Refugees and Displaced Persons

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority group, have fled persecution in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, fueling a historic migration crisis.

Global refugee flows are currently at the highest levels in history. Many refugees are at risk of a human rights violation too often insufficiently addressed in security and conflict prevention efforts: human trafficking. 

The South African Police Service (SAPS) has ended a sit-in at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) compound in the capital, Pretoria. Some two hundred people have been arrested, according to the media, and others are being held to determine their immigration status. The sit-in had lasted for a month with up to seventy participants, identified by the media as refugees and asylum seekers. The protestors were demanding that the UNHCR resettle them in other countries because of their fear of xenophobic violence centered in South Africa’s townships. The episode has been highly problematic. The protestors were demanding what the UNHCR could not do. Under international law, the UNHCR has a role with respect to persons outside their own country because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on religion, ethnicity, political views, or membership in a particular social group. While media reports are unclear, it is highly unlikely that most of the protestors had gone through the South African adjudication process to qualify for asylum or refugee status. In South Africa as in the United States, adjudication of refugee or asylum claims is a lengthy process. It is likely that most of the protestors were economic migrants. The UNHCR has no remit for those who go to another country seeking economic betterment.  South Africa has by far the most advanced economy on the continent. As such, it is a magnet for immigrants, documented and undocumented. Borders are highly porous; the largest number of foreigners in South Africa appear to be from close neighbors, especially Zimbabwe and Mozambique. This population, usually very poor, ebbs and flows depending on conditions in the home country. There are also higher-profile migrants from countries further afield, such as Congo and Nigeria. Wealthier, they attract sensationalized media attention. Nigerians, for example, are frequently identified as drug dealers. As is nearly always the case, the clearing of a sit-in is a public relations disaster for the police. In racially-charged South Africa, there are international media shots of a white policeman pepper-spraying a black mother and her child, though, according to the New York Times, the SAPS racial make-up mirrors that of the population, which is 80 percent black.  Stepping back, South Africa is dealing with what is likely to become more common: the unregulated movement of people from poor areas and countries to wealthier ones. Like most countries, South Africa does not have in place a solution to this new challenge. As elsewhere in Africa, borders are porous and fundamentally artificial—they were drawn by colonial governments without reference by and large to the indigenous peoples. For example, the Tswana people are to be found on both sides of the Zimbabwe-South Africa border.

Recent attacks that appeared to target immigrants have underscored South Africa’s struggle to combat violence and limit tensions with the rest of the region.

A new report from the Women and Foreign Policy program, launched this week, highlights the security implications of human trafficking and offers recommendations to prevent human trafficking and advance U.S. security interests.

Earlier this month, the Myanmar government embarked upon a new plan to begin repatriating Rohingya who had fled Rakhine State after waves of brutal violence there. It was the second time Naypyidaw tried to begin the repatriation process—the first attempt was in November—and this time the Myanmar government reportedly had approved some three thousand Rohingya to return, with the backing of Bangladesh for this action. None apparently voluntarily took up the offer, instead fleeing back to the camps in Bangladesh or hiding out. That Rohingya would not want to return to Myanmar is hardly surprising. It has been only two years since the deadliest wave of violence against them in Rakhine State. Rakhine State, where most Rohingya in Myanmar live, remains a violent and unstable place. In recent months, violence in Rakhine State has been rising again, as the army battles the ethnic Rakhine Arakan Army. The military has resorted to its usual scorched earth tactics in response, and the UN’s human rights office has accused the Tatmadaw of launching attacks against civilians in this fighting. Amnesty International has further issued a report claiming that the Myanmar military is committing new atrocities in Rakhine State, against both ethnic Rakhine and Rohingya—including extrajudicial executions. Meanwhile, the Myanmar government, while telling Rohingya that they can come back safely, has not exactly created a safe, trustworthy environment for their return. The ongoing violence in Rakhine State certainly does not indicate a strong prospect for safe return. Senior Myanmar government leaders continue to demonize the Rohingya and also refer to those still in Myanmar as illegals. A report released this week by Fortify Rights, a human rights and investigative group closely monitoring the situation for Rohingya, found that Myanmar authorities have continued to force Rohingya still living in Myanmar to accept National Verification Cards, which basically mark them as foreigners and preclude their getting citizenship rights. And the Myanmar and Bangladesh authorities did not appear to consult with Rohingya who were put on a list for repatriation, or prepare anywhere for them to restore their lives in Myanmar. The UN fact-finding mission found that the Myanmar government has simply leveled portions of northern Rakhine State where Rohingya had lived. Naypyidaw has done little to rebuild to prepare for a return, or offer infrastructure or social services of any kind in northern Rakhine State. Instead, Myanmar companies are developing tracts of land formerly occupied by Rohingya. A UN fact-finding report released in early August found that the Tatmadaw’s “crony companies” are funding projects in Rakhine State now designed to reengineer the province’s ethnic makeup and “erase evidence of Rohingya belonging to Myanmar.” Instead, the more than one million Rohingya in Bangladesh may try to stay in Bangladesh indefinitely, a scenario that is becoming increasingly plausible—though as Bertil Lintner notes, the Bangladesh government desperately does not want them to remain. Already, the camp on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border is the largest refugee camp in the world, overflowing with people, crowded, and highly vulnerable to disease and human trafficking. As Lintner notes, Bangladeshi citizens are growing increasingly resentful of the refugees and worried that they might take locals’ jobs, the camp’s massive size is causing environmental damage, and there are real fears that, the longer so many Rohingya stay as refugees in desperate conditions in Bangladesh, they could become targets for radicalization by extremist groups. Yet given the abysmal prospects for Rohingya if they returned to Myanmar, he is probably correct to note that the Rohingya are “there to stay” in Bangladesh, at least for a long time. If this is the reality, what can Bangladesh, and other governments and aid agencies do about it? For one, while continuing to prepare for the (remote) possibility that Rohingya would be safely repatriated to Myanmar, the UN and other third party actors could push harder for a third country settlement solution for at least some Rohingya. There is at least some precedent for this option—Bhutanese refugees in Nepal have almost all been resettled in third countries—although it will obviously be difficult in the current global environment of large refugee flows and leaders increasingly opposed to taking in refugees. Still, there are third countries, in the region and globally, where more Rohingya resettlement might be possible in at least modest numbers, including Malaysia, Indonesia, and Canada. Yet the likelihood is that the Rohingya are going to remain in Bangladesh, and both the Bangladesh government and outside actors need to prepare for that possibility.

Washington is hoping it can force asylum seekers to stay south of the border.

Neil Edwards is the volunteer intern for CFR's Africa Program in Washington, DC. He is a master's candidate at the School of International Service at American University and is a returned Peace Corps Rwanda volunteer. At the World Economic Forum this past January, Mohamed, a Somali national living in Kakuma Refugee Camp located in northwestern Kenya, spoke on behalf of refuges worldwide. He addressed the sobering reality that living in a refugee camp is likely a life-sentence. “It surprises me that money and capital move around the world in seconds, but it takes a refugee decades… for a place to call home.” Mohamed, now twenty-six, emphasized that his over twenty-year wait has prevented him from realizing his dream of higher education. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), out of the 1.2 million refugees worldwide that needed resettlement in 2018, only fifty-five thousand were actually resettled—a mere 4.7 percent of the global need.  Worldwide, there are 70.8 million forcibly displaced people fleeing from conflict, natural disaster, or persecution. Of these, 41.3 million people are internally displaced within their own nation, 25.9 million are living in refugee camps—half of which are under the age of eighteen—and 3.5 million are seeking asylum. Sub-Saharan Africa hosts twenty-six percent of the world’s refugee population. According to UNHCR, the African refugee population grew by 150 percent from 2010 to 2016, with every year seeing an increase. In the coming years, the number of refugees in sub-Saharan Africa is likely to continue increasing based on intensifying violence in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and terror groups in the Lake Chad basin. There is, therefore, an urgent need to fix the broken refugee system that keeps individuals like Mohamed waiting for resettlement indefinitely. As he said in his address, “We are not animals and we are not criminals. It’s not a crime to flee from your country.” Historically, the United States has led the world in refugee resettlement. Resettlement is the end goal of refugees; it offers a permanent and stable place of residence. In contrast, refugee camps are meant to be temporary. Since 1980, the United States has accepted three out of the four million refugees who have been resettled worldwide. However, in 2017, the United States resettled fewer refugees than the rest of the world combined—the first time this has happened in U.S. history. From 2016 to 2017, U.S. resettlement of refugees plummeted by one third—from 92,000 to 33,000—the lowest rate since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The number of refugees the U.S. resettled from Africa dropped from 30,000 in 2016 to around 10,000 in 2018. Now, there is even talk that the Trump administration may wholly suspend refugee admission in 2020.  Escalating violence in sub-Saharan Africa has increased the number of refugees and the demand for resettlement to record levels. These numbers will continue to rise and demand urgent attention. Addressing this change through an improved refugee resettlement system requires more resources, not less.

More than three million Venezuelans have fled poverty, hunger, violence, and persecution in recent years, journeying throughout the Americas and Southern Europe.

Countries have done too little to fix a broken humanitarian system.