you can turn a blind eye or turn a life around

On June 20 each year is World Refugee Day. The week that day falls on in Australia is held as Refugee Week. I saw very little coverage of this in the traditional and social media. This year, more than ever before the issue of refugees and displaced persons must be highlighted as the word faces its worst refugee crisis. But the issue in Australia, and in many parts of the world, is that refugees and displaced persons are seen as a statistic, not as each individual person suffering. That this is someone else’s problem or it’s just unfortunate for them. The world is not just dangerous because of those that do evil, but because of those that look on and do nothing to protest it or stop it.

There are currently 65.3 million displaced persons in the world. That is more than after World War 2 and the equivalent to the population of France. That number means that 1 in 112 people in the world has been forced to leave their homes. Thirty-nine per cent of the world’s refugees are hosted in the Middle East and twenty-nine per cent in Africa. Since 2011, the number of people forced from their homes has doubled. If the total number of all the people that have been displaced were one country it would be the 21st largest country in the world.  More than half of all refugees since 2011 came from three countries: Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia. Afghans make up the second largest refugee population. There are 6 million Syrians displaced in Syria and 5 million more Syrians are refugees in other countries.

Over 40 million people are internally displaced in countries in conflict and another 21.3 million are refugees in other countries. In the last year, Turkey was the top hosting country taking in 2.5 million people, Pakistan has taken in 1.6 million and Lebanon hosted at least 1.1 million more refugees. The population of Lebanon is 4.5 million, with 4.1 million Lebanese nationals, 1.1 million Syrian refugees and close to half a million Palestinian refugees; making nearly one quarter of the population in Lebanon refugees. In the Middle East, there are 58 Palestinian refugee camps. In some there is no access to water, food or electricity. For Palestinian refugees the situation is even worse as Palestinians have been refugees for decades and are stateless leaving them with very limited rights. They have no international protection and they cannot move across borders and have limited to no rights in the countries they are stuck in.

While it may be communicated to Western society on a daily basis that refugees are in fact illegal immigrants trying to sneak in and take our jobs and commit crimes, that could not be further from the truth. Refugees have had to flee or been forced from their homes and countries either to escape war or persecution. Displaced persons, are those whom have fled or been forced from their homes and towns to escape war or persecution. While the number of over 65 million refugees and displaced persons in the world may just be statistic for you that is 65 million people without the rights you have, without safety. Not one person should have to live like that.

So while you may sit in safety and with all the luxuries life can offer and look down on these people, remember they have more strength and courage then you will ever have to know in your life.  They aren’t terrorists, actually many have been the victims of terrorism. No one flees their homes, their families, crosses borders and hops in dangerous boats unless that option is safer. The world has lost all empathy. We in the West tend to think that all these people are nothing to do with us. Well, beyond it being part of our own humanity to care for other people, the West has contributed to the mass of displaced persons and refugees. The decisions of the governments we elected and supported assisted in creating this issue and inflicting these circumstances on millions of people. Since World War 2, 90 per cent of the casualties of warfare are civilians, and a third of those children.

After the attacks of September 11 2001 in New York, the United States (US) and allies invaded Afghanistan to dismantle al-Qaeda.  The invasion and bombing of Afghanistan caused over 1 million civilian deaths and destroyed much of the country. As al-Qaeda and the Taliban initially retreated to Pakistan, the US commenced a drone program which killed almost 1000 civilians and destroyed many parts of the country including schools and hospitals. The war in Afghanistan went on for over a decade, devastating the country and allowing the Taliban back in causing millions to flee. Afghanistan and Pakistan have been damaged in a war they did not start and those millions fleeing Afghanistan are now stuck in Pakistan or countries throughout Asia.

The US, Western Europe and allies’ invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a strategic catastrophe and led to the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The Saddam Hussein secular Ba’athist regime actually prevented  al-Qaeda from operating in Iraq. The Iraq War overthrew Saddam and destabilised the country, which made Iraq a perfect ground for recruiting for al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda in Iraq started in April 2004. The US and others didn’t do much to stop it and the new Iraqi government, the US supported, alienated Sunni Muslims and attacks on Sunni’s were made with US weapons. By the time they wanted to get rid of that government, there was enough damage done for an ISIL-led Sunni insurgency.

In Syria, in 2011 the ruling Assad regime violently suppressed peaceful pro-democracy protests and an armed uprising against the Syrian government began. As civil war developed, extremist groups joined the fight against the secular regime and were backed by a large amounts of arms and funding from America’s regional allies, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. These countries funded extremist groups including Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria). The US agreed that the Assad regime had to go, as it was an ally of Iran. ISIL was continuing to take over parts of Iraq, and the US did nothing to stop the civil war in Syria, leading to destabilisation, creating safe havens for extremists that otherwise would not have existed and for ISIL to thrive.

ISIL fighters have attacked villages across Iraq and Syria. They have destroyed infrastructure, killed thousands including men often in front of their families, and taken young girls to be raped and forced into sexual slavery, raped hundreds of times and sold on. You cannot ruin countries and expect there to be no ramifications. A large amount of refugees in the last decade have come from Afghanistan and Syria. Their lives and countries have been destroyed and they are at the mercy of terrorists, yet we leave them in those countries to die or if they seek refuge on our shores lock them up. In the 1970s, the Australian government under Malcolm Fraser resettled 70,000 Vietnamese refugees. At the time he said it was the right thing to do as Australia had assisted in causing the problem through their involvement in the Vietnam War. Over 40 years on and we have less compassion and human decency. As the Syrian crisis deepened, Australia announced it would take in 12,000 Syrian refugees, but that wouldn’t be extra, it would be included in the yearly refugee quota. On the same day as that announcement, the Australian government committed to air strikes on Syria.

As at December 2015, the Australian government was holding 1,852 people in immigration detention facilities and 585 people in community detention in Australia. In order to stop deaths at sea by those asylum seekers travelling by boat, a system of third country processing was enacted. At December 2015, 543 asylum seekers (including 70 children) were in detention in Nauru and 926 adult asylum seekers in detention on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. While we might like to say the system is working as it has stopped deaths at sea we forget these are people, locked up for no crime. Stopping deaths at sea doesn’t entitle the government and Australia as a nation to breach international law and our moral obligations.

The conditions in which asylum seekers are held in indefinite detention has been likened to Guantanamo Bay and last year the United Nations found that the conditions of offshore detention breached the United Nations anti-torture conventions. Australia is the only country in the world to hold children in indefinite detention. And while you still might not have a heart and care about the lives of these people, while causing this inexcusable human suffering the government is also wasting millions. It costs $500,000 a year to keep a person in offshore detention, it could cost a fraction of that to resettle those people in Australia. On top of that, the deal the Australian government did with Cambodia to take asylum seekers, has already cost $55 million and only five people have elected to go.

If nothing you have read so far changes your opinion on displaced persons and refugees, I fear for the society we live in. Evil will continue to win when we do nothing. Love and compassion for others is necessary, without them humanity cannot survive. Every night you go to bed safely in your house, after you have eaten and washed. You take these things for granted. There are millions around the world that have no food, water and electricity and no home, meaning no safety. To think of child who will grow up in fear, a girl each day with the threat of being kidnapped and raped, being torn away from your family and never knowing where your next meal may be – that is not the life you should be “ok with” for anyone.