The refugee crisis has been debated extensively in the current media. Refugees are people who have forcibly left their countries to seek refuge and an opportunity to restructure their lives in other countries. What forces these people to leave their places of origin are armed conflicts and political conflicts , causing the need for asylum .
Refugees find it very difficult to reestablish themselves in other places, in addition to the fact that many of them cannot easily legalize their situation in the new country, living as stateless and, sometimes, in hiding .
The refuge is a major concern of the UN, which has a special agency to offer humanitarian aid to refugees worldwide.
Immigration and refugee crisis
Refugees are immigrants, but not every immigrant is a refugee. People who leave their places of origin for social and economic reasons, and of their own free will, are immigrants. Refugees are forced to migrate because they face an imminent risk of death and persecution, for various reasons, in their places of origin, usually devastated by armed conflicts or dominated by criminal organizations.
The United Nations ( UN ) already considers the refugee crisis to be the most intense humanitarian crisis of the century . In 2016, the total volume of people who had fallen as a refugee reached 65.6 million. The UN itself estimates that the last major migratory crisis occurred during the Second World War .
2016 data collected by the UN indicated that 3/4 of the Syrian population needed humanitarian aid because they were in refugee status. The Syria was the center of the problem to have hatched there a war between government officials represented by the Syrian army and a paramilitary terrorist organization called Islamic State .
The civil war in Syria forced more than five million Syrians out of their homeland. [1]
The refugee crisis was and still is due to the large number of immigrants, mainly of Syrian origin, who moved en masse to Europe, across the Mediterranean Sea, in a precarious way and with insecure boats. This generated, a priori, an intense and rapid demographic growth of the region close to the sea and then of other parts of the continent, causing, therefore, repulsion of the Europeans, who are based on xenophobic speeches, in addition to those who claim that immigrants steal citizens’ jobs, among others.
In addition to Syria, African countries , such as Congo, Sudan and Nigeria, suffer from political conflicts that generate refuge. Still in the Middle East, Afghanistan is a country with conflicts that today sends the second largest amount of refugees to the world. Here in South America, the crisis in Venezuela has also put Venezuelan citizens in a similar situation.
Read also: Important facts about Venezuelan immigration to Brazil
Don’t stop now … There’s more after the publicity;)
Causes of the refugee crisis
The refuge is usually caused by wars . However, not only wars but political conflicts also put the person in the situation of refuge. Many citizens flee their countries because they are threatened by criminal organizations that dominate the local political scene. Others flee because they lose everything in the war and the country’s situation prevents the reconstruction of their lives.
In the case of Venezuela , there is a crisis that puts citizens in need of humanitarian aid, as hunger , unemployment and economic instability drastically affect the poor Venezuelan population. Political conflicts and ideological persecution also happen there.
Know also: Causes and consequences of Haitian immigration in Brazil
Consequences of the refugee crisis
The consequences, in general, of the refuge are felt in the countries that shelter the refugees . Generally, when there is a sudden and large influx of migratory flows to a place, the phenomenon that geography calls “ demographic explosion ” occurs . The demographic explosion directly affects the economy and social relations, as it leads to a chain of events that can be disastrous, as we show in the following topics:
- There is a large and sudden number of people migrating to the same place;
- There is no infrastructure in this location to receive these people, making access to health, sanitation, security and education compromised;
- There is no job and income generation for everyone, because the population increase happened suddenly;
- Hunger and misery are installed among the migrant population and even among the local population, as the lack of employment begins to affect local residents;
- There is an increase in crime due to the lack of structure and organization.
This vicious cycle tends to continue if there are no joint efforts by governments, the private sector, NGOs and even the local population to welcome refugees. In this sense, despite the expenditure of energy, resources and money spent to receive refugees, the sacrifice is more than necessary for humanitarian reasons.
When a person submits to the refuge, he does so because there is no other option, because staying in his place of origin represents an imminent risk to his life and the life of his family. Many refugee families, in fact, belong to a middle class in their places, with guaranteed housing, business, good jobs and a dignified life, until a conflict starts so dangerous as to make them abandon everything they have built out of fear and despair.
When refugees and immigrants in general are not welcomed and inserted into society, they can end up living on the streets or falling into crime.
Thinking like a global citizen, having a sense of humanity and respecting basic rights (life, freedom and dignity), today, implies realizing that when the other needs our help, even if the other is a foreigner, we must strive to help it .
Another possible perspective for defending humanitarian aid is to think about our tomorrow. No country and no city in the world is so immune to conflict that it cannot fall into civil or military war, domination by criminal organizations or suffering from a lack of resources in the future. If that happens to us tomorrow, we may be subject to falling into refugee status as it is today with Syrians, Congolese, Afghans, Nigerians, Sudanese, Venezuelans, citizens of Eastern Europe and other nationalities.