According to figures released by the UN refugee agency on World Refugee Day (June 20th), there are 16.7 million refugees, 1.2 million asylum seekers, & 33.3 million internally displaced persons in the world today. Staggering figures, but since the UN carefully parses definitions, these figures do not indicate the real number of human beings made homeless or compelled to hit the road.
Internally displaced is such a delicate expression for those millions who have been bombed out of their homes or are fleeing from war zones & military occupations. They haven’t joined the millions fleeing their countries but remain homeless right at home.
Half the world’s refugees are now children, just like they make up so many of the world’s homeless, or “internally displaced” persons. They are the offal egested by neoliberal plunder & damn it before every standard of human civilization & culture. These little ones, despite their daring & desperation, are vulnerable to every kind of violence & shyster. Obama spouts pieties about equality & children & Hillary Clinton made swag off writing “It Takes a Village” advocating child welfare. She also made a display & built quite a reputation for her association with the Children’s Defense Fund. They’re both now calling for the mass deportation of children refugees crossing the US border.
Just like ignorance of the law is no excuse for miscreants, neither is being entirely bereft of human decency or making a pitiful spectacle of the refugee problem. It’s admirable the UN refugee agency keeps abreast of the scale of the refugee problem but why can’t it bring itself to denounce the wars & barbaric plunder creating it? Pity-mongering does not constitute political action & calling for the deportation of children puts you in a special class of criminals; it also merits you a special place in hell.
This little Afghan boy hiding behind his mother’s veil is an “internally displaced” person in Kabul. We don’t need any more sob stories out of the UN; we need to demand US-NATO out of Afghanistan! US out of Iraq!
(Photo by Massoud Hossaini/AP)