“All of us impatient for sunrise, all of us in dread of it. All of us in search of home…I have heard it said we are the uninvited. We are the unwelcome. We should take our misfortune elsewhere.” – An unnamed refugee father speaking to his sleeping son in Khaled Hosseini’s Sea Prayer
Refugees are people who flee not just from war and armed conflict, they flee from all types of injustices, including gender-based crimes and crimes against children. They try to escape from countries where natural disasters devastate their lives and livelihoods, from countries where having an opinion against a dominant culture, group or government is punished. And they face/survive far more atrocious things than Covid.
The vast majority of the world’s refugees end up in what is commonly known as the ‘developing countries’. There were 30 million refugees and asylum seekers globally at the end of 2019 and less than 1% were resettled in First world countries last year. NZ promised to resettle 1500 refugees annually from 2020. Last year we promised an intake of 1000 refugees but resettled only 800. This year, we had one intake of roughly 100 people (without making up for last year’s shortfall of 200). And then Covid happened. The resettlement programme got suspended, along with the hopes, dreams and plans of the remaining 1400 people looking forward to rebuilding their lives here.
Refugees survive in camps, in slums in developing counties, on food handouts and rations, with limited access to water, medicine, education, resorting to all sorts of ‘work’. They already battle malnutrition, malaria, respiratory diseases, measles…The threats to life they encounter are far too many to note down on this single page. Now, they too, live alongside Covid. I would like to believe that we inhabit a just world, but refugees remain in places where they are susceptible to Covid as well, while we live in our national cocoon.
The UNHCR and International Organisation for Migration suspended all refugee resettlement programmes in March 2020 but uplifted the suspension in June 2020. At that point in time NZ was revelling in Covid-free joy. Yet, we did not resume the refugee resettlement programme. We are by far one of the best countries in the world in terms of dealing with Covid. But apparently we do not have the confidence in our health care and testing systems to bring in a very small percentage of one of the world’s most vulnerable at a time when they need us the most…when the same systems function for the 400-odd people who arrive daily at our borders. Refugees do not need hotels for managed quarantine. The Mangere Resettlement Centre has functioned for years as THE place where new refugees go when they arrive, and where they remain for 6 weeks, isolated from the rest of NZ (even during pre-Covid times), while they learn about life in NZ. The infrastructure is in place. The Covid tagline “We are in this together” appears to apply to New Zealanders only. I thought as a country we were more inclusive than that.
Perhaps only our First World lives are more important…
Yes, there is a global crisis that is Covid. Yes, there have been 28.4 million cases of Covid worldwide, and yes, of these 19.4 million have so far recovered. The count of 30 million refugees and asylum seekers keeps increasing. We do not know how many die, unnamed and unaccounted for, each day. Which is, and has been, the bigger crisis? Where is our humanitarian spirit, our humanity?
On the topic of life and death…the perilous sea crossing in Hosseini’s tribute to refugees who have died on such journeys is but one of the many threats to life they encounter. While I live in enforced isolation, I think of the unnamed millions dreading the sunrise. I think that their displaced lives speak more of strength, hope, and resilience than our closed borders do. And I feel immensely sad that we get so concerned with ourselves, we become so inward-looking, that we lose sight of the fact that all lives matter…that there are bigger problems than Covid which continue to plague our world.
The pandemics of inequalities and exclusion are very much alive.
See more:
http://themoorestory.com/index.php/2020/08/30/elimination-isolationist/
http://themoorestory.com/index.php/2020/08/23/what-will-be-our-global-message/
I loved your writing, speechless.
Just want to say that your views about everything is right but unfortunately covid freezes every aspects of people life
Like our sorrow on attending for death ceremony
Birthdays weddings everything
People are refugees when their life is in danger. They refuse to the other countries to go there and live safe.
At the current situation everybody is somehow refugees
My country! Iran has 1/3 population dying every day of corona and health system can’t cope with helping people
So those can be refugee
Guess covid jade all of us to be like a refugee.
Nice! If there is anything that was starking shambles it was everything the govt did this year since covid struck. I have my own 3am thoughts and today i think i have decided the govt of the day isn’t the best NZ has seen.
Call me sad…but every time i see Jacindas smiling face on TV i feel disappointed. Stay home, safe lives, be kind, we’r in this together only applies as and when it seems fit. It’s all about people’s convenience.
The govt bent backwards to save lives of a very small percentage of people from a virus yet silently is killing all the hard working SME owners with financial stress and a bleak future.
Handing out money in the first quarter as if it were a lolly scramble! The actual disaster is about to strike as wages subsidy all come to an end this month….what’s the plan from here on? Any direction from the govt yet? Or we all to join the WINZ queues coz thats where all unsolved problems end up!
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