The World Refugee Day, observed on June 20, has once again exposed before us the plight of the refugees across the world. These people comprise mostly the hapless humanity that has been forcibly displaced by regional wars or internal armed conflicts. There are, besides, the environmental or climate refugees. The first category of refugees leave their native lands to unknown territories to settle in a safe place as they fall victim to socio-political assaults in their lands of origin. The tales of persecution of an ethnic or religious minority and their subsequent ouster are plenty.
According to an estimate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the world-wide refugees at the end of 2013 reached 51.2 million, which was 45.2 million in 2012. The UN body's report says Bangladesh is one of the top 20 refugee-hosting countries in the world today -- as it has been sheltering Rohingya refugees from the neighbouring Myanmar for over two decades.
The number of Muslim-majority Rohingyas, who have been crossing border into Bangladesh from the Arakan province of Myanmar since 1991, now officially stands at 31,145 in two camps. The unregistered Rohingya refugees, living outside the camps, are believed to be numbering 200,000 to 500,000.
A lasting solution to the problem has yet to come by, despite the fact that a section of the Rohingya refugees lately became a threat to law and order in the south-eastern region of Bangladesh.
The very term 'refugee' invokes in many of us sad, heart-rending memories. Beginning from the decade of the late forties, 1947-1948 to be precise, to the year of 1971, millions of people had to undergo endless sufferings as they crossed borders to escape persecution back in their native lands. In the former case, it was communal hostilities in the aftermath of the partition of the Indian sub-continent that had prompted people to flee their ancestral homes in either India or Pakistan, which became 'foreign lands' overnight. The later displacement of people was caused by the 1971 genocide let loose by the Pakistani occupation army in the then East Pakistan during the Bengalees' Liberation War. Both the episodes of refugee-marches were mixed with death pangs, cries of the injured, wailing for the loss of the dear ones, not to speak of the silent agonies of the dishonoured women.
The march of civilisation has been intertwined with the streams of refugees. It was mainly wars or armed conflicts that had spawned refugees around the world. In the inter-state hostilities that at times assumed the proportion of mindless atrocities, the common, unarmed people became victims that resulted in their forced displacement. In the history of conflicts, the six-year-long Second World War still tops the list in terms of brutalities resulting in forced migration of people from their own countries.
The post World War-II era did not see an end to the refugee caravans. Beginning with the Palestinians and the inhabitants of the sub-continent (mentioned earlier), the Japanese in the forties and the Vietnamese, the Laotians to many other nationalities in the Sub-Saharan Africa in the sixties kept taking refuge in the alien, but rich countries. From the later half of the twentieth century until now, the Middle East remained a powder-keg. As in the other flashpoints, the invariable fallout from conflicts in this region emerged first in the form of refugees -- mostly the Palestinians. The latest refugee crises have been confined to domestic displacement in Pakistan and Afghanistan, coupled with fleeing of persecuted people from strife-torn Syria to neighbouring countries. Internal displacement has currently affected people in an Iraqi province. A couple of years ago, it plagued northern Africa.
A few Sub-Saharan countries appear to have been dogged by the scourge of pogroms and ethnic cleansing since their very birth.
It's only a full awakening of conscience and the collective nurturing of unalloyed humanism that can save mankind from the doomed life a refugee has to pass through.
shihabskr@ymail.com
The plight of refugees
Shihab Sarkar | Published: July 03, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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