Nearly 60 Million Refugees Uprooted and Displaced Around the World

June 22, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Try to imagine the unimaginable (at least for most people living in the U.S. or other imperialist countries). You’re already living in an impoverished, highly repressive society. Then suddenly, with little warning or no warning at all, you’re forced to find your loved ones and grab what you can stuff into a few plastic bags or a suitcase and flee for your lives—from bombs, invading troops, or marauding gangs. Sometimes on foot, sometimes by car. You may have little idea where you’re going—but now you’re even more vulnerable to dying of hunger or thirst, or being preyed upon, raped, robbed, or murdered, including by those supposedly taking you to safety.

Well, horrors like this aren’t “unimaginable” in today’s imperialist-dominated world. They’re an everyday reality for tens of millions. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that in 2014 alone nearly 14 million people were displaced from their homes by violence or persecution. That’s over 38,000 every single day on average! Making this all the more gut-wrenching: half are children.

And that’s not all. The 2014 deluge of displacement brought the total current number of people who have fled their homes to “seek protection elsewhere” to 59.5 million people—the highest number ever recorded. The New York Times reports this exodus has “littered deserts and seas with the bodies of those who died trying to reach safety.” (“60 Million People Fleeing Chaotic Lands, U.N. Says,” New York Times, June 18, 2015) It should be noted that the United Nations and the NYT article actually undercount the number of people around the world forced from their homes. Their figures do not include the tens of millions who have fled their homes because of poverty or other reasons, including the millions of people from Mexico and Central America forced to immigrate to the U.S. because of they cannot survive in their countries dominated by U.S. imperialism.

Millions of those displaced remain displaced—stuck in limbo—for years, even decades. They can’t go home, and they can’t find new permanent homes. The UN reported that in 2014 the lowest number of displaced people in three decades were able to return home—fewer than 127,000.

This devastating flood of humanity is not inexplicable or accidental. It’s due to the political, economic, and military workings of the global system of capitalism-imperialism, a system dominated and shaped by a handful or countries headed by the U.S. Just look at where the victims are concentrated.

Syria ranked number one: 11.6 million Syrians had been displaced by the end of 2014, of which 7.6 million are within the country and another 3.9 million have been driven from Syria. In Afghanistan, 3.7 million were displaced. An estimated five million people have been displaced in Iraq. Some 15 million people from Sub-Saharan Africa have been displaced—4.5 million just in 2014. What do all of these places have in common? They are countries oppressed by imperialism and countries or regions that have been the direct target of U.S. and European military assaults and interventions—the ongoing U.S. “war on terror” in particular.

Yet what makes this situation even more horrific is the fact that refugees are not mainly finding shelter in the richer countries that bear the most responsibility for these horrors—they are being driven into other oppressed and impoverished countries. Turkey, Iran and Pakistan have more displaced people within their borders than any other countries. And one quarter of all refugees has been forced into some of the world’s poorest countries, including Ethiopia and Kenya. These two countries take in more refugees than France and the UK.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees said: “For an age of unprecedented mass displacement, we need an unprecedented humanitarian response and a renewed global commitment to tolerance and protection for people fleeing conflict and persecution.” But global capitalism—which has caused these horrors—is incapable of an “unprecedented humanitarian response.” And events are proving this once again. Instead of seeking to aid the peoples of the oppressed countries and end imperialist military interventions, the European powers are squabbling over how to divide up the 40,000 asylum seekers, a small number in relation to the number of refugees overall, within the European Union—meanwhile, they’re discussing a military blockade to prevent refugees from fleeing North Africa and landing on European shores. Australia is doing likewise. And the United States allows permanent residence status to only 70,000 refugees a year—a drop in the bucket.

This is a global catastrophe, yet another indictment of the global system of capitalism-imperialism and evidence of how this system is utterly bankrupt and unreformable. This intolerable outrage should compel anyone with a shred of humanity to dig into understanding the real source of the problem—and the actual solution to end these horrors. A good place to start is Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage—A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, and the works of Bob Avakian, Chairman of the RCP, who has brought forward a new synthesis of communism that opens up the possibility of a radically new and better world through revolution.

 

 

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