World Refugee Day: The search for a land of freedom

Migrants from Central America wait for a nod from Border Patrol to board a van to a processing center in El Paso, Texas. Tens of thousands of children and families from Central America (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) are fleeing from gang violence—murder, kidnapping, violence against women and forced recruitment by gangs—and undertaking a dangerous journey to seek asylum in the United States. In 2016, El Salvador and Honduras were two of the top 10 countries (outside of those at war) with the highest murder rates of women in the world.
 

A young refugee is led away from a clash between migrants and authorities at a camp near the town of Diavata in northern Greece. Over half of the nearly 22.5 million refugees are under the age of 18. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNRA), there are over 170,000 children travelling without any parents, having separated from them or lost them to violence. They are left with no choice but to endure long journeys to safety on their own.
 

A Yazidi woman makes bread at a refugee camp in Mount Sinjar, Iraq. Yazidi women were brutalised by IS in Syria. The conflict in Syria, now in its seventh year, was the world’s biggest producer of refugees (5.5 million).Many Syrians have been forced to leave their homes, often multiple times, making Syria the largest displacement crisis in the world with 6.3 million people internally displaced and almost 4 million people registered as refugees in neighbouring countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. Turkey hosts over 2.9 million registered Syrians in the 21 government-run refugee camps. 
 

A migrant, part of a group of 47 including minors, watches from the deck of the Dutch-flagged rescue vessel Sea Watch 3 anchored off Syracuse, Sicily, while they await permission to land. Almost 22,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in the EU by sea since the beginning of the year, according to the most recent UNHCR figures. This has led to deterrence-based migration policy by countries such as Italy, France and Germany, ignoring the lives of migrants in distress at sea. It has also led to a comprehensive system of forced deportations to concentration camp-like detention facilities.
 

Riot police officers clash with refugees headed to Northern Europe outside a camp in the town of Diavata in northern Greece. The EU reached a deal with Turkey in 2016 that saw a decrease in the number of people crossing over to Greece. Under the deal, anyone who arrives on Greek islands must be returned to Turkey unless they qualify for asylum. In recent months, the campaign group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has reported allegations of violence at the Greece-Turkey land border as refugees and migrants are "pushed back" into Turkey by the Greek authorities

Costa Ricans march in San Jose in protest against the arrival of Nicaraguan refugees who fled from unrest in their country. This decade is marked by the vociferous rise to power of the Far Right political parties and the resurgence of nationalism in many countries in EU and elsewhere. Citizens across the European countries surveyed believe their country should allow fewer immigrants into their country or none at all. Though opinions are somewhat divided over the impact of immigration on crime, a majority now say that immigration increases the risk of terrorism.
 

Migrants and locals are invited to partake of a meal on a 270-meter long table in front of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The initiative, called ‘Italian Dinner without Walls’ is intended to send out a message of solidarity and inclusion to the nation. Italy’s populist government has repeatedly declared Italian waters closed to NGO rescue vessels. As a result, several boats have been left stranded at sea, with many migrants dead as they attempt to reach Italy from Libya. Since mid-2017, the number of migrant journeys has declined dramatically because Italy has engaged Libyan forces to stop migrants from setting off or to return them to Libya if found at sea—a policy condemned by human rights organisations.

A view of Zaatari refugee camp in north Jordan. The past two years have witnessed a new form of manipulation by refugee-hosting countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. They adopt policies to extract revenue from western countries and organisations to maintain refugees within its borders. Turkey was able to secure an unprecedented sum of 6 billion euros in 2016, as well as other concessions, in return for keeping Syrian refugees within its borders. A Jordanian official was quoted as saying that they should have blackmailed the EU like Turkey did.
 

A Venezuelan family from Aragua state poses for a picture after they obtained refugee status or temporary residence, through the Federal Police and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), at the Pacaraima border control, Roraima state, Brazil. More than 4 million Venezuelans suffering from political chaos, food shortages and hyperinflation have left the country. Mostly families who feel they have no choice but to go by foot, they end up walking for hundreds of miles
 

Twenty-five-year-old Afghani refugee Qudratullah Hotak trains with Germans at the training workshop of Ford Motor Co in Cologne, Germany. He was one among a few chosen for Ford Germany's Equipment Qualification (EQ) programme, which integrates migrants in a booming labour market. Germany spent a record 23 billion euros ($25.65 billion) last year on helping to integrate more than 1 million refugees and fighting the root causes of migration abroad, with measures aimed at keeping migrants outside the European Union and improving living conditions in their home countries.

As an act of protest against the US regime’s ‘purposefully’ cruel family separations, immigrant rights advocates in the US put up two dozen startling art installations in carefully chosen landmark locations, featuring a chain-link cage, a foil-wrapped "child," and harrowing audio of real-life kids sobbing. It called for an end to the suffering of over 3,000 migrant children who remain penned like animals in cages, sleeping alone under 68-cent blankets in freezing cells in US Border Patrol custody.
 

A businessman flips through a newspaper at a cafe during the morning rush-hour in London. Britain’s 3.7 million EU citizens have begun applying for ‘settled status’ to remain in the country after Brexit. Potentially, tens of thousands of vulnerable EU citizens, without help, may risk not securing their status. The migrants most affected by Brexit will be Europeans—those living in the UK or who want to work there. People who have been residents in Britain are likely to be allowed to stay, but low-skilled migrants hoping to move to the UK can expect to find it harder to get in the door. According to Home Office figures, merely 312 refugees entered Britain by crossing the English Channel in 2018
 

Protesters march to the Central Government Offices in Hong Kong, calling on Chief Executive Carrie Lam to resign, after flooding the streets for days, protesting against the city’s proposed extradition treaty with mainland China. The reason: If the bill becomes law, it can be misused by Chinese allies to extradite political refugees. And there are many in Hong Kong.

Rohingya refugees construct reinforcements to prevent landslides ahead of the monsoon season at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Claiming to conduct a “clearance operation” to rid the country of militants, the Myanmar military killed thousands of Rohingya civilians, raped hundreds of Rohingya women and girls and burnt entire villages to the ground in 2017. In reality, they are suspected of fulfilling a supposed long-standing dream of Myanmar’s Buddhist nationalists: The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims. Most Rohingya live as refugees in Bangladesh, which is struggling to provide for the needs of refugees. Myanmar refuses to take the steps necessary to ensure the safe and voluntary return of the Rohingya to their homes in Rakhine State.

Climate refugees are a reality now, with climate change causing the displacement of people across frontiers. Over the past few decades, the many inhabited islands comprising the Sundarbans deltaic region in the Bay of Bengal is disappearing due to continual rise in sea level caused by global warming. The Lohachara was the first island in the world submerged by the sea, and its inhabitants, the world’s first climate refugees. The Ghoramara island, seen above, has lost almost 75 percent of its land. Many climate refugees from across the Sundarbans have migrated to Dhaka, Bangladesh, and now live in conditions of intense crowding and poverty
 

A Somali ‘internally displaced people’ camp in Dollow, Somalia. Around 1.1 billion people live without a recognised form of identification today. In many cases, their papers—if they ever had papers at all—have been burned, lost or otherwise destroyed. By 2050, the World Bank predicts, over 143 million people across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America will become climate refugees. Both the private and public sectors are racing to come up with a sustainable way of counting, identifying and connecting the growing population of the global displaced. There’s big money in it. Mastercard, Microsoft, Apple, Palantir and Facebook have all entered the field, betting on everything from biometrics to blockchain, through private ventures as well as controversial partnerships with some of the world’s largest humanitarian agencies.

Data Sources : UNCHR, PewResearch, MercyCorps, MigrantWay