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Jan. 25, 2008
What makes a refugee?
Experts talk about resettlement of war victims.
ARASH BEN SHAUL
On Jan. 15, a public forum on refugees in Canada was held at the Alice MacKay Centre of the Vancouver Public Library. The event was organized by the Canadian Red Cross with the co-operation of several human rights organizations. The forum, How Do Refugees Get Chosen? Exploring Canadian Policy and Refugee Needs, was the second event in a series of presentations named Taking Refuge Among Us: A Canadian Experience.
"The series has been around for five years now," said Jenny Moss, the event organizer and the community outreach and liaison co-ordinator of the Canadian Red Cross. "The purpose is to engage the community in dialogue around refugee issues and at the same time educate people about who refugees are, why they come to Canada and what the experience is like when they get here."
The forum drew about 170 participants. The speakers were Lesley Stalker of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Debra Presse of Citizenship and Immigration Canada and Candy Marvel of the Immigrant Services Society.
Stalker gave the audience an overview of the world refugee situation and spoke about the work being done by Canada and other countries to help resettle refugees. There are currently 33 million people displaced from their home countries by wars and conflicts, said Stalker, but only about nine million of these are considered refugees according to the United Nations. Resettlement efforts can only be aimed at this "recognized" refugee group that includes people from Afghanistan, Columbia, Ethiopia, Burma and, most recently, Iraq. Each year, government officials from 18 host countries, such as the United States, Canada and Australia, meet to discuss at which refugee populations their resettlement efforts will be aimed. Canada's resettlement efforts over the past few years have mainly been focused on Afghan and Columbian refugees.
In response to a question about why displaced Palestinians living in Lebanon and others are not recognized as refugees, both Stalker and Presse said that the decision to categorize a group of people as refugees is subject to the complexities of international politics. Barring Palestinians, they said, from being considered refugees has been a long-standing political decision of the Palestinian leadership and the Arab countries, lest successful resettlement of Palestinians in their host countries jeopardize their "right of return."
Presse said that, of the nine million recognized refugees, only one per cent is moved to new homes in the host countries. Responding to the audience's criticism of Canada for doing too little to meaningfully address the world refugee situation, Presse reminded the audience that the vast majority of developed nations, including France, Germany and Spain, do not contribute to refugee resettlement efforts at all. Canada, she said, does a good job of assisting world refugees, as it brings in 7,500 refugees each year, a number second only to the United States, which settles 50,000 refugees annually.
Presse also stressed that the inherent financial, economic, cultural and political difficulties of absorbing large numbers of people in a host country makes it extremely challenging for governments and nongovernmental organizations to increase the number of refugees they can assist each year.
Presse's remarks were echoed by Marvel, who explained that the main problems refugees face arise when they reach their new homes. Most of the refugees who come to Canada do not have the health, language proficiency, occupational skills and education to succeed. To help overcome some of these obstacles, the Canadian government offers newly arrived refugees one year of income assistance and other basic services, such as health care, language training and employment counselling. However, said Marvel, these services are often overloaded and underfunded and more needs to be done to help fully integrate refugees into Canadian society.
While there seemed to be general agreement among the speakers and the audience that developed nations needed to take further steps to increase the number of refugees resettled each year, as well as better facilitate their integration into their new countries, a massive refugee absorption by any country, such as the ones Israel has experienced, is unlikely to occur anytime soon. Israel successfully absorbed two massive waves of refugees in 1949, when close to 700,000 Jews from Arab countries sought refuge there, and again in the early 1990s, when close to a million Soviet Jews migrated to the country.
Arash Ben Shaul is a Vancouver freelance writer.
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