REFUGEE CRISIS

Why India is home to millions of refugees but doesn’t have a policy for them...

Every minute, around 20 people are forcibly displaced from their homes around the world — by war, persecution, genocide, terror, hunger, poverty, or climate-induced droughts.

Who is a refugee?

The United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention states that a refugee is one who has fled her or his home and country due to a “well-founded fear of persecution because of her or his race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion”.

Millions have undertaken treacherous journeys by road and sea in search of liveable conditions. And to raise awareness and educate people about this looming refugee crisis, the United Nations has been observing 20 June as World Refugee Day each year since 2000.

' Step with refugees: Take a step on World Refugee Day '

Most South Asian countries, including India, do not have a national, regional, or international policy for the protection of refugees. They also haven’t officially disclosed why there is no policy.

Over the past decades, though, many reasons have been inferred towards this peculiar South Asian behavior. For instance, India’s reluctance to accept refugees could be attributed to the international community’s response to its call for assistance while dealing with lakhs of people who had arrived here after fleeing Bangladesh in 1971. India hosts 1999 37 refugees and 5074 Asylum seekers .the UN Refugee agency assists around 24000 refugees across India 11500 Afghan 9000 Rohingya s700 Somalian.

Some of the common problems that every Refugee's faces are

1. this government didn't provide anything to them 

2. a language barrier 

3. government do not give education to the refugee children 

4. government does not provide proper electricity and water to the refugees.

most common problems are regarding security, education, and health.

Although India is a democratic country everyone can live the way they want. Refugees cannot even return back to their countries because of the various problems they will face and even because of the assured death .What everyone wants is peaceful life in the end.

Indian laws and policies have often appeared haphazard. On the one hand, the country experienced profound levels of forced migration during the 20th century, as people fled violence up to, during, and after partition with its South Asian neighbors, and it continues to be a safe haven for many migrants. However, India does not have a domestic law for asylum management. Thus, the government’s management of the estimated 250,000 current refugees and asylum seekers has been ad hoc, leaving many vulnerable to poverty and neglect. Denied access to much government-issued documentation, these humanitarian migrants are often excluded from formal systems for socioeconomic inclusion and can fall into the margins of society, affecting not only themselves but future generations.

India’s internal migrants, who travel from less-developed regions to larger, industrialized towns and cities in search of better lives, are often no better off. According to the most recent census, in 2011, India had 456 million of these migrants, amounting to roughly one-third of its population. Despite being Indian citizens, many find that crossing a state border puts them in a condition on par with international refugees since they often end up without a social protection net at the destination.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a serious economic impact on the global population

India’s lockdown is one of the world’s largest and strictest, and its impact has been devastating, particularly on more vulnerable groups such as asylum seekers and refugees who have lost their livelihoods and struggled to sustain themselves.

 Measures implemented by India with respect to refugees and migrants 

To mitigate the impact of the pandemic, the Indian government has implemented a slew of measures, including declaring masks and sanitizers as essential commodities; stepping up its contact-tracing and testing efforts; permitting private labs to conduct testing; announcing a relief package to address the immediate needs of the poor and others in need of urgent assistance. 

Though the lockdown has affected almost all citizens to varying degrees, migrant workers have emerged as among the most impacted. Stranded in bigger cities with no livelihoods in the absence of economic activity, many were left with no choice but to attempt reverse migration. However, with fears of this exodus leading to the uncontrollable spread of the virus into the interior of the country, the government acted swiftly to curtail this, and most of those unable to return home were placed in temporary shelter facilities by various state governments in India. The central government also set up hunger centers and initiated a migrant mapping protocol to make relief measures accessible to them. More recently, the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of India has been invoked in matters relating to the provision of basic amenities, payment of minimum wages to workers, and ensuring that people covered by the government’s flagship healthcare scheme were able to access free COVID-19 testing at private labs. However, despite all these measures, the plight of refugees remains the same, as they continue to be excluded from mainstream systems and do not have access to any of these benefits.