10 May 2021, NIICE Commentary 7021
Dr. Devika Sharma
About 86 per cent of the world’s refugees are hosted by the Global South due to a process of systematic exclusion pursued by the developed North. Inspite of limited resources, the global South is sheltering refugees, whereas the Global North is building fences around their regions to ward off refugees.
The percentage of refugees is increasing in the Global South, as a result of strategies directed at externalizing refugees adopted by the developed North and is not mere coincidence. The International Organisation for Migration has declared that more than 25,000 migrants have lost their lives in trying to reach or settle in Europe since the year 2000. Some sections of the political elite in the Global North have tried to instigate xenophobic sentiments and demonize refugees by holding them responsible for endangering the unity and cohesion of their societies, intensifying the strain on their resources and competing with the local population for jobs. The harsh reality is that more than such helpless people actually wasting the scarce resources of host countries; it is the anti-immigration policies enforced by the Global North leading to strict border controls that costs the exchequer billions and ironically still fail to check irregular migration. On the contrary, such crafty strategies exacerbate the risk of smuggling and human trafficking. The deliberate designs of the so called “liberal democratic” Global North of shutting out people from the Global South is a manifestation of global apartheid in a new avatar. Little do these developed countries realize that their economies thrive on the resources and labour of persons from developing countries. Not only that, compelling refugees to stay where they are by not allowing them entry into their countries, the Global North is violating its own liberal principles of freedom of movement and inter-mingling of cultures apart from refugee and human rights conventions. Far from responding to the humanitarian impulses of accepting forcibly displaced people, some countries like the UK, Australia and even the USA have set up immigration detention centres where refugees are detained as being potential dangers to the host societies, without having any proof of their involvement in any illegal activity. In fact, the UK Home Office has outsourced this task to private firms which run illegal detention centres for immigrants, this mushrooming business has been thriving and profiteering out of the miseries of forcibly displaced persons. While the Global North tells the tale of cruel immigration rules, the buck of sheltering and protection of refugees has been passed on to the Global South which is ill equipped to handle the refugee crises, given its scarce resources. However, these resource constraints have not deterred the Global South from shouldering this disproportionate share of the responsibility.
The present is characterized by a paradoxical situation, while one can witness a historical high in the global refugee population, resettlement of international refugees and voluntary repatriation are at their lowest ebb in a decade. According to the World Migration Report 2020, the population of refugees is 25.9 million. As per Amnesty International, half of the world’s refugees are children. The geographical spread of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) brings to the fore the fact that forced displacement is a feature of the Global South. According to the UNHCR statistics, the major countries hosting refugees are situated near the sites of conflict in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In Sub-Saharan Africa, refugees escaping violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia and South Sudan settle down in neighbouring countries like Uganda, Sudan and Kenya. In Asia, refugees fleeing the conflict in Afghanistan live in Iran and Pakistan. Those escaping political violence in the Middle East settle in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. In sum, refugees escaping violence and persecution in their home states find shelter in their neighbourhood and most of these countries are situated in the Global South.
The prosperous nations of the Global North have not done enough to fulfill their obligation towards providing shelter and protection to people who have escaped persecution and violence or have been forcefully displaced. Multiculturalism too, does not appear to be a global value, further resulting in an unwelcome attitude towards migrants and refugees in the developed North. Resource-rich countries and the ones which were granting the most asylum are reversing their roles. This brings to light the fact that the refugee crisis is localized to the south, thus, implying that those who are least equipped to shoulder the responsibility are compelled to bear the burden.
There is a need for more rationalization in the division of the responsibility between developing and developed countries to achieve the shared goal through international policies such as the UN Global Compact on Refugees. However, it is disappointing that the affluent states far from displaying a spirit of solidarity with the Global South to meet this challenge, frame policies that will prevent people from seeking refuge in their territories and passing on the buck to nearby countries to protect people who have fled from their countries to save their lives. Myopic policies like these are compelling vulnerable people to undertake risky journeys by the land and sea routes endangering their lives and laying the ground for human rights violations.
The lack of intent of the Global North to give shelter to refugees has engendered strategies which are directed at keeping forcibly displaced people confined to the Global South, including providing financial assistance to developing countries which grant shelter to refugees. Countries in the Global South are attracting external financial support, encouraging rent seeking on their part in order to continue giving refuge to displaced persons within their territories. The practice of seeking rent to host refugees gathered momentum in the backdrop of the Syrian refugee crisis. Several “mobility partnerships” between Morocco, Tunisia and Jordan on the one hand and the EU on the other were entered into. Such policies translate into short-term stop gap arrangements rather than durable solutions. The resource crunch faced by the countries of the Global South leads to measures on their part which emphasize on the subsistence needs of the refugees and thereby turning a blind eye to requirements which are crucial to ensuring stability in the long run. In case these nations’ attention remains concentrated on meeting the basic needs of refugees, without devising mechanisms for raising the living standards of the refugees, the cycle of poverty continues endlessly. Successful refugee management in the nations of the Global South necessitates laying down unambiguous policy priorities that are attainable enabling governments to channelize their scarce resources in the most effective manner.
All these points highlight the fact that the general trend of overemphasizing Global South- North migration flows amounts to a distortion of the spatial features of international forced displacement. There is a need to look beyond the biased Northern perspectives on forced migration and to realize the empirical realities of forced migration in the Global South, which has been and continues to be a safe haven for refugees and there is an upward trend of migrants within and between the Global South.
