This week marks the annual awareness-raising Refugee Week, a week which celebrates the incredible contribution made by refugees and their families to the social, cultural and economic fabric of the UK. A whole host of artistic, cultural and educational events are being held across the country this week to help improve our understanding of refugees and asylum seekers, and I would strongly recommend that you take the time to attend one in your local community. I thought I would use this month’s column to reflect on the situation experienced by refugees here in the UK and internationally.
After decades of decline, the number of refugees has escalated in recent years, with over 68 million people displaced around the world today. Tragically, the global number of refugees is larger than the entire population of the UK. Within Asia and the Pacific alone, there are 7.7 million people of concern to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), a figure fuelled by the ethnic cleansing and genocide perpetrated within Myanmar by its military.
After decades of discrimination and religious persecution, the Rohingya people were forcibly removed from an area they have called home for generations. Thankfully, Bangladesh has stepped up to the task with great determination and decisiveness, offering shelter and aid to well over a million refugees as part of its humanitarian response. Having travelled to Cox’s Bazar to see the refugee camps during the initial crisis, I have seen how they live and the great strength they have shown in the face of overwhelming adversity.
The UK and intergovernmental organisations such as the UN Refugee Agency have also displayed remarkable leadership and generosity to the Rohingya people, though we must now hold the military of Myanmar to account. The international community must bring greater pressure to bear on the Myanmar government, led by the de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, for the crimes against humanity which have been committed under her watch.
Successive UK governments have often proven to be among the world’s most generous in providing emergency aid to refugees, and the Department for International Development (DFID) is one of the most respected and ambitious in its field. As a member of the International Development Committee in Parliament, our role is to scrutinise DFID and the aid industry, ensuring that international aid is spent effectively. While we believe that DFID is performing well, the UK’s response to refugee crises is often too piecemeal and short-sighted and we must do much more to alleviate their plight in the longer-term. When refugees such as Rohingya are unable to return home, countries such as ours must take the lead and grant more refugees the right to live here.
We must lead by example. We cannot ask poor or middle-income host countries to give asylum seekers the right to work when we ourselves prohibit this basic right. Tens of thousands of asylum seekers living in the UK receive just £37.75 a week in which to survive. After all that they have gone through, this paltry sum forces even greater indignity upon people who have fought tremendous adversity just to make it here. Suffering must not be allowed to continue in their sanctuary.
