Today is World Refugee Day

Today, the 20th of June, 2006 is the World Refugee Day. Let us take a moment from out lives to stop and ponder to think about the millions of people who have been forced to move out of their homes because of war and famine. A place to live, food to eat and clothes to put on our bodies are the things in life we take for granted, yet there are human beings who make without at least one of them. Dear Lord, give me a lot of money, and give me the will to spend it all on the deprived people of the world. That is what i want to do, and that is what I will strive to do.

The one headline that provided a glimmer of hope is that the number of refugees in the world is at its lowest in the last 26 years. While the media chooses to focus its cameras on the numerous celebrities going around camps, holding children, and talking about compassion, this situation will not improve that way. The people with money must share some of what they have with the deprived and displaced humanity elsewhere. No, we can't go to bed satisfied that Hollywood actresses are taking care of the situation.

UN marks World Refugee Day with message of hope and events around the globe

20 June 2006 – From remote camps to big cities, from the steaming lowlands of Liberia to the high plateaux of Afghanistan, from floodlit fountains to fashion shows and soccer matches, the United Nations today celebrated World Refugee Day with a message of “Hope” broadcast around the globe by leaders, film stars and refugees themselves.

“Let this Day serve as a reminder of our responsibility to help keep hope alive among those who need it most – the millions of refugees and displaced who are still far from home,” Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a message, underlining this year’s theme.

“For the thousands of people forced to flee their homes each year, escaping with their lives and a few belongings, is often just the start of a long struggle. Once they have found safety from persecution or war, they still face enormous challenges just trying to obtain things most of us take for granted - schooling, a job, decent housing or health care.”

“If there is one common trait among the tens of millions of refugees that we at the UN refugee agency have helped over the past 55 years, it's the fact that despite losing everything, they never give up hope,” said High Commissioner António Guterres, who marked the Day on the ground at the Bo Waterside area near the Liberia-Sierra Leone border, meeting returning refugees and displaced people.

There are currently 20.8 million people of concern toUNHCR, including 8.4 million refugees, more than 5 million of whom have been in exile for five years or longer.

In Buta in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a simple man who had not seen his homeland in four decades since he was taken by his fleeing family to Sudan as a four-month old infant, symbolized UNHCR’s work and the Day’s theme.

A world away in Afghanistan, UNHCR marked the Day with a documentary film and visits to aid centres in a country that has produced the largest group among the Agency’s total global populations of concern. Since the ouster of the Taliban regime more than four years ago, some 4.6 million Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan.

In Geneva, UNHCR’s home base, the city’s iconic 140-metre-high jet d’eau fountain and public buildings around the country were set to be bathed in blue, the UN colour, and World Refugee Day banners were to line the Mont Blanc bridge. Australia was illuminating the old parliament building and other landmarks in Canberra, the capital.
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India, as a rising nation, must be more active in sending aid workers and other help to Africa and other affected places. This world is not a white man's burden anymore, and India and other rising countries need to announce that by being more proactive in world affairs.

Indian religious organizations are crying foul all the time of all the evangelist money coming into India's tribal lands, but the reason is that our own money and support not reaching there. What stops all the big temples, mosques and other organizations of India to channel resources and aid and human hours to the needy around the world. Why must I always switch on the news and hear about Hollywood actors and actresses being the saviours of this world?

India has been home to the Tibetan refugees for many decades, and add to that the thousands who just came in as things heated up in Nepal.

Refugee populations: Fact file

According to the UNHCR, the total number of refugees worldwide reached 8.4 million by the end of 2005, the lowest level since 1980.

Refugee numbers have decreased by 12% in 2005, the fifth consecutive year in which the global refugee population has dropped.

Here is a list of major refugee populations at the end of 2005 ahead of World Refugee Day on Tuesday:
Country of Origin Asylum Population
Afghanistan Pakistan/Iran 2,414,695
Sudan Chad/Uganda 730,914
Burundi Tanzania/Democratic 485,506
Republic of Congo Tanzania/Zambia 461,248
Republic of Congo
Somalia Kenya/Yemen 3 90,026
Palestinian Saudi Arabia/Egypt 349,828
Territories*
Vietnam China/Germany 348,446
Liberia Guinea/Ivory Coast 336,115
Iraq Iran/Germany 312,480
Azerbaijan Armenia/Germany 250,911

* Does not include about four million Palestinian refugees living in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
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So Tibetans are not considered refugees anymore I suppose. All hail economy, a treacherous regime can get away with anything because it can make cheap consumer goods.