COMBATING CAUSES OF ALL FORMS OF CRISES AS THE 2017 WORLD REFUGEE DAY IS MARKED ON TUESDAY JUNE 20
On Tuesday,
June 20, the global community commemorated the World Refugee Day. On 4th
December 2000, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in its unanimous
Resolution decided that, from 2001, June 20 of every year would be celebrated
as World Refugee Day. In the resolution, the General Assembly noted that 2001
marked the golden jubilee or the 50th anniversary of the 1951
Convention relating to the status of Refugees.
Each year on June 20, the United Nations
Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and countless civic groups around the world host World
Refugee Day events in order to draw public attention to the millions of
refugees and people who are internally displaced worldwide.
A refugee can be described as a
person who has been forced to leave his or her country due to persecution,
which could be attributed to his/her race, religion, nationality, political
opinion, or social affiliation, or as a result of disaster, either natural or
manmade, such as massacre, genocide, war, inferno, earthquake, terrorism,
climate change, and famine, just to mention but a few. In some cases, the
internally displaced individuals within a certain country can also be referred
to as ‘Refugees’.
Recently, the Bornu State
government in Nigeria cried foul as well as sought for the financial assistance
of the international community in regard to the alarming number of displaced
persons recorded in the state owing to the ongoing terrorism of the Boko Haram
sect in the area. Such incident is not peculiar to Nigeria, but to many other
countries in the world.
Statistics show that not less
than forty-three million people worldwide are presently displaced as a result
of conflict and persecution, which is the highest number since the middle of
1990s. More than fifteen million of the aforementioned figure are refugees who
fled their home countries, while the rest are people who remain displaced by
conflict within their own homelands and they are generally regarded as Internally
Displaced Persons (IDPs).
Worldwide, refugees have really suffered an
untold hardship in the respective camps or localities they are being hosted or
they found themselves; they mostly lack the three basic needs of mankind, which
remain food, clothing and shelter. Most of them often feared killed by deadly
diseases, or sometimes due to the unbearable hazards attached to the
environment they reside in.
It is worthy to note that, most
of the beggars found on the major roads or streets of most cities in Nigeria,
likewise other countries, are refugees. A good number of them who hail from the
neighbouring countries to include Niger Republic, Chad, Benin Republic and
Cameroon, migrated to Nigeria in search of a lasting succour. This implies that
more than half of the world’s refugees are in urban environments, not in camps.
This set of people invariably fall victim to human trafficking, which is
currently on the rampage in several countries.
No doubt, displaced persons are
found virtually in all the nations across the globe. Since refugees are mainly
victims of either manmade or natural disasters, there is a compelling need to
take appropriate and drastic measures that would thoroughly address all forms
of disaster or conflict witnessed by mankind virtually on a daily basis.
It is noteworthy that, even the
natural disasters such as earthquake, depletion of the Ozone layer, climate
change, erosion, and what have you, are mostly attributable to human/manmade
actions or activities. Needless to say that, any event that could lead to
displacement of individuals from their places of residence or country of origin,
can be averted by the concerned persons or authorities, as the case may be.
To this end, inferno for
instance, which usually takes place as a result of man’s carelessness or
lackadaisical attitude, can be prevented by sensitizing the public on the
fundamental actions that could lead to such disaster. In the same vein, people
ought to be professionally directed on where, when, and how to erect various
structures both residential and industrial as well as in the case of drilling of
boreholes in order to help avoid future occurrence of earthquake and other
related crises.
There is also need for legal
backing in respect to prevention of the various uncalled attitudes or practices
including discrimination, extremism, racism, ethnicity, human rights violation,
et cetera, that can result to a life-threatening crisis such as insurgency,
terrorism or war. Hence, the bill on prevention of terrorism that is presently
lying on the floor of the National Assembly ought to be given a speedy hearing
by the 8th Assembly with a view to passing it into law in earnest.
As Nigeria joins the rest of
the world to mark the sixteenth (17th) commemoration of the World
Refugee Day, there’s a compelling need for the various civil society
organizations as well as religious bodies to embark on a massive and rigorous
awareness crusade that would educate the entire public on the dangers inherent
in any form of crisis, which will go a long way to bring a holistic attitudinal
change among the overall citizenry. Think about it!
Comrade FDN Nwaozor
_______________________
Twitter: @mediambassador
http://facebook.com/fred4nwaozor
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