2020 has been a challenging year for the state of refugees. UNHCR has reported record numbers of displaced people around the world and has logged 14 emergencies. Since 2011 there has been a sharp increase in people fleeing very precarious environments. In 2020, we surpassed the mark of 80 million forcibly displaced people. Refugees are in dire need of help more than ever before, as hardships do not seem to have an end in sight. Here is the review of how 2020 has impacted refugees and the most important events in the annual timeline of mass displacement.
March: The Covid-19 pandemic.
The advent of the global pandemic has disproportionately affected refugees making it a ‘crisis within a crisis’. Covid-19 was surprisingly contained with extreme efforts in refugee camps around the world. However, keeping camps covid-free has meant that most of the already minuscule resources are spent on containment efforts to the detriment of other services. Additionally, to ward off the virus most camps had to further isolate themselves to the dismay of their residents that already live in social exile.
Refugees displaced outside ‘official camps’ and into urban areas have also been negatively affected by lockdowns stripping them of the means of making a living in the informal economy, whilst they are further burdened by the fact that in a lot of hosting countries they do not fully qualify for access to healthcare or relief packages. Living outside UNHCR camps also means that international aid might never reach them.
Considering that there is an urgent need to curb the spread of the virus, many states like Jordan and Portugal reconsidered their policies and implemented ad-hoc solutions to include displaced people, asylum seekers, and undocumented migrants in their wider public health strategy. Given that the refugees will remain after the pandemic ends, states need to take lessons and move towards ensuring greater access to healthcare for all residents within their country.
August: The Channel Crisis
The UK has entangled itself in the throes of Brexit. At the same time, the government of Boris Johnson is constituted by a cabinet full of anti-migration reactionaries, making the UK one of the most hostile countries for asylum seekers. In August small dinghies tried to cross the channel from Calais and Dunkirk into Dover but were met with pushbacks while BBC cameras were filming the events taking place. The ‘channel crisis’ was sensationalized in the media, with the likes of Daily Mail implying that it’s an ‘invasion by the sea’. The UK maintains one of the strictest border regimes in the world and has taken in some of the lowest numbers of asylum seekers or refugees in Europe.
International legal frameworks prescribe the right to applying for asylum as an obligation of all countries, hence, the UK has resorted to a strategy of making Britain a no-go zone for asylum seekers in the first place. Increasing numbers of people trying to reach the UK have resorted to paying people’s smugglers which has severely compromised their safety. In October, the tragic deaths of an Iranian family were reported while they tried to cross the channel after their smuggler capsized their boat. Later in December, two smugglers were convicted for the death of 39 Vietnamese migrants who died of suffocation in the back of a lorry.
September: The Burning of Moria Refugee Camp.
In September Europe’s largest refugee camp was burned to the ground, leaving thousands of people homeless. The camp was already beyond capacity and the means of maintaining hygiene and social distancing almost nonexistent, despite the extreme efforts of self-organized refugee groups to help their community in these dire times. Some offers for resettlement were made to minors but overall the government decided to “re-house” most refugees in a new camp. Moria 2.0 is touted as a ‘temporary solution’, but it lacks even the most basic facilities and refugees have to live in raggedy UNHCR tents in the middle of the winter. Reports have published videos of the new camp tents being flooded with mud and rainwater.
November: The Ethiopian Refugee Crisis.
Most displacement crises are still active and unresolved, but in November one more was added to the list. The Ethiopian government was locked into combat with separatist forces in the North-Western Tigray region causing the displacement of thousands who have fled into Sudan. Sudan is already hosting huge numbers of refugees and it has been the epicenter of an ongoing political crisis. Therefore, the Ethiopian refugees fleeing across the border won’t be able to sustain themselves for a long time under these conditions.
December: The ICRC Mental Health Report.
In December an ICRC report described the situation in Greece as a ‘mental health crisis’. Years of displacement have taken a severe toll on refugees and asylum seekers that already have to scramble for the basics and have little to no access to social services and psychological support. Many of whom have been victims of extreme abuses, either in their country, en-route to Europe, or in protracted displacement in Greece. As the report describes based on thousand of interviews with refugees in Lesvos island ‘one in three have contemplated suicide’.
December: The Rohingya Crisis.
The Rohingya crisis has been an ongoing situation that has received very little attention from the international community. But in December the government of Bangladesh went ahead with its plans to move the displaced Rohingya population to camps in remote islands in the Bengali gulf, essentially cutting them off from the rest of the country. As of December 29, they already moved 2,000 refugees to the Bhasan Char island. The unjust incarceration of refugees in remote and underdeveloped locations is not new. This practice is known as ‘warehousing’. Australia is also guilty of this practice by incarcerating asylum seekers for years on end in Nauru island and has come under fire for its abusive detention practices.
Throughout the Year: Immigration Detention.
Lastly, the detention of refugees and asylum seekers for no criminal offenses has been essentially overlooked, albeit intensified throughout 2020. In the US, UK, Australia, Libya migrants and asylum seekers undergo gross abuses. The latest scandal is the forced sterilization of female detainees in ICE facilities in the US. Detention based on ‘immigration offenses’ is an inhumane practice and completely uncalled for as it goes against basic human rights such as the right to claim asylum and having your application processed in a fair and transparent manner.
What to look for in 2021.
The year 2020 signaled the deterioration of asylum and the living conditions for refugees worldwide. States taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic and the need for limiting cross-border movement, have engaged in more aggressive push backs and policies that result in isolating refugees from the wider community and state support. In 2021 we will need to push against the normalization of the subpar standards with which we have responded to the refugee crises around the world. It is also time to move away from ‘ad-hoc’ solutions and treat the refugee issues as a matter of community development where we can all contribute to and benefit from incorporating people with potential into our communities instead of having them languishing away in social exile.
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