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Australian Lutheran World Service Awareness Week 2007

Walking With Refugees

Discussion Starters

If the world’s refugee population shrunk to

100 people ….

If there were 100 people in

the world …

If there were 100 refugees in

the world …

61 would live in Asia 45 would live in Asia

13 would live in Africa 30 would live in Africa

12 would live in Europe 19 would live in Europe

5 would live in North America 5 would live in North America

8 would live in Latin America

and the Caribbean

0.5 would live in Latin America

and the Caribbean

1 would live in Oceania 0.5 would live in Oceania

Source: UNPF – The State of the World’s Population, 1997 and UNHCR 2002

Human Rights recognise that certain principles are true and valid for all peoples, in all

societies, under all conditions of economic, political, ethnic and cultural life. Human

rights are universal – they apply everywhere; invisible – in the sense that political and

civil rights cannot be separated from social and cultural rights; and inalienable – they

cannot be denied to any human being.

International Labour Office, International Organisation of Migration and the United Nations High Commission for

Human Rights, at the World Conference Against Racism

An African asylum seeker who has seen and lived though untold hardship, both in his homeland and

then in Australia waiting for a visa decision (without work permission and Medicare), was telling me how

he tries to cope emotionally. He said that when he is really down, when he cannot stop the thoughts in

his head and the pain in his heart over what is happening to him. Then he tries to get some money to

buy some brand new clothes. Sometimes he will go without food. He will borrow and beg to get the

money. He feels if he wears new things, it’s like shedding his old skin and getting a new skin. This new

skin does not have memory of the pain and sorrow that soaked through the old things. He can start

anew. “I would never wear the clothing with somebody else’s sorrow. That’s like bad luck. Maybe your

body will soak up the sadness in the other person’s clothes. Then your own sadness will get even worse.

All I need is a new skin. Then life will get better.”

Gabby Heuft

Refugee Claimants Support Centre, Brisbane

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"Resettlement Does Not Extinguish Refugees' Right to Return Home" GENEVA, 16 November 2006 - The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) welcomes

recent indications by several countries of openness to receiving Bhutanese refugees

for resettlement, but stresses that resettlement does not exclude repatriation to

Bhutan.

"The LWF would … like to underline that acceptance of third country resettlement

does not extinguish the refugees' right to return to the homes in Bhutan from which

they were obliged to flee," LWF General Secretary, Rev. Dr Ishmael Noko says in a

statement issued, 16 November.

The LWF Department for World Service (DWS) program in Nepal has been

supporting over 100,000 refugees from Bhutan in refugee camps in eastern Nepal for

more than 15 years. In accordance with the refugees' expressed wishes, the LWF has

consistently pushed for their repatriation to Bhutan. The Government of Bhutan,

however, has so far failed to accept any of the refugees back.

“The world is like a table. Twenty percent live on the table and eighty percent

survive underneath it. Our work cannot be to move a few from under the table onto

the table, or vice versa. Our task is to move the table, to change its position if

necessary, and all to sit together around the table.”

Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti Source: 80:20 Development in an Unequal World, P 5

Source: 80:20 Development in an Unequal World P5

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Source: 80:20 Development in n Unequal World P237

Source: 80:20 Development in an Unequal World P132

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“Refugees are not born but are created by states, individuals and groups.” Sadako Ogato, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

Hassan Lamungu had never seen a laundromat before. He knew he must first put his clothes into

the washing machine. So he did that. Add quarters into the coin slot. So he did that too. Then he

stepped back, waiting.

Nothing happened. Someone finally had to point out that he should press the little button that

said, "Start." Lamungu looked confused. "Why?" he asked. "They told me it was an automatic

washing machine”.

To a Somali refugee from a world away, there are some things about the United States that aren't

what they're cracked up to be. But for the most part, Lamungu's new home country has exceeded

his wildest expectations.

Less than a month ago, the 42-year-old Somali Bantu refugee and his eight family members

stepped off an airplane at Phoenix International Airport. The journey from war-torn Somalia,

through a decade of being held up in Kenya's squalid refugee camps, was finally over. A new life

began.

Stephan Lovgren for National Geographic News, June 2003

Gifts from rich highlight plight of world's poor

By Ana Nicolaci da CostaWed Nov 29, 11:04 AM ET

Huge gifts to charity from U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett and others have won widespread praise, but some say the same economic process that helped earn those fortunes is leaving billions more in dire poverty. Buffett pledged to give away a mammoth $37 billion of his fortune -- more than most African countries' GDP estimates for this year -- the bulk of which will go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

But the size of the gift also highlights growing inequality in the distribution of wealth, even as world economic output doubled in the last 10 years. "The way we have proceeded with globalization has exacerbated the inequalities because it has been very asymmetric," said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist and professor at Columbia University in New York. "Capital moves more freely than labour and that means that the bargaining position of workers is disadvantaged relative to capital."

Analysts say the huge numbers of workers coming into the market through globalization in China and India have driven down wages in rich countries by making their workforce compete with much cheaper labour elsewhere. At the same time, the upside for wages in poor countries is capped by an infinite pool of labour to choose from.

This helps explain the numbers in the 2005 U.N. Hum an Development Report, which show the richest 50 individuals in the world have a combined income greater than that of the poorest 416 million and that the unequal distribution of income worsened wi thin many countries in the last 20 years.