They are not just statistics
Despite the reduction of wars, civil wars, ethnic cleansing, and extreme violence are on the rise and become bloodier, resulting in a huge increase of refugees.
“We’re going through a difficult period politically in this country right now and they don’t directly talk very much about [refugee] issue but it is at the heart of the values we’re addressing as a country,” Chic Dambach, president of the Alliance for Peacebuilding said in the Fifth Annual Displacement Day event at George Mason University on April 14. The event, organized by a George Mason University’s student-led organization Working Group on Displaced Populations, aims to raise awareness of the refugee crisis.
In 2015, one out of 122 persons is either a refugee, internally displaced, or asylum seeker. The total number of displaced people is 59.5 million. If they were citizens of a country, it would be the world’s 24th most populous nation.
According to the United Nations, refugees are defined as someone who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particularly social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his/her nationality, and is unable to, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country.”
Sahar El-Issawi is an Egyptian refugee, and later asylum seeker, and currently is residing in Alexandria, Virginia. She fled Egypt in 2011 in fear of political persecutions because she was part of the Egyptian uprising.
“While I was taking pictures, they just arrested me for taking pictures of secret military building, which is not secret because it’s a very short building and there are surrounding buildings and people are living there.” El-Issawi said during the Displacement Day event. “They just arrested me, faked the case and then they said something like I’m spying and they interrogated with me for like 10 hours and then they left me there for a whole day before they let me go on suspended case that I had to go back.”
“It was so bad that the day of my trial, there was a massacre in Egypt. They killed a lot of people with military trucks. They like literary passed over them,” El-Issawi continued.
She was only able to escape when Dambach created a series of lectures in the Department of State that only she could give, thus creating an opportunity for her to escape death in Egypt. She arrived to the United States with $500 in her pocket.
“Their lives are turned upside down,” Pierrot Rugaba, a guest speaker at Displacement Day and an officer of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, talked about what happened when refugees fled their homes to escape violence.
“Resettling to a new country means that you are losing a part of yourself that was attached to your country, culture, and traditions. You have to reinvent or rediscover who you are as a person and not as part of a support group,” Claudine Kuradusenge, a Rwandan genocide survivor and Ph.D. student at School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution of George Mason University, said. “You have to adapt to a culture you don't really know or understand. Most of all, you have to be the one getting out of your bubble in order to 'survive' the new environment.”
The refugees’ resilience in new environments is commendable. They grasp every chance they get to improve their lives and help others. El-Issawi has opened an online company to help refugees file asylum paperwork at an affordable price, since hiring lawyers requires a lot of money that most refugees do not possess. Meanwhile, Kuradusenge plans to work with refugees and Diaspora communities to create a better understanding and process regarding the needs of refugees in their first five years of resettlement when she finishes her degree.
Stories like what El-Issawi and Kuradusenge have are not uncommon. For the last five years, U.S. accepted about 80,000 per year. This year, with the crisis in Syria and its neighboring countries, the U.S. is expected to accept 85,000, in which 10,000 will be Syrian refugees. 85,000 is less that 0.5% of refugee worldwide. For a country like the U.S. to accept such a small number of refugees, it can be surprising but the reality is that it is not. With the rise of extremist terrorism and most recently, terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, there is a lack of political will in the U.S. as well as practical obstacles that prevent the country to accept more refugees.
Dambach considered the current political rhetoric about refugees as misguided and dangerous.
“My heart goes out to all the refugees out there every time I listen to the news. I understand the fear of these States due to increase in terrorist attacks but human protection and rights is the responsibility of all of us,” Solace Quist, a refugee from Ghana and current George Mason University student, said. “ I do not know what exactly can be done to lessen this problem, but I know for a fact there is a way and this is not it. “
Rugaba said that there are a lot of mindsets that prevent people from understanding and sympathizing with refugees.
“The only thing I can say is that this country has a history of welcoming people,” Rugaba said. “This country has taken in over 3 million refugees from the mid-70s. So you know that tradition should not be forgotten. That is what makes this country.”
“We obviously have to have policy that enable us to accommodate those who leave their home because they have to. Not because they want to, but because they have to,” Dambach said. “You just have to do that. If you’re a human being with any decency whatsoever, you just have to be ready and willing to do that.”
It is clear that the acceptance of refugees into the U.S. causes a lot of controversy. The division between American citizens is greater than before. On the national level, there are high prejudices against refugees coming from Muslim-populated countries. There are about 31 states in the U.S. that say they will not accept any Syrian refugees coming in and resettling in their states due to security reasons. But locally, the level of division fluctuates depending on the locations in the country.
Al Fuertes, faculty advisor of Working Group on Displaced Populations and professor at George Mason University, said that Fairfax County, part of the District of Columbia- Virginia- Maryland (DMV) area, was a very culturally diverse place and it helped people with understanding the difficulties that refugees have to go through.
“DMV area is close to policy-making bodies. It is easier to lobby as well as to access policies, Sudha Rajput, a professor at School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution of George Mason University, commented when asked about why the area is more accepting as opposed to other places in the country.
However, to Tabatha Donley, president of Working Group on Displaced Populations, it isn’t enough.
“I’m sure that there is a big chunk of George Mason University that really cares about refugees and is compassionate, but I know that just as well, you know, the opposite hostile sentiment,” Donley said.
“Mason is very diverse, but inclusion is another thing.” Quist said. “ There are many refugee population at George Mason University, in the hundreds but one thing I do know is not a lot of people like to make it known that they are or were refugees. I have a few friends who are refugees and do not like to say it, we all talk about our experiences together but they do not announce it with fear of being looked down upon. It took me years to tell many people that I used to live on a refugee camp. ”
It is Working Group on Displaced Populations’ goal to humanizing the issue to more than just the mere statistics of nearly 60 million people displaced, but to the issue of actual people and to increase support and raise awareness about displacement issue. Their event, Displacement Day, gathered a lot of attention from onlookers and was considered a huge success. The event was divided into two parts. One was the constructions of shelters through recycled materials while the other was composed of guest speakers - who are all experts and practitioners in the displacement field.
“The event is important because it creates a space for the George Mason community to learn about the issue and to have an engaging hands-on activity to explore the complexity of displacement,” Leah Chatterji, treasurer of Working Group on Displaced Populations, said.
“I got to see the shelters and to imagine having to live in that condition…What we consider as trash is their home. They were basically tarps hanging from strings connected between trees with just thin sheets lying on the ground,” Hannah Cox, a George Mason University student said. “And I could not actually imagine having to sleep in that situation, in that environment”.
“What I took away from the event was each speaker basically told the crowd ‘You should try to meet a refugee or get to know a refugee because you’re not going to fully understand what it’s like until you hear a personal story,” Cox continued, “I feel like now I am better equipped in going out there kind of advocating for the fair treatment of refugees.”
