Refugee camps Archives

Who are the lost children? I read again with no little horror the story published in The Observer ‘The Long Walk to Europe’. The facts given do not bring home the pain and loss that the children have suffered – the loss of homes due to war, the building depression and finally the journey to try and find a refuge of safety.

Caroline Brother’s fictional account about two brothers escaping the turmoil of war and a country in turmoil is no less real, but does bring home the plight of ‘The Lost Children’.

On the 26 June, I watched a history programme about the USA, and how so much of its history has been re-written to suit political purposes (as indeed in so many other countries). However, what I really found interesting was the cameo about the Statue of Liberty. How it was in another guise meant for the Middle East, and because the cost was extortionate, it was redesigned for the West – the USA.

But whilst it initially started its career in the USA as a political reminder to the USA of France’s involvement in the USA’s independence, by the writing of one poem (…The New Colossus …) with the phrase

… “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”… Emma Lazarus

which then ended up on a plaque beneath the statue and became symbolic for refugees looking for freedom, fleeing tyranny, and looking for freedom – this statue was their first sight of the land of freedom (USA) Statue of Liberty, Liberty Island, New York City, New York, U.S.

You may think this a detail, but it is not. The youths fleeing the warzones in the Middle East and elsewhere are looking for a place of refuge, and with so many countries having economic problems (and now Corona Virus as well) and being under financial constraints, the doors to refugees are being shut.

Repeated governments from so many countries profess ‘that they are doing everything they can’, but fundamentally leaving so much of the work to charities, who depend on private individuals’ generosity, is not dealing with the problem. And in all humanity, you cannot send these children back because what is there for them to go back to?

We need a coherent, global policy that enables these disposed to be housed, educated, integrated and along with the youth in our own countries they deserve a fair and developed hope of work.