My name is MD, an asylum seeker from the north east of England. I am currently studying LLB Law ( First year) at Northumbria University in a Sanctuary Scholarship. I am working in the refugee sector alongside 9 organisations across the country. I have been a Refugee Week Leader 2020, UK and I have introduced Md’s Little Help food bank (The first Asylum seeker led project during the pandemic) to drop food packs and currently Md’s Little help dinner club including my society “ University of Sanctuary Society”
Preamble: Before we start can I assure you all this little lecture on some specific questions will be interesting and I will make sure we get plenty of Md’s memory break. This lecture will explore some causes of displacement through my analysis and global humanitarian response and some real-life experience with some appeal. This is a lecture soecially researced by me with instructions by my Dr Jen Bagelman – a lecturer in human geography at Newcastle for her ” Third year Students of Displacement and migration studies”
Can you all hear me? “ I got the answer yes” Aha so I can start.
Todays Topic: “Causes of displacement- what causes asylum/refugee movement: here some of the processes that force people to move”
According to my analysis, there is possibly 6 reasons for the displacement of a human being. I would explain why I have said human being as no one is born as a refugee or asylum seeker. It is the situation which makes them accept the situation and get this tag on their identity.
1. Bad Government.
2. War.
3. Climate change.
4. Discrimination against minorities, gender, child displacement, race, religious belief or faith, and domestic violence.
5. Economic Reason.
6. Human trafficking and slavery.
Let’s discuss them – ( Md’s 10 sec Memory Break)
1.Bad Government–
We have seen this specific reason across the world how bad governance had led people to seek sanctuary. It is also considered one of the vastest reasons why people are being displaced and seek asylum politically. There could be a fear of life, threat of being life sentences and sometimes the corruptions of the government are closely related. In African and some Asian countries for example in Bangladesh whenever the government is being changed there is a trend of people being Cross fired, put into the jail, or killed by the ruling party. Lots of opposition political leader then flew home to save their life and seek refuge. Normal people also being put into this situation just because they support a certain group of political groups. Sometimes it’s the law enforcement as well who play a vital role to extort money from general people and put their life in risk. It is sometimes the corrupted law injustice system which cannot ensure the justice for an innocent also lead them to leave their motherland where they grow up. There is a lots of example of that even in African counties like Sudan and Zimbabwe is an perfect example of that.
2. War-
It is also a major reason why people are being displaced. The war in Syria, Iraq, Libya, World wars are the perfect example of them.
* There is a new kind of war refugees are including in this list according to my analysis- Which is Cyber War or Internet War. It is very interesting as we can nowadays see there is a blogger, programmer and IT professionals also flee their country being threatened for the work they do by organisations. It is a new kind of added version by the surge of Social media which also reflects the connection of social media in this displacement. Recently in Iran and if you have seen the news in Azerbaijan and in Vietnam what have happened with the bloggers while they have expressed their view in the Social Media. So, I would say they are “Cyber Refugees” (Not the one in Japan who sleeps in the cybercafé). A lot of refugees from Bangladesh is in Europe at the moment seeking sanctuary after getting life threat while they have posted something against government or the system and possible prosecution. In most cases the Human rights and freedom of speech and opinion is only exits in papers and not in real life in those countries. I would like to do a research project in future about it if someone is interested in it.
Let’s move onto the next one-
3. Climate change-
I was watching a documentary on YouTube about climate change effects on the migration. I can assure you it’s the huge and most alarming situation we are heading for the future as we are not concerned about this. In Morocco, thousands of acres of land have been deserted because of climate change – no water. Around 60% of the Moroccan now wants to move to different counties as they cannot live in that situation. There are sometimes indigenous people displaced from one place to another because of deforestation, drought and natural disaster. Examples can be found in the countries like Brazil, Middle East and even in Asia. I was been consulting this matter with the Honourable Sir Howard Morrison who is an international Criminal court judge was talking about the road less travelled where he mentioned about the riots and civil war between the countries will be happening because of climate change and sweet water shortage after 2050. The alarming fact is that A glass of water you are drinking now will have to be shared with 3 more people after 2050 if that climate change continues. I have seen the graves of my family had gone under the river water because of global warming and the level of seawater rise in past. An interesting documentary link will be provided in the written analysis version of this lecture as well. Please see that which is titles – The climate refugees of Bangladesh” .
First-Ever Climate Refugee In Europe: History has been made this year in confirming a Bangladeshi man’s residence permit renewal, a French appeals court has made legal history by taking into account environmental conditions in the applicant’s country of origin.
In an apparent first, the Bordeaux-based court “effectively declared that the environment – air pollution – meant it was unsafe to send this man back,” according to Dr. Gary Fuller, an air pollution scientist at Imperial College London. The United Nations Environment Programme predicts 250 million climate refugees worldwide by 2050. (https://www.climate-refugees.org/spotlight/2021/1/15/french-court)
Oh yes please generously feel free to reference me if possible, I will be really happy.
With Sir Howard Morrison.
Links- Climate refugees in Bangladesh- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co5uywe-1Z8&t=808s
Bangladesh’s Battle With Water: Can It Save Its Climate Refugees? | Once Upon A River- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV42sBSq1Mw
The enormous amount of ice is melting in the poles. The rise of water will take peoples house away.
15-sec memory break.
4. Discrimination against minorities, child displacement, gender, race, religious belief or faith and domestic violence-
There are lots of religious minorities across the Middle East like Iraq and Iran. Where if you are a different faith person you will be treated differently. In lots of cases, they are being discriminated by being even in their own country.
If you have read the news about USA you will find how many children are being abandoned and sadly they are suffering there to seek sanctuary.
There are also sexual minorities
There are also lots of countries, where is illegal to be a homosexual. The government would encourage to murder people if you are gay like Uganda. It also happens in a couple of Islamic countries where they do not recognise these homosexual groups. In terms of the race, a lot is going on in Kurds in Iraq, Syria and Iran. Even in India, there is huge segregation in the same religion for being a different cast member.
Domestic violence is also a major cause sometimes. I may discuss this in my future lectures. ( Actually, I am acting here as an opportunist be lecturer a guest again)
5. Economic Reasons–
Another one is economic circumstances, which has been ignored a lot of times but also been picked up by social media when is needed and this specific cause has not been added in any of the context in past. If You’re live in a poverty, starvation then you definitely search for new resources to live. For example, lots of people when I lived in Worcester, UK have moved from Worcester to secure and pursue their career in different countries and other convenient part of the country. It is absolutely natural thing what people will do. Unfortunately, opportunities like this does not exist for lots of countries and including lots of people around the world. There are people dying every day in the Sahara Desert. People from Mali and Niger are been forced to be chosen desert life and die because there are no resources. Economic condition is much needed to be secured of a human being to live their life as in most cases their country does not have the social welfare system like we have in the UK. There is a lot of economic expats around the world who also went around the world for economic reason. Did we ever question them?
See this documentary- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlPZ0Bev99s
6. Human trafficking and slavery–
Although this reason is caused by individuals and gang members this is also causing displacement and create new refugees. This is one of my real-life experience. The victims do not have left any choice on some occasion to seek sanctuary to save their life from the traffickers or enslavers. This is a huge complex sector which I am personally hoping to explore during my L.L.B being a victim of modern-day slavery and trafficking inside the UK. Very often it is create by one of the others categories I have already covered.
10-sec memory break. We will be finishing soon-
Next topic I will discuss is –
Global humanitarian responses what are some of the key ways that asylum is dealt with – what you think are positive/negative responses.
If we move to the south Asian country.
Like Afghanistan. Afghanistan still has a lot of problems going on. The government controls details and the Taleban control to Countryside this is how can Afghanistan runs. Sometimes they are also controlled by Warlords.
Refugee camp in Pakistan’s Peshawar which was probably a million people from Afghanistani refugees does not have the right to go out of their camp. Camps in Bangladesh there are hundreds of thousands of Rohingya are there. And there’s nowhere to go from there. The border between Bangladesh and India is very secure. So no one can escape to other countries from Bangladesh as well. And the Indian border sometimes when people try to cross the border.
Bangladesh cannot do anything about it and the international community only into this just to pay money and leave it to the country where they are suffering. It’s like Oh bad luck. You’ve got it and good luck because we haven’t got them. Giving money is not a solution to those refugee camps at all. In most cases, those money was not been spent properly to subsidise the real cause because of organisational deep corruptions.
We got a multinational organisation like UNICEF, United Nations Save the Children and others to help in this cause but in some cases, their active presence and resilience was been questioned with lots of uncertainty and corruptions.
Internationally politically nothing happened. There are old rules there are conventions which is needed to be reformed. This reformation needs to be done with the participation of the refugees themselves. The reason, Actually the rest of the world feel they don’t have to. If the world obliged to take responsibility which can be eventually spread across the world would be great. Even the world will try to stand for this issue probably let’s say China is a very good friend of Burma. Will they say anything about the genocide happed with the Rohingya minorities? They will say ok probably this is not a good idea whatever you are doing at this moment. They may show that they are standing against bomber, but we will be still friends. Don’t worry we’ll be still buying the nice things you produce like rubies and others in special stones from Burma. There is no moral obligation, there’s no morality in the treatment of the causes of refugee’s situation. For example, about the Palestinians, they were driven out of their own country after the creation of Israel 1949. A million of them has been driven out of Israel they’re still living in the refugee camps. In Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and those countries have never given them any status even they have probably got their 4th generation of Palestinian refugees. The international community put huge importance on the maintenance of the international borders not in the refugee crisis.
Moving on to the next discussion: Don’t have the right to work. I don’t have the right to support myself. You will find about my story in my blog in details. So, I will not prolong this lecture about this. See my video lecture to know more about what you can do to help and about the solutions. And yes remember Empathy, Compassion and your support of inclusion can make someone’s life and make them happy . So be there for the people and be there for your community, Something good will happen in return ( Mahmuda Hamid- My beloved Mom).
Finally- Thanks everyone for reading my blog. I hope it helps. If you have any suggestions and you would like to discuss more. Please feel free to drop me an email- abirking1988@gmail.com. or my twitter: @abirhamid2017 or my Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/md-m-hamid-8b2735190
References: Pictures are being collected from online ( different websites). 1. Metro Article – “Huge ice sheet breaks off Greenland glacier amid rising temperatures”- Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2020/09/14/42-3-square-mile-ice-shelf-breaks-off-greenland-glacier-amid-rising-temperatures-13271484/?ito=cbshare
Global Temp check- https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/climate/science/global-temperature-records
More Data about the Climate of UK since 1950- https://www.ukcip.org.uk/wp-content/PDFs/UKCP09_Trends.pdf