WORLD BRIDGE BLOG

Sunday, June 20 is World Refugee Day, the annual date on which we celebrate the courage and tenacity of refugees worldwide, and reflect on the massive gaps that remain in responding fully to their needs. This year, more than ever perhaps, is a good opportunity to reflect on whether the iconic image of the refugee – an African woman with several children at her feet posing in front of a tent with her meager belongings – conveys refugee reality adequately.

At Refugees International we increasingly believe that it does not. As we have found in Syria and Jordan, in Yemen and South Africa, in Colombia and Pakistan, camps hold a decreasing percentage of the world’s forced migrants, whether refugees or internally displaced people. While camps are often appropriate as a way to organize an immediate response to large-scale refugee outflows, such as in Uzbekistan at the moment, the displaced prefer the flexibility and relative freedom of living in urban areas, or finding space with a host family in rural settings. The advantages are many: ability to find paid employment, even if only day-labor in the informal sector; access for their children to local schools, especially for internally displaced people; relative freedom of movement and engagement with the outside world compared to the closed confines of a typical camp.

This does not mean that there are no challenges in the non-camp environment. Women are vulnerable to using transactional sex and degrading employment as a means of survival. Access to medical care may be expensive or impossible. The most vulnerable – elderly, disabled, orphans – may find it difficult to survive without the organized services that a camp provides. Lack of documentation and legal status threatens refugees with arrest and deportation, and leaves their children vulnerable to statelessness.

The challenge to both operational humanitarian agencies and refugee advocates like those at RI is to find strategies that are appropriate for this emerging new world of displacement. There are already positive examples. A recent RI mission focused on Somali refugees found that in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, the government, in cooperation with international agencies such as the UN Refugee Agency, facilitates refugee access to housing in urban areas; assures that refugees have appropriate documentation; conducts surveys to identify the most vulnerable; and encourages microcredit projects focused on women and other initiatives that help people find jobs that provide support to themselves and their families. If the government of Yemen can pull this off, then certainly wealthier host nations, with support from flexible international donors and agencies, can initiate similar innovative programs.

On this World Refugee Day, then, reflect on the refugee experience in all its variety --- from Damascus and Johannesburg to the Thai-Burma border and Dadaab camp in Kenya. But think also about the sheer vulnerability of Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan, wrenched from their homes by organized violence and forced to flee into neighboring Uzbekistan with few of their belongings in tow. While the refugee experience is evolving the shock of sudden deprivation remains a reality, one demanding our continued vigilance.