A refugee is a person,
„who owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.“ (Art. 1, Geneva Convention on Refugees)
A description which sounds very abstract on the first sight. Because being a refugee means much more than just living in another country: It means beeing torn out of your familiar environment; It means to leave all the things behind which have always been near and dear to you; It means to be forced to abandon friends and family while having no guarantee to see them ever again; And it means to be confronted with an uncertain future and the inability to determine your own destiny.
Today’s World Refugee Day is dedicated to the about 40 million people worldwide, who currently are in such a situation. For the first time, this world day of migrants and refugees was proclaimed in 1914 by pope Benedikt XV. against the background of World War I. Since this year the World Refugee Day has been celebrated in many countries annualy, but the exact date of the exercises differed from region to region. In 2001, finally, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed June, 20th, to be the official World Refugee Day.
This day is supposed to honor the hopes, dreams and desires of all refugees – and, at the same time, to communicate that they won’t ever be forgotten. This year’s theme of the World Refugee Day is ‘real people, real needs’.
On betterplace.org you can help to fulfill the ‘real needs’ of many refugees worldwide. For example you have the possibility to support two projects of the German relief coalition „Aktion Deutschland Hilft“. The first project collects donations for refugees in Darfur(West-Sudan), where about 4 million people presently are in the need of supply by aid organisations. The second project is about helping refugees in Sri Lanka, who are forced to leave the hard-fought areas in the northeast and to move to southern regions.
The claim of both projects is to guarantee the availability of clean drinking water, to improve the sanitary state of things and to ensure primary health care.
But also those refugees, who already managed to move to another country, still have to face severe problems to accommodate themselves in the new environment. Namely they are confronted with language barriers, as well as the complicated and often grueling procedures to fulfill the requirements of the authorities. Furthermore they have to deal with a completely different culture while often beeing traumatized by the experciences in their home country. The human rights organization XENION in Berlin helps exactly these persons by initializing a mentoring programm. On betterplace.org you can support the work of XENION, too.