Global Campaign to End Refugee Warehousing

Introduction

Of 13.9 million refugees and asylum seekers worldwide, startling number of 8.8 million people have been stuck in inadequate living conditions five years or more. These “warehoused” refugees are trapped in idle, meaningless, miserable life where they are deprived of basic human necessities and rights as the conflicts in their home country prolong their return indefinitely. Let’s face it: long-hoped for dreams of resettlements and repatriation are unlikely to be achieved in the short-term since source countries has to go through much-needed regime reforms. The important question is, as U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) puts it, “how are refugees to live in the meantime: like captives with their lives on hold or like dignified, free human beings?”

Perhaps few terms should be clarified at the outset to show relevance of this campaign to “access to shelter”. In prosaic terms, adequate shelter is a habitable refuge; but we live in 21st century where adequate shelter no longer means a roof over one’s head. The comprehensive definition is as follows:

“It [adequate shelter] also means adequate privacy; adequate space; physical accessibility; adequate security; security of tenure; structural stability and durability; adequate lighting, heating and ventilation; adequate basic infrastructure…; suitable environmental quality and health-related factors; and adequate and accessible location with regard to work and basic facilities: all of which should be available at an affordable cost. Adequacy should be determined together with the people concerned, bearing in mind the prospect for gradual development… ”

Simply put, shelter incorporates the idea of adequate environment, or surrounding in addition to tangible shelter, in which a person can live a normal life with basic human rights. In this essay, the term shelter will be used in this context.

U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) first took the initiative to launch the Global Campaign to End Refugee Warehousing. It is now a global campaign with signatures from nearly three hundred non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs) around the world agreeing on the Statement Calling for Solutions to End the Warehousing of Refugees , drawing a stark contrast to its humble beginning; some of the prominent participants include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and International Rescue Committee. These social entrepreneur consortia assembled under the common pursuit of providing refugees an adequate shelter built with basic human needs as well as human right they deserve, as stipulated in 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.

Now the main agenda—the purpose of this paper is to evince that social entrepreneurs—CSOs and NGOs—with their ever-increasing participation in tackling global issues, positively influenced on social changes made against the warehousing of refugees.

Heart of the Matter

For economic and safety reasons, host governments are becoming increasingly reluctant to let in the refugee into their borders. Refugee admission has dropped considerably all around the world. The United States, for example, used to allow about 130,000 refugees into their country each year. The number however, plummeted as the year went by, especially after the 9/11 attack: in 2001, only 69,304 people were accepted; 27,110 in 2002 although Presidential authorization remained to be 70,000. Interesting fact is that not a single refugee applicant turned out to be a danger to the country and that not one of September 11 bombers impersonated an asylum seeker. After all, those terrorists weren’t patient enough to sit through years of idle waiting just t be able to win a ticket to U.S. resettlement; they had a flight to catch. Some argue that officials are playing safe, fearing the situation where they’d have to be answerable to signing a visa to a refugee who turned out to be a terrorist.

The heart of the matter now is to cope with protracted refugee situations. Both UNHCR and the NGOs deserve applause for providing efficient remedies for the times of emergency. With their intervention, mortality rates swiftly calms down and the refugees’ most pressing needs are satisfied. However, once the “emergency phase” progresses on to “care and maintenance” phase, the problem arises. Refugees are stranded in camps for years to come, provided with the most rudimentary commodities so as to keep them physically alive until the repatriation day comes. There is no plan B for the more probable but less hopeful scenario of refugees —what if the does not happen, at least not in the near future. Disappointingly,