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World Refugee Day
Vol. 33 No. 6 DHIL-QAIDA 1440 JULY 2019
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THE United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), in its "Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018" indicates the following: ‘The global population of forcibly displaced increased by 2,3 million people in 2018. By the end of the year, almost 70,8 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations. As a result, the world’s forcibly displaced population remained yet again at a record high.’
The statistics are mind-boggling. The numbers, at a very basic level, speak of the myth of a world increasing in prosperity for all. It is a lie bandied about by the super-rich and powerful elites of the world, who have at their disposal weapons, economies, media and an inglorious queue of academics who churn out the nonsense of rising prosperity for everyone under the ‘miracle’ of neoliberal economics.
The importance of these ‘academics for hire’ as they have been derisively named is that they create a taken-for-granted set of ideas in society, taken up by journalists who know no better, and news editors hungry for ‘experts’ to peddle their sophisticated lies to most of us who want, and need, to make sense of an increasingly complex world.
And so it is vital that we consider World Refugee Day (which was on June 20) not as a one-off event. We need to think through our approach. How do we come to understand what a ‘refugee’ is? What are we told to love or fear about ‘refugees’? Are they like us? Are they not like us? Do they deserve compassion or are there other humans who are more deserving of our compassion? These questions are crucial for us to think through. Slavoj Zizek, noted and (in)famous philosopher, tells us that we need to respect people irrespective of difference or similarity. That respect comes from a recognition that we are human only insofar as we act humanely. If we act towards ‘refugees’ as if they are ‘not of us’, we are letting go of our humanness. Think hard, and then turn to pages 20 and 21 for a series of articles about some of the 70,8 million of Allah’s creation who face incredible challenges in postapartheid South Africa.
