Undiscovered Country. Shelter from the storm?

If you read the newspapers you will have confronted the massive refugee crisis in Syria. Angela Merkel’s brave declaration that Germany will absorb almost a million refugees has dominated headlines across the world. What the headlines don’t say, unfortunately, is that the vast majority of the 15 million refugees worldwide are hosted by developing countries, usually the most stable one across the border from where the refugees are fleeing. This makes sense, but in the news of war and horror, we are rarely made aware that both Turkey and Pakistan host more than 1.5 million refugees each, fleeing from wars in Syria and Afghanistan. Even a country as tiny as Lebanon, with a population of less than five million, hosts an additional million refugees, while Iran, considerably bigger at 77 million, shelters around a million people from the surrounding war-torn countries.

Though India is not in the top 10 countries offering shelter, it is home to approximately two lakh refugees, and that is primarily because we are, thankfully, not surrounded by countries tearing themselves apart (although, until a year ago, Sri Lanka qualified). The two largest nationalities we have given shelter to are from the Tibetan region — with over one lakh refugees — and Sri Lanka, with 65,000. India also plays host to a number of people from Afghanistan due to age-old cultural ties with the nation. A little more than 10,000 Afghans have found themselves in India, with many of them finally settling in a third country.

A recent Afghan refugee was Noorzia Atmar. You would not have heard of her as a guest of our country, but you may have heard of her as one of the first women elected to the Afghan parliament in 2005, following the overthrow of the Taliban. There were few stronger symbols of the country’s liberation from the regressive Taliban rule than this woman in her thirties, who, though not coming from the cosmopolitan, globetrotting class of the Kabul elite, had triumphed in politics. Unfortunately, overthrowing the Taliban was easier than overthrowing the mindset of the male-dominated society. In 2010, Atmar lost her re-election bid, and soon thereafter her husband started physically abusing her. A courageous woman, Atmar filed for, and received, a divorce in 2013. Unfortunately, this made her a social outcast. Even Atmar’s own family boycotted her.

When Atmar turned to international diplomatic missions for help, they refused. The embassy of one European country, which had been a major cheerleader of the Afghan war, insinuated that if they provided help to women suffering domestic abuse, then they would have to shelter an uncountable number. In desperation, Atmar fled to India, hiding her whereabouts from her own and her husband’s families. The journey to India should have been a shelter from the storm. Sadly, it was not.

Despite being a welcoming host, India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Nor does it have a domestic law on refugees. If you arrive in India as a refugee, you are on your own. If you are lucky, you will find your way to Delhi, which is the only place where you can apply to be recognised as a refugee at the UNHCR offices. But to be recognised as one, you have to go through a difficult and opaque process, which may take months of paperwork. And during that time you have to survive on your own, with no means of income, with no country to call home, and with nobody to help you. Many of the refugees fleeing to India are, like Atmar, traumatised either by war, or other forms of violence. They are anyway not at their best, and this bewildering process is often more than they can deal with.

Luckily for Atmar, just two years before she fled home, a group of young women lawyers had set up The Ara Trust to provide legal help and counselling for refugees. Roshni Shanker, a former UNHCR lawyer and founder of the Trust, had explained the challenges to me in 2013, and also how the flow of Afghan refugees had increased due to violence that had spiralled out of control. Intimately familiar with the UNHCR’s inner workings, Shanker and her friends work with hundreds of displaced people every year to help them get recognition and find safe harbour. Atmar’s case was referred to Ara Trust, and she recently received both recognition and resettlement in a third country. In her case a victory was won, but in too many cases such battles are lost, because nobody knows, nobody cares, and we continue with our lives without a second thought for the tragedies that surround us on all sides.

@OmairTAhmad

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