How has civil war affected refugees?
What is a protracted refugee situation?
How many protracted refugee situations are there?
How do protracted refugee situations relate to poverty?
How does displacement impact health?
How do countries host protracted refugee communities?
What historical factors explain the rise of today’s protracted refugee crisis?
How has civil war affected refugees? Top
The impact of civil war on refugee populations has been staggering. The number of total refugees and the number of civil wars since 1945 are very closely related, suggesting that the increase in refugees has been mainly if not entirely driven by the spread of civil war during the Cold War. Since 1980, the estimated average number of total refugees per ongoing war is about 405,000.
What is a protracted refugee situation? Top
A protracted refugee situation is one in which refugees find themselves in a long-lasting and intractable state of limbo. Their lives may not be at risk, but their basic rights and essential economic, social and psychological needs remain unfulfilled after years in exile. A refugee in this situation is often unable to break free from enforced reliance on external assistance. Protracted refugee situations bring wasted lives, squandered resources, and increased threats to security. It is true that camps save lives in the emergency phase, but it is also true that, as the years go by, they progressively waste these same lives. A refugee may be able to receive assistance, but is prevented from enjoying those rights – for example, the freedom of movement, employment, and in some cases, education – that would enable him or her to become a productive member of society. The majority of the world’s refugees live in protracted situations.
How many protracted refugee situations are there? Top
Protracted refugee situations are growing in both number and duration. UNHCR estimates that 38 protracted refugee situations existed in 2003. While the average duration of major refugee situations was 9 years in 1993, by the end of 2003, it was 17 years. The majority of Africa’s refugees have been in exile over ten years, and around 25 million of the world’s Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) population (half of it in Africa) has been displaced for a decade or more.
How do protracted refugee situations relate to poverty? Top
Protracted refugee situations perpetuate poverty. Refugees are without national protection and are also desperately poor. Such poverty can lead refugees, as well as others, to resort to negative survival tactics, including child labor, prostitution, or environmental degradation. Festering refugee crises can nurture instability and conflict. Large, disaffected and alienated populations relying on subsistence-level handouts are prime targets for recruitment into armed groups. In the past, refugee camps have been used as bases for armed groups engaging in insurgency, resistance, and terrorism. Refugees in protracted crises experience daily frustration with living in squalor and obscurity, feeling that injustice continues to be perpetrated in their home country.
How does displacement impact health? Top
The International Rescue Committee reports that mortality rates among displaced populations can rise as much as 30 times the normal level of the communities from which these individuals have fled. These fatalities are often the result of preventable and treatable diseases and conditions, including diarrhea, dehydration, measles, malaria, and malnutrition.
How do countries host protracted refugee communities? Top
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Most African governments place refugees in camps, exacerbating local and regional insecurity. At the same time, tens of thousands of refugees live clandestinely in urban areas, avoiding contact with authorities and lacking legal status. Governments see refugees as security concerns, expressing worries about small-arms proliferation and the spill-over of conflict at the national level, and increased crime and insecurity at the local level. Local populations in refugee-populated areas feel aggrieved that refugees receive such basic services like health care and primary education while their own access is limited. |
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The isolation of refugees in camps denies them many basic rights and also compounds states’ security concerns. Without the rights to move freely or earn wages in surrounding villages (creating full dependence on international assistance), some refugees are forced to turn to illegal activities. This reinforces states’ sense of vulnerability, leading to more restrictive measures against refugees.
What historical factors explain the rise of today’s protracted refugee crisis? Top
Refugee flows have been a feature of Africa’s politics since independence. Large refugee movements resulted from the wars of national liberation in Southern Africa in the 1960s and early 1970s and from civil conflict in newly independent states like Sudan, Rwanda, Congo, and Burundi. Hoping to form strategic allies during the Cold War, the US and USSR gave political and military support to the various African independence movements. The most direct means of doing so was through assistance to refugee populations, which contributed to the establishment of semi-permanent settlements across the continent. The end of the 1970s to the mid-1980s saw massive refugee flows, resulting from a combination of the renewal of East-West tensions, superpower rivalry, and external manipulation of civil conflicts.
The politicization of refugee problems in Africa in the 1980s precluded any easy solutions to the refugee dilemma. The three traditional solutions to refugee crises – resettlement, local settlement and integration, and repatriation – were inadequate. Western states had no compelling political or ideological reasons to resettle large numbers of refugees from Africa. Local settlement began to be perceived by most African host states as politically and economically infeasible. Neither donor governments nor countries of origin had an interest in promoting repatriation.
The disengagement of the superpowers from Africa in the late 1980s coupled with a rising preoccupation with potential refugee flows from Eastern Europe and the Balkans led to the neglect of a number of African refugee situations, especially those resulting from previous proxy wars. Many current protracted refugee situations in Africa stem from this period.
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