HELP! My sister is in Syria and my Brother is in South Sudan.
A refugee simply put is one who has been displaced from his home in order to seek succor in times of war, natural disaster, or to flee persecution. A plethora of life threatening situations exist in our world today giving birth to circumstances that compelpeople leave their homes forcefully. By leaving their homes with such inadvertence, they are left with no plans as to shelter and not enough to survive or live a good life. These families are spread across different countries and majorly six emergency locations in the world today according to the UN Refugee Agency. These emergencies include, the Central African Republic (CAR), Europe, Iraq, South Sudan and Syrian emergencies. These situations get worse by the day, its intensity is made evident in the recent situation in Aleppo, Syria where aid workers were attacked and killed and aid materials destroyed. The effect of which being the perpetration of a war crime on the part of the perpetrators and the subjection of persons in this area to even a worse condition of living as the United Nations has suspended aid to the area till further notice. The above highlighted scenario is one out of thousands that plague our world and its continued existence today.
The continued subjection of refugees to deplorable conditions of living poses a huge threat to peaceful coexistence even in the smallest part of the world (though not experiencing an emergency). You would remember that it was highlighted in the previous post that. Globalization has now made the world into a smaller milieu where we all have no choice but to interact with other parts of the world living no room for even deliberate attempts to avoid the ensuing interaction. The truth in the above made assertion is made evident in the words of Dame Anstee, former UN under Secretary General, while speaking onSustainable Development Goals, she said “…they (the SDGs) are very important because, although there are all sorts of political reasons for conflicts, most of the tragedies start off because there are people who are marginalized- who are poor, people who don’t have enough to live on…” The highlighted texts to a large extent define the lives of most refugees in the world.
It is rather disheartening that many develop a NIMBY (Not in my Backyard) attitude towards refugees and their state of living. Many of us are caught up in our “little” world which we have carved out for ourselves thereby creating no room for others. The quick forgotten truth is the fact that that little boy in South Sudan who lost his family to a conflict and now lives in a refugee camp is also your brother not just one bestowed on you by biological circumstances.
We must now expand the limits we set for ourselves in terms of concern to include persons whom we may never meet, who may never pay us back for acts of kindness done to them, who may never stand before you to thank you for your gratuitous gifts. We must now put a few blocks the other to create more space while breaking already built ones that block our lives out of those of others especially people whom we do not know. We must expand our dreams for a better life to accommodate persons living in war torn areas and peaceful zones. We must remind ourselves that brotherhood and sisterhood is a compulsory relationship we have with everyone in the world regardless of race, religion, creed, nationality or status and transcends the myopic realm of Biology. We must remember that if we truly intend to be successful, we must put the success of the Sustainable Development Goals before ours thus giving us the consciousness of the fact that these goals cannot be met until every single person on the face of the earth is included in the measurement of the success of the goals with refugees being no exception.
Having said all that lengthy stuff, it is time for you to make a pledge to brotherhood and sisterhood to refugees, take action no matter how little and speak up for refugees and for the world. Remember the world Nineteen is the world that exists right in your backyard and whatever stays there is definitely your business so pay RAPT attention to it.
Thank you for taking your time to read this post, please share your comments to air your views as it is part of the action we speak of and stay tuned for more exciting posts
