(NC)For some people who flee their country, rejection of their refugee claim will mean they are sent home to be arbitrarily imprisoned, tortured or killed.
Sadly, there is a growing tendency
for many governments to cut off
refugee protection. Demanding visas, indiscriminately jailing refugees
at border points, withholding legal
aid or social assistance, providing
sub-standard legal proceedings for deciding refugee claims, negotiating international agreements to block refugee access to whole areas of the world these practices are becoming more common internationally.
These barriers are being created despite the fact that most countries have signed the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, an agreement that states that people who leave their countries to escape human rights abuses have the right to be safe.
Refugees usually do not want to leave their homeland they are running from the horror they're leaving behind. A person becomes a refugee when they flee from individuals or conditions that threaten their basic human rights.
The violations that cause people to become refugees take many forms:
Individuals who are active politically or socially may be targeted by their governments or other powerful groups if they are seen as a threat to power. Working as a journalist or a professor, denouncing human rights abuses can make you a target for persecution.
Whole communities may be targeted for persecution, often in the context
of war. The Kurds in Iraq or Tamil villagers in Sri Lanka who fled ethnically-based human rights abuses are examples.
People may flee simply because society will not allow them to be themselves. People may be forbidden to worship as they want to, persecuted for their sexual orientation or be targeted because of another "identity".
Women and girls are sometimes the victims of human rights abuses solely because of their gender. They may face discriminatory practices such as female genital mutilation, honour killings and forced marriage.
Many people become refugees because perpetrators commit abuses with impunity they go unpunished for their crimes. At times when the state is unwilling or unable to protect its citizens from human rights abuses, many citizens flee and become refugees.
Members of the worldwide human rights organization Amnesty International hold countries to their responsibility to make the right decision about each refugee's need for protection. In Canada, Amnesty's Refugee Network provides assistance to refugees at risk of being deported to a country where they face possible arbitrarily imprisonment, torture or death.
For a free information package about Amnesty's refugee work, please write to Amnesty International, 312 Laurier Ave East, Suite 200, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 1H9 or call us at 1-800-AMNESTY (266-3789) or visit www.amnesty.ca.
- News Canada
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News Canada