![]() These stories on “terror” reminded me that the Ministry of Home Affairs recorded 630 communal incidents between January and October 2015, against 561 such occurrences during the same period in 2014.Īs it happens, I’ve had to travel to two different countries in two different continents within a short span and the word “refugee” has been in my mind constantly. European Union’s struggles to deal with the refugee crisis have continued to be in the news especially since the tragedy last April when five boats sank in the Mediterranean, killing more than 1,200 people trying to reach the European shore. On 11 September 2015, the UNHCR posted that nearly one million asylum seekers had crossed the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe since the beginning of the year. ![]() In a report entitled Global Trends-Forced Displacement in 2014, published on 18 June 2015, the UNHCR states that the total number of people forcibly displaced by the end of 2014 was almost 60 million, the highest since the second global war. ![]() That optimism has proved to be a pipedream, of course, with the UNHCR very much in existence till date. The UNHCR was founded in December 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly to deal with the crisis of Europeans displaced by World War II, with the optimism that the crisis would be sorted out in three years and the body could be disbanded. They have no protection from their own state-indeed it is often their own government that is threatening to persecute them.” In the 1951 Refugee Convention, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) defined the term as someone 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.” Elucidating further, the same Convention emphasises that “Refugees have to move if they are to save their lives or preserve their freedom. The term ‘refugee’ is inseparably connected with international borders and internal strife in the country of one’s birth. Refugee is a political term, connected to, but not quite the same as, a person seeking refuge. My country’s slide towards fascism makes me feel more and more like a refugee in my own land.
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