The Life of a Refugee

A refugee is forced to deal with situations that most human beings on the planet doe not have to contend with. For example, most people do not have to figure out how to fit themselves and their family into an area that is only three, to three and a half, meters around. Yet they do, and they continue to live in these conditions until they are allowed to return home. 

These are the types of things that I have learned form this blog. I had always known that refugees had many hardships that they had to deal with, yet I had no idea just how many there were. For example, I had no idea just how high the number of refugees suffering from malnutrition was, or how bad living conditions were children in particular. 

In a reflexive sense this cultural experience taught me a great deal about my own life. I learned to be truly grateful for what I have been given. I mean when it comes to personal space in college, it seems as if there is none, but then I read about people who live in a three meter area, with only two meters between themselves and their neighbors and I realized that college housing is not so bad.  Yet, this is only a minor example of what this experience ha taught me. 

I also learned a great deal by relating what I discovered about refugee camps to my knowledge gained in Anthropology class. Items such as personal space, food, fair treatment of people, language, all of these continually popped upped when I thought about refugee camps.

Looking back I could not have picked a better topic for this blog, as I learned a great deal about refugees and their camps, and in learning I was able to create connections to other everyday events and situations. 

Angelina Jolie Speaks about Refugees

I found this video on youtube.com and I thought it was an incredibly eye-opening story. Angelina Jolie, an american actress, speaks at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting about refugees, specifically about the education of child refugees. She tells a truly heart- wrenching story about two boys who in any other situation could have been well educated human beings. Yet this video sheds light on more than just the need for the education of refugees, it gets to the heart of the living conditions that some of these people are forced to deal with. She describes a man who was beaten and burned and could not seek medical aid in a neighboring country, so now he is forced to be treated by a young boy friend of his, who is decent enough to change his bandages each day. This boy is able to buy bandages because he sells tissues on the street, thats right he has to sell tissues in order to provide for himself and his friend. A different aspect of refugees is shown in this video, and that is the population of refugees that live outside of, or cannot get into, refugee camps. 

Clinton Global Initiative 2007: Angelina Jolie Makes Impassioned Plea for Refugees. Perf. Angelina Jolie. Youtube.com. .

Food in Refugee Camps

Malnutrition has become a serious concern within refugee camps. Officials are quickly discovering that an alarming amount of people within refugee camps are malnourished.

"According to UNHCR and World Food Programme (WFP) experts, 20 percent or more of the refugees are suffering from acute malnutrition in, refugee camps in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Chad. Lack of Vitamin B is a public health problem among refugees in countries like Nepal and Bangladesh. Meanwhile, more than 60 percent of the women and children in camps in Kenya and Algeria, who are highly dependent on food aid, are anaemic." (UNHCR)

This quote, taken form a UNHRC article shows just how wide spread the problem of malnutrition is in refugee camps. While some shortage of food is expected the fact that roughly twenty percent of refugees, within camps, are suffering from malnutrition was surprising to me. Especially when you think that a country decided to host these refugees. However, I think that this problem would be incredibly difficult to deal with as the number of refugees can continue to increase. Also, to relate back to a previous post, the host country must continue to provide for their own citizens 

However, to get back to the issue of malnutrition, I was surprised to find how high the percentage of people that were affected by this issue. One thing that I found interesting was that the amount of food aid given to refugee camps has dropped drastically in the last ten years. "Fifteen million tons of food aid were provided in 1999 and only 7.4 million in 2004... as you can see, food aid is falling." (UNHCR) This quote shows how the amount of food aid that organizations attempting help refugees has fallen drastically in the last few years. This is surprising to me because it means that anything from governments, to non-profit organizations have cut back on their support of refugee camps. The world needs to realize that refugee camps are not going anywhere fast, and something like malnutrition is a problem that could be quickly fixed, but so far less is being done, rather than more. 

"UNHCR - UN agencies highlight dangers of increasing malnutrition in refugee camps." UNHCR Welcome. 06 May 2009 .

Darfur

I chose to post this video to showcase a current refugee camp, in the form of the refugees from Darfur. This video shows the issues that arise in terms of what the leaders of communities have to deal with when moving their people into a refugee camp. Until I found this video it was not something that previously crossed my mind. I had never thought about what exactly happened when a group of people got the the camp, what types of things they had to think about, and how they went about making their temporary home. This video shows the leader of a group of refugees attempting to figure out how best he can take care of his people. 

Darfur Now. Dir. Ted Braun. Perf. Don Cheadle and George Clooney. Film. Cresendo Productions, 2007. Youtube.com. 13 Mar. 2009. 6 Mar. 2009 .

Space in a Refugee Camp

While refugee camps offer a safe haven for thousands of people who otherwise would have nowhere to go, there are some major problems with them. One serious issue becomes space, in  warm climate the recommenced space per person in three and a half meters. Think about that, three and a half meters in which you have to live. Three and a half meters to cook, sleep, and attempt to live your life as normally as possible. However in an emergency situation much larger groups of people can be crammed into a space roughly this size. When it comes to personal space, there is virtually none in a refugee camp. While your space is technically your own, some people even build their own shelters, everything is public. 

Personal space is not something known in the world of refugee camps. The main type of living environment is a tent, in which you may or may not have a stove to cook on. The stove depends on the type of environment, in a warm climate the stove is likely to be outside. In fact, consider yourself lucky if your stove it outside, because then you have roughly four to four and a half meters of space to live in. Imagine that, a bonus for an outdoor stove, an extra meter of space. It sounds ridiculous but in an area where the minimum space between two shelters is supposed to be two meters, this is a lot.

While refugee camps provide a needed place for prosecuted people to flee to, the conditions, in terms of space, in which they live is incredibly difficult. 

"CBC News In Depth: Anatomy of a refugee camp." CBC.ca - Canadian News Sports Entertainment Kids Docs Radio TV. 06 May 2009 .