Refugees CGU4U

Today there are approximately 15.4 million refugees according to the United Nations (2013). Refugee A person who flees their home to save their life. Caused by violence from civil war, terrorism, authoritarian government controls, religion, racial, ethnic persecution, environmental scarcities, … Refugee camps are often established along borders of neighbouring countries as refugees wait for an end to the events that forced them out.

Refugee camps Friends killed Thirty-year-old Mariam Khamis Abdelkerim walked from Sudan to the camp last week with her five-year-old daughter. She describes the morning she fled: “I heard shouting… and saw men had arrived and were starting to kill my friends and neighbours. “I grabbed my baby and ran. We hid for two days in the bush… before creeping back. We found 10 dead bodies of men from our village. “Everything was destroyed or stolen. The clothes we are now wearing have been given to us."

Water worries Fifteen-year-old Mariam Adam Djouma Mahamat collects water at one of only five wells at Bredjing camp. The threat of water-borne diseases increases with the arrival of the rainy season. There are 60 toilets for 30,000 people. The threat of diseases, including cholera and malaria, is ever-present.

Two Afghan refugee women cross the border into Pakistan near Chaman

In Peshawar, tents are loaded for transport into Afghanistan for family's displaced by the drought and violence.

Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan

Refugee camp in Sudan

Internally Displaced Persons (IDPS) People forced to move from their homes but not outside the borders of their country. There are more IDPs than refugees in the world.

Asylum Seekers Enter country claiming to be refugees even though they may come from a country that is not experiencing war or a natural disaster. They will usually undergo an investigation to determine if they left their country out of fear of safety or a desire to improve economic conditions. If it is determined to be economic, then they will not be granted refugee status.

UNITED NATIONS UN helps refugees by providing one of three different solutions: Voluntary repatriation – the return of refugees to their own home when lives are no longer in danger. Local integration – the government of the country of asylum (usually a border country) allows the refugee to remain and become a part of the host country. Third-country resettlement – when first asylum country doesn’t accept local integration, the UN will find a third country to accept refugees. For example, following the Vietnam war (1970s), Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos went to Canada and the United States.

REALITY Many refugees do not integrate well into societies and continue to live in refugee camps with squalid conditions, poor job prospects, limited mobility, and poor education opportunities.

Refugee camp in Rwanda Since late 1998 CRN has in cooperation with CEPAC assisted close to Tutsi refugees who returned home to Congo from refugee camps in Rwanda.