shelter and implicated two other youths housed there, according to federal documents. The findings prompted ORR, which places children and teenagers caught crossing the border without family members into temporary care, to begin removing all the children and teens from the three area St. Michaels shelters run by Catholic Charities a process still under way. In a statement issued Friday, Catholic Charities officials said that when Catholic Charities learned of ORRs concerns, the individual employee at St. Michaels responsible for those concerns was subsequently terminated. Catholic Charities is working with ORR and has every expectation that it will meet ORRs recommendations and address its concerns and reopen the St. Michaels Program soon, the statement said. The statement also said that Catholic Charities reported the sexual assault to Texas Department of Family and Protective Services officials within 24 hours of the incident, though state records show the incident was self-reported by the shelter on July 13. Federal investigators conducted an unannounced site visit in August to investigate the sexual assault, reporting that the Catholic Charities senior management doctored initial reports to omit details of the sexual assault and tried to pressure staff not to disclose details of the incident to protect the program, according to the report. The ORR monitors found significant concerns, including the fact that management had full knowledge of the extent of the assault and submitted erroneous reports to this office, which deliberately misled ORR, the agencys director wrote in a Sept.

8 letter to the president of Catholic Charities. ORR moving the kids out. On Sept. 8, ORRs director sent a letter to Bonna Kol, the president of Catholic Charities Galveston-Houston, detailing the results of the investigation and saying the agency planned to remove all of the children from the organizations care until the corrective actions called for in its report were addressed. St. Michaels says with federal money (taxpayer funding) cutbacks they are closing anyway. Joanie Wentz, vice president of development and communications for the organization, insisted the closure was not related to the July 1 incident. She said the St. Michaels program, which is approaching its 25th anniversary, suffered a $1 million cut from the federal government in the last budget, reducing the number of beds from 88 to 52 and resulting in the layoffs of 19 employees. The other day I told you about how much federal money was going to Catholic Charities of Ft. Worth,enough for the creation of fiefdom, but chicken scratch compared to the Houston CC! Check out how much government money goes to Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Houston-Galveston, the one crying poor mouth now. Is their most recently published Form 990. Out of a gross income of $29 million, you, the taxpayers gave them $21 million that year! So how many abandoned immigrant kids are there? The Houston Chronicle goes on to report: U.S. immigration officials placed 6,074 immigrant and refugee children in the care of ORR in 2009, the most recent data available. More than half of those some 3,200 were detained in Texas, the statistics show. [And, they need to go to college subsidized by you too---no they didn't say that!---ed]

 The Houston Chronicle reporter did a very detailed piece so I recommend you read the whole thing. We have written a lot about problems in Houston, check out all the posts, where Houston is mentioned. REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT FACT SHEETS We have a new fact sheet! Readers who have visited this page before might recall that our original fact sheet was written in 2007 and was definitely out of date. Below is our new fact sheet which was a collaborative effort between RRW and others. 1. From 1992-2001, 77% of refugees who were resettled permanently in industrialized countries came to the U.S. (UNHCR, Refugees Vol 4, Num 129, Jan 2002) In Fiscal Year 2009 the U.S. resettled almost three times as many refugees as all the rest of the countries in the industrialized world combined. In FY 2010 the U.S. will take in 80,000 refugees plus at least 45,000 asylum seekers and so-called Cuban-Haitian Entrants all with the same rights and entitlements as refugees. See item 19 for a definition of refugee terms. 2. Until 9/11 the U.S. took in about 100,000 refugees annually plus a large numbers of asylum seekers. When the 1980 refugee act was passed, sponsors promised 50,000 refugees per year and 5,000 asylum seekers per year. The Obama administration is committed to increasing the refugee quota, as was the Bush administration. Much of the political elite on both sides of the aisle and business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce want higher refugee admission numbers. (We maintain this is the case because they

dont really understand how the program has evolved.) 3. In recent years up to 95% of the refugees coming to the U.S. were referred by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or were the relatives of UN-picked refugees. Until the late 90s the U.S. picked the large majority of refugees for resettlement in the U.S. Considering that the refugee influx causes increases in all legal and illegal immigration as family and social networks are established in the U.S., the U.N. is effectively dictating much of U.S. immigration policy. 4. The focus of the refugee program has shifted from those fleeing our cold war adversaries to more diverse populations from Africa, South East Asia and the Middle East. 5. The leading refugee source countries for the U.S. program in recent years are, in order of admission numbers, Iraq, Burma, Bhutan, Iran and Somalia. The program has gradually shifted towards the resettlement of refugees from Muslim countries. Some individuals from Muslim countries are Christians or other minorities, but most are Muslims. In the early 90s the percentage of Muslim refugees was near 0; by 2000 the program was 44% Muslim. The Muslim component decreased after 911, but today is back up to at least 40% and is set to rise from here. Today, even professed membership in a U.S.-registered Islamic terrorist group is not a bar to entry on the program as long as the refugee was not a direct participant in terrorist activity. 6. Refugees, successful asylum seekers, trafficking victim visa holders, Cuban-Haitian Entrants (which are mostly Cuban) and other smaller humanitarian admission groups are eligible for ALL federal, state and local welfare programs 30 days after arrival. Refugee access to welfare on the same basis as a U.S. citizen has made the program a global magnet.

The federal programs available to them include: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) formerly known as AFDC Medicaid Food Stamps Public Housing Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Social Security Disability Insurance Administration on Developmental Disabilities (ADD) (direct services only) Child Care and Development Fund Independent Living Program Job Opportunities for Low Income Individuals (JOLI) Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) Postsecondary Education Loans and Grants Refugee Assistance Programs Title IV Foster Care and Adoption Assistance Payments (if parents are qualified immigrants refugees, asylees, ect) Title XX Social Services Block Grant Funds 7. Welfare use is staggering among refugees. Welfare usage is never counted by officials as part of the cost of the program. Yet when it is included, the total cost of the refugee program soars to at least 10 billion a year. See item 23 below for more detail and

links to government reports on welfare usage. 8. As some Americans are pushed off of time-limited welfare programs many refugees are going on to life-time cash assistance programs. For instance 15.3% of refugees are on SSI a lifetime entitlement to a monthly check / Medicaid for elderly or disabled. This rate of usage is at least 5 times higher than the rate of usage for SSI among the native-born population. Permanent and intergenerational welfare dependence has been allowed to take hold to a significant degree in the refugee population. 9. Not in My Back Yard. Senator Sam Brownback harshly rejected the resettlement of Somali Bantu in his own state yet he is a major advocate of increased refugee and asylum seeker immigration to the U.S. 10. Medium size towns, such as Nashville,TN, Ft. Wayne, IN, Boise, ID and Manchester, NH, are serving as the main reception centers for the refugee program. 11. Refugees receive waivers for diseases, such as HIV, that would otherwise be cause for a bar to entry. Refugees are a major contributing factor to TB rates among the foreign-born. TB among the foreign-born now accounts for about half of the TB in America. 12. The money the U.S. spends bringing one refugee to the U.S. could have helped 500 individuals overseas in countries where they currently reside. 13. It has never been reported in the U.S. that 47% of loans made to refugees for transportation to the U.S. are unpaid leaving a balance of 450 million. Include interest on some of these unpaid loans and the unpaid amount is well over a billion! 14. Refugee resettlement is profitable to the organizations

involved in it. They receive money from the federal government for each refugee they bring over. They have almost no real responsibilities for these refugees. After 4 months the sponsoring organization is not even required to know where the refugee lives. 15. The groups that resettle refugees are referred to in the media as charities or non-profits or humanitarian organizations. They are actually federal contractors and get the vast majority of their resources from the U.S. taxpayer. There are now at least 350 non-governmental organizations resettling refugees. They are all dependent on taxpayer funding. Increasingly these groups are made up of refugees and have as part of their agenda increasing the refugee quota, passing hate-crime legislation, increasing the size of welfare benefits, raising overall immigration numbers, etc. 16. Despite their rhetoric, refugee agencies have steadfastly refused to use their own resources to maintain the U.S. refugee resettlement program. Public money has thoroughly driven out private money. A program known as the Private Sector Initiative allowed sponsoring agencies to bring over refugees if the agencies were willing to cover costs of resettlement and support. It was discontinued for lack of use in the mid-1990s. Today the agencies are on record as opposed to diverting more federal refugee dollars to overseas refugee assistance (where each dollar will go further in helping refugees) because it might mean fewer dollars for them! As with other government-dependent industries there is a revolving door between the refugee industry and the federal government which pays its bills. 17. Refugee resettlement organizations (known as Volags from Voluntary Agency) are paid well for their work by the tax payer. There are 10 main Volags with approximately 350 affiliated organizations throughout the country; many are run by former refugees.

Below are some of the sources of income for Volags: a. The Volags receives $1900 per refugee (including children) from the State Department, half of which they must show went to the refugees. b. The Volag receives up to $2,200 for each refugee by participating in a U.S. DHHS program known as Matching Grant. To get the $2,200, the Volag need only show it spent $200 and gave away $800 worth of donated clothes, furniture or cars. c. The Volag pockets 25% of every transportation loan it collects from refugees it sponsors. d. All Volag expenses and overhead in the Washington, DC HQ are paid by the U.S. government. e. For their refugee programs, Volags collect money from all federal grant programs Marriage Initiative, Faith-based, Ownership Society, etc., as well as from various state and local grants. 18. The refugee program is totally immune from honest press coverage. Media reporting on refugees is filled with blatant factual errors and grossly understates the true cost of the refugee program. The program is so lucrative that the Catholic Church has dropped traditional charity works to put more effort into resettlement. It uses collection offerings to promote the refugee resettlement program. 19. Definition: refugee, asylum seeker.A refugee is a person, by legal definition, who has fled his or her country of origin because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on membership in a political, racial, ethnic, religious or social group. It generally means the person is unable to return home because of this persecution.

An asylum seeker is a person who merely shows up in the U.S. having overstayed a temporary visa or having crossed the border illegally, claiming persecution in the home country on the same five grounds mentioned earlier. The 1980 refugee act anticipated about 50,000 refugees per year and about 5,000 asylum grants per year. The most common method of obtaining asylum seeker status is to come over on a tourist visa and then link up with an immigration consultant or refugee agency like Catholic Charities for help in filling out the paper work and help in learning what to say in the asylum interview with U.S. officials. Once you have asylum you are eligible for all welfare. Famous asylum seekers have included the planner of the 93 WTC attack and John Lee Malvos mother as well as war criminals from the Balkans, Africa, the Caribbean and Central America. 20. The definition of a refugee has been widely stretched by all 3 branches of the government the Judiciary, the Congress and the Administration. Though we have a definition (well-founded fear of persecution based on political, racial, ethnic, religion, social group membership) basically Congress can name whatever group it wants to be a refugee. For instance Congress passed a law declaring Chinas one-child policy to be an example of persecution based upon a political view. Not surprising: China now heads up the list of successful asylum seekers. People may seek asylum in the U.S. based upon domestic abuse, FGM and even lack of services for the disabled. 21. To give an idea of the staying power of the refugee program: When we began taking Southeast Asian refugees in the late 70s, the refugee agencies hired temporary workers, thinking the program would only go for a few months. More than 35 years

after the last American left Vietnam we are still taking refugees from South East Asia. At least 1.5 million have come in as refugees alone. As well, it has detonated chain migration of nonrefugee immigrants. 22. The program is rife with fraud and corruption at all levels. UN personnel often sell access to the program and once here refugees make false claims of family relationship in order to facilitate wider immigration. Government grant fraud is common among local refugee service providers. 23. Public Assistance utilization. Latest data available is from 2007. Among refugees who arrived during the 5 years previous to the survey 51% are on government medical assistance such as Medicaid, 25% have no health insurance at all, 49% are receiving food stamps, 25% are in public housing (an additional percentage is on a public housing waiting list), and 32 % are getting cash assistance such as TANF or SSI. The rates of welfare dependence are much higher today (in 2010) than they were in this report from 2007. Also, the survey method used to determine welfare dependence may under report since it relies on voluntary self reporting from individuals. 24. The refugee program has a significant impact on U.S. foreign policy. It also affects internal and foreign policies of other nations by allowing them to rid themselves of unwanted minorities or close their borders to asylum seekers in the knowledge that the U.S. will take them in.