The Current State Of The Migrant Community
There are a
number of reasons why people choose to move from a particular country from
which they originate to a new country. The factors that cause people to
emigrate can be categorized into push factors and pull factors. Push factors
are those reasons that make people leave a particular area. These includes;
drought, poverty, war, high crime rates and lack of services. Pull factors on
the other hand are those reasons that motivate a person to move to a particular
country. These factors include; better opportunities, higher quality of life,
better services, political stability, good climate, less crime and better crop
yields. It is thanks to a combination of these pull and push factors that
migration usually occurs and has brought about the existence of the migrant community.
Though there are
a number of people who have the choice of moving permanently to a new place,
there is also another group of people that are forced to migrate. This is
especially the case in areas affected by war or famine. It is at this point
that refugees come into perspective. A refugee according to the United Nations
is “anyone who flees their home country due to a well-founded fear of being
persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a
particular social group or political opinion.” Refugees account for the largest
migrant community in the world.
Top 5 Migrant Communities In the world
Palestinians
The history of
Palestinian refugees dates back to the 1948 Palestine war where 700,000 Arabs
fled their areas of residence. Other than this, the Six day war of 1967 by
Israel where over 280,000 Palestinians fled. Another mass exodus by
Palestinians was during and after the Gulf war. It is thanks to the turmoil in
the region that there are 4.8 million Palestinian refugees.
Afghans
There are about
2.9 million Afghan refugees in the world today. This is the second largest
number of refugees after the Palestinians. There are four main waves that
contributed to the fleeing of refugees i.e. both legal and illegal and they
include:
The Soviet war
in Afghanistan (1978 – 89)
The Civil War
(1992 – 96)
The Taliban Rule
(1996 – 2001)
The Afghanistan
war (2001 and still ongoing)
Iraqis
With over 1.8
million refugees, Iraqi refugees account for the third largest refugee
population. This number has been gradually growing over the last thirty years.
This can be traced back from the Iran – Iraq war, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait
and the first Gulf War which generated hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Somalis
Fourth on the
list are the Somali refugees who are around 700,000 in number. Just like the
above mentioned refugees, the Somali refugees have also been largely generated
by civil strife and war.
Congolese
There are over
450,000 Congolese refugees today. The biggest contributor to this sad state of
affairs is like in the above instances war.
With the above, it is quite clear to see that
war is never the solution. Though this is the case, a lot of harm has already
been done and it is only best that we can help undo the pain that the migrant community lives with is by helping
in any way possible.
0 comments:
Post a Comment