World Refugee Day 20 June 2022: Hope For The Future Of Refugees

This year the theme of World Refugee Day 2022 is ‘Whoever, Whatever, whenever. Everyone has a right to seek safety’. The theme focuses on the right to seek safety and means that every refugee must be welcomed and treated with dignity regardless of their birthplace, race, origin, or religion. However, in reality it is very difficult to achieve as the number of stateless, displaced persons, asylum seekers and refugees are increasing tremendously day by day compared to the efforts by the international community to stop the root cause of the problem that forced people to flee their countries.

As we know that the Rohingya Genocide is still ongoing and that forcing the Rohingya to flee. On top of this the military coup in 2021 has forced thousands of Myanmar people to flee to the neighboring countries. In addition to this, the situation in Afghanistan and Ukraine adds to the numbers of displaced persons, asylum seekers and refugees and therefore more resources needed to support refugees to seek safety and timely protection.

While the refugees continue to be associated with threats to a national security of the transit countries which resulted in the widespread of hate speech and xenophobia, we request that more strategic measures to be put in place to counter this as the impact to the refugees and asylum seekers are terrible. More strategic measures must be put in place to stop the countries from producing refugees indefinitely. We request more strategic measures to be put in place to increase resettlement quota for the affected refugees.

Humanitarian aid in refugee camps around the world is severely inadequate compared to the number of refugees and asylum seekers. The situation of refugees and asylum seekers outside the refugee camps is not much different due to lack of access to legal employment in transit countries. Therefore, we hope that access to legal employment for refugees can be implemented to enable refugees to survive while waiting for a durable solution.

We also hope the UNHCR will create more access to education for the refugee children while waiting for a durable solution.

While the Rohingya in exile hope to return home, the situation in Arakan State as well as in Myanmar do not allow them to return unless the military junta stop the Rohingya Genocide and guaranteed their safety and rights with dignity. As of now the Rohingya in IDP camp in Sittwe and other Townships in Arakan State still cannot return home. They must be allowed to return home to rebuild their life.

We hope the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, H.E Tom Andrews will work more closely with ASEAN to end the Rohingya Genocide and atrocities in Myanmar so that we can return home safely with dignity where our rights are guaranteed.

© Scoop Media