EXAMPLE: People coming to France from countries like Turkey and Albania from where they attempt to get to England in things like trucks and trains. Last year over 50 Chineese refugees died in a truck, which didn’t have sufficient ventilation for them.
There are an estimated 15 to 20 million refugees in the world today. This is a dramatic increase since the mid-1970s when there were less than 3 million refugees worldwide. The end of the Cold War and the end of regimes that kept social order led to the dissolution of countries and changes in politics that led to unbridled persecution and a huge increase in the number of refugees.
Top Refugee Origin Countries
When a person or family decides to leave their home country and seek asylum elsewhere, they generally travel to the closest safe area possible. Thus, while the world's largest source countries for refugees include Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sierra Leone, some of the countries hosting the most refugees include Jordan, Pakistan, Iran, and Guinea. Approximately 70% of the world refugee population is in Africa and the Middle East.
During 1994, Rwandan refugees flooded into Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Tanzania to escape the genocide and terror in their country. In 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Afghanis fled to Iran and Pakistan.
In addition to refugees, there's a category of displaced people known as "Internally Displaced Persons" who are not officially refugees because they have not left their own country but are refugee-like inasmuch as they have been displaced by persecution or armed conflict. The leading countries of Internally Displaced Persons include Sudan, Angola, Myanmar, Turkey, and Iraq. Refugee organizations estimate that there are between 12-24 million IDPs worldwide.
Major geopolitical transitions have caused some of the largest refugee migrations in the twentieth century. The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused approximately 1.5 million Russians who opposed communism to flee. One million Armenians fled Turkey between 1915-1923 to escape persecution and genocide. Following the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, two million Chinese fled to Taiwan and Hong Kong. The world's largest population transfer in history occurred in 1947 when 18 million Hindus from Pakistan and Muslims from India were moved between newly the created countries of Pakistan and India. Approximately 3.7 million East Germans fled to West Germany between 1945 and 1961, when the Berlin Wall was constructed.
When refugees flee from a less developed country to a developed country, the refugees can legally remain in the developed country until the situation in their home country has become stable and no longer threatening. However, refugees who have migrated to a developed country often prefer to remain in the developed country since their economic situation is often much better. Unfortunately, these refugees often have to remain illegally in the host country or return to their home country.
Forcing people to migrate is against human rights laws and in cases like in Serbia people were being ethnically cleansed and forced to move to neighboring countries. The UN is an organization, which tries to stop these kind of events from happening.
In recent years 3 different types of International migration took place:
From poor to rich countries
Example: From Mexico into southern parts of the USA. These people are looking fro jobs and higher living standards.
From drought hit countries
Example: From Mozambique to other neighboring countries.
Movements of political refugees
Example: Jews returning to Israel, which is there Holy land set up specifically for them.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Migration
There are 4 types of International Migration which are as follows;
Permanent: when people move from one country to another for the long term not just for a few years.
Semi-permanent: when people move to another country for a few years and then return to there home country or another country. This often occurs when people are moved from a volatile country for example Kosovo where people where moved to other European countries for between 6 months and 2 years and the plan is that they will settle back in Serbia.
Seasonal: when people move to different places at different seasons. This usually occurs amongst people who move from a cold country in the Winter to a hot country to get away from the climate.
Daily: when people visit other countries for a few days usually to go to work. This happens a lot in the business world.
Refugees by Region
Often refugee’s will find that they are in a worse position because they will have lost there family and be either detained in countries like the UK or have to live in camps in 3rd world countries where they will have to live in very bad living conditions, however there is still a great deal of refugee’s who successfully migrate and build a life in another country.
The refugee crisis was virtually non-existent in the 1970s but now it is becoming worse and worse below are recent reports about the recent refugee crisis in Afghanistan.
Current Refugee Crisis & Articles
New wave of refugees feared
There is little prospect of many refugees returning soon
UN aid agencies say the fighting in Afghanistan could slow down relief efforts to millions of Afghans and trigger a new influx of refugees into Pakistan.
A World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman told the BBC they had 400 trucks now inside Afghanistan, heading for areas where winter has already set in.
But he added that there were about six million people in urgent need of food and the WFP only had supplies for a third of that number.
The spokesman said the rapidly changing situation in the country was likely to slow down the relief work for at least a few days, but he expressed the hope that things might stabilise soon to speed up the food supplies.
Refused entry
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said that 3,000 refugees were reported to have entered northwestern Pakistan from Afghanistan on Tuesday alone.
It is urging the Alliance to refrain from committing atrocities.
Reports from the Pakistani border town of Chaman say a crowd of more than 100 refugees from Afghanistan has gathered there.
But Pakistani paramilitary forces have been preventing them from crossing over.
There are some reports of refugees returning to their villages as Taleban forces have retreated.
"We will be home for Ramadan," Habib Allah told the Associated Press news agency.
He has been living in a tent for more than a year with his relatives.
According to the UNHCR's representative in London, Claire Doole, some 2,500 Afghans have crossed back into Afghanistan from Iran over the last three days.
Mixed feelings
But there are mixed feelings about the Northern Alliance among the refugees.
Many refugees from the city of Herat, which the Alliance captured on Monday, live in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
"We're happy. We've been waiting for this for years, but we'll see if (the Alliance) make the same mistakes again," Omar, a carpet seller, told the French news agency AFP.
Fazul Rahim Ansari said he would go back to Herat as soon as possible.
"We're all happy now. With the help of God, these guys (the Northern Alliance) won't fight against each other," he said.
But social worker Rahima Delir is more cautious.
"We'll see if there will be peace, then we'll go back," she told AFP. "We don't trust that there's peace yet."
The UNHCR estimates some 135,000 Afghans have fled into Pakistan since the 11 September terror attacks on the United States.
That is still a small number compared to the millions of Afghans who left to live in Pakistan and Iran during the years of fighting in Afghanistan.
^ BBC News
