Recently, Father Joseph Healey, a Maryknoll fathers reminded me about Africa Refugees Day which is celebrated on 20 June every year. People for Peace in Africa (PPA) used to actively participate in the celebration.
The celebration is to create awareness that every person on this planet has a right to seek safety – whoever they are, wherever they come from and whenever they are forced to flee. Whoever they are, people forced to flee should be treated with dignity. Anyone can seek protection, regardless of who they are or what they believe. It is non-negotiable: seeking safety is a human right. Wherever they come from, people forced to flee should be welcomed. Refugees come from all over the globe. To get out of harm’s way, they might take a plane, a boat, or travel on foot. What remains universal is the right to seek safety. Whenever people are forced to flee, they have a right to be protected. Whatever the threat – war, violence, persecution – everyone deserves protection. Everyone has a right to be safe. South Sudan has the largest refugee crisis, about 2.2 million refugees. The situation in South Sudan is dire, and the largest refugee crisis in Africa. There are so many refugees from Africa because since the 1950s, many nations in Africahavesuffered civil wars and ethnic strife, thus generating a massive number of refugees of many different nationalities and ethnic groups.
While European nations seek to limit the economic refugees as opposed to asylum seekers, Ethiopia for example is taking in thousands of refugees from neighbouring countries. Being a refuge has a long history. Early in the Hebrew Scriptures we are told that God called Abraham and his family to leave their land and their flock. They became refugees and trusting in God they learned to live by the promise (Gen 12). They became sojourners in a stranger land, lacking protection of the family and birthplace, and depending on the hospitality of other.
In the New Testament when Jesus was an infant, Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt as refugees, to escape from Herod murderous soldiers (Mt 2.13.23) Thus Jesus can be identified very closely with refugees. Refugees are not a unique product of our times. In the course of history tensions between culturally and ethnically diverse groups and between the rights of the individual and the power of the state have often led to war and persecution, expulsion and flight. Africa has been on the move for centuries. Inhabiting a vast continent, communities over many centuries migrated in search for better pasture land for their cattle, to find security in the face of hostile neighbors and to achieve better living conditions.
According to the United Nations developing countries mostly in Africa, are taking in a disproportionate numbers of refugees currently 80 percent of the world’s refugees population. Refugees hosted in developing countries put enormous pressure on water and health care system in host communities United High Commission for Refugees the world is currently facing the highest level of displacement ever in history, with an unprecedented 65.3 million people forced from their homes by war, internal conflicts drought or poor economies.
Among these are 21.3 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18, the rest are economic migrants and internally displaced persons. In the central Africa Republic, clashes among rival groups have forced thousands to flee their homes, in Nigeria, more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced including the 1,87 million who have fled from the militant group Boko Haram Violence since 2014.Some 195,350 people have sought refuge in neighbouring, Cameroon, Chard and Niger. Refugees have skillful ideas and hopes and dreams… they are also tough, resilient and creative with the energy and drive to shape their own destinies given the chance says UN High Commissioner for Refugee FIlippo Grandi. A young girl wants to become a pilot after watching UN aid planes take off from the airport near her home in South Sudan I would like to different parts of the world and help people in need said Nyahok, who is in the seventh grade primary school in the camp.
The monsters in today’s world most certainly are the horrors of raging conflicts, violence and human right abuses, which people flee within or outside their countries year after year. Father Ken Thesing MM said this in a Burundi workshop for Clergy. Uganda has been cited generous refugee law and policy regime, in response to the influx of South Sudanese refugees as an example to emulate Uganda grants refugee’s free movement, employment opportunities and land for building new homes or farming. Father Sessan Kizito, a Comboni priest once told me when he was editor of New People Comboni based Kenya Magazine humanitarian activists agree that today’s challenges are interconnected and complex with population growth, climate change, urbanization, water scarcity and food and energy insecurity exacerbating conflicts. Father Kizito said they must not be deprived of their future. They face basic survival difficulties. On arriving in a new country, they usually need immediate shelter, food, water medical care and security.
By Joseph Adero Ngal