Refugees

Why do refugees risk everything?

A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee their home country because of war, violence, or persecution, and has crossed an international border to seek safety.

There are any number of reasons why we tend to regard refugees as unwanted in our so-called advantageous societies; they may be seen as a drag on our resources, as people who take our jobs, and who some politicians try to convince us are all criminals, rapists, and murderers. Despite all this, they leave their homes and risk everything. Almost 3/4 of the world population lives under despotic, authoritarian, or autocratic leadership. (Democracy Report 2026, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. ) This is the basic reason triggering people to leave those countries, often by any means. There are 117 million refugees in the world today, or one in every seventy or all peoples. Leaders in autocratic nations often try to convince their citizens that their tribe or ethnicity is threatened by the outside world, and they are their saviours. Some in Africa even flee and join ISIS’s as they unknowingly believe that it will give them more stability than remaining where they are. (In Africa, where many flee, it is to join Boko Haram, which is in allegiance with ISIS.)

 We all tend to feel loyalty to our group, our tribe; it is the basic cause of most wars.  All animals group themselves together with their own species. Even chickens are tribal; when we introduce new chickens into the group, the original chickens (tribe) try to keep the newcomers from leaving the pen to go out into the yard. They even appoint a chicken to guard the door to prevent the newcomers from getting out. It takes several days before they intermingle and allow the newcomers to join the tribe.

 Refugees leave to escape extreme poverty, even starvation. They flee for many reasons, including warfare, political oppression, ethnic cleansing, systematic terror, even when staying home may mean facing imminent death or imprisonment.  They flee from destitution, environmental disasters, and seek physical safety, the rule of law, but overall to have a real chance in life for themselves, and especially for their children.  They may walk hundreds or even thousands of miles, facing all kinds of danger. They cross seas in tiny, overcrowded inflatable boats.  In 2025, there were a total of 2185 recorded drownings of refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe, and many more drowned crossing the English Channel. ( These are the recorded deaths; many other deaths probably went unrecorded. )  Recently, I spoke to an Uber driver and discovered that he had left Ethiopia as a refugee.  He was in a group who spent three weeks crossing a desert. Two females in the group, due to overwhelming thirst, drank from a contaminated water source, and they died. 

 In Sudan since 2003, Arab Muslim groups known as the Janjaweed have been targeting largely black ethnic, agriculturist villages and communities, mainly the Masalit and Zahrawa tribes. They have systematically murdered  the men, sexually assaulted and raped the women and children, some of whom are as young as one year old. They have sold many of the women and children into slavery ( there is no prohibition in the 1991 Criminal Code in Sudan against Slavery ). They burn their crops and steal their animals. This situation has worsened in the last three years due to a civil war in the country. Some estimate that up to six million have been murdered. 4.5 million have sought refuge in neighbouring countries, and nine million have been internally displaced.  Many of the countries they have fled to are themselves already suffering  from low food resources and internal conflicts. These countries  include Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, Kenya, and Uganda.  Many of those who have not fled to other countries have sought refuge in camps in Sudan itself.  In the Darfur region of Sudan, there are camps run by the United Nations Commission for Refugees. The largest camp, Zanzam, houses over half a million refugees.  It has been beset by catastrophic  conditions, including famines, lack of clean water, poor sanitation, and a severely strained medical system; the  rate of infant mortality is unacceptably high.  Even this camp is not physically safe; it has been attacked by rebel forces, who have killed hundreds, and they have destroyed homes, markets, and even health facilities.

 In South Sudan, a separate country, conditions are not dissimilar to those in Sudan. There has been fighting between  government and opposition forces, and as in Sudan, mass displacement of people. In Africa as a whole, 45.7 million people have been displaced by violence and persecution. 		

 In Asia, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan has triggered one of the highest exodus of refugees. 40 years of armed conflict, economic collapse, widespread hunger, and the stripping of human rights have spurred this exodus. Women have been denied secondary education, they may not leave the houses unless fully covered in a Burka, and even their voices may not even be heard in public. The Taliban government is a follower of Wahhabism, a theology that has become widespread in the Islamic world.  ( Wahhabism is an ideology based on feudal tribal life in the 5th and 6th centuries, at the time of Muhammad. )

In Myanmar, over a million Rohingya Muslims have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh to escape persecution by the illegal military junta. Bangladesh is itself a very poor country. In Syria, over 4 million have fled the country. Approximately 580,000 people were killed under the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad. Many of those were tortured to death. There has recently been a regime change in Syria. Bashar al-Assad has fled to Russia. Hopefully, the conditions in Syria will improve under the new regime.

The countries that have accepted the highest number of refugees are Iran ( 3.5 million), Turkey ( 2.9 million), Germany ( 2.7 million), Uganda ( 1.8 million), and Pakistan ( 1.6 million). By percentage of population, the most refugees have been received by Lebanon, Colombia, the Czech Republic, and Jordan. The U.S., which used to be a huge recipient of refugees, in 2026 has limited itself to almost only receiving white refugees from South Africa. Only 5 non-Whites from Afghanistan have been accepted.

 A large percentage of refugees from Central America and Mexico are being driven from their homes by the drug cartels, which play a huge role in their countries. The cartels only exist because of the irresponsible war on drugs in the US, and the huge profits to be made by selling drugs there.  Cartels control much of the administration in some of the countries, including the police, the judiciary, and the administration. Those approached to join the cartel are given one choice, “the bullet or the bribe.”  Children are driven into the arms of the cartels by poverty and intimidation; cartels often threaten to kill them and their whole family if they don’t agree to join. Children are forced to be lookouts, drug couriers, and gunmen for the cartels. Cartels exist in almost every country in Central America and the neighbouring countries of Mexico and Colombia, though they are less influential in some. 

Refugees from Central and South America make their way up to the U.S. border in a variety of ways. Most travel hundreds of miles on foot; others risk their lives by travelling on the roofs of freight trains; one slip can mean sudden death. Refugees coming from countries south of Colombia, who lack the legal or financial means to fly directly to Central America, countries which include Venezuela, Ecuador, and Haiti, and also some global migrants who fly into South America first, where entry rules are loose, these include from China, all must cross the Darien Gap on foot, as there are no roads. It is a mountainous area, with almost constant rain, thick mud, flash floods, disease, high temperatures, and humidity. In addition, armed gangs and cartels systemically extort, rob, and tax travellers. Sexual assaults and rapes are also common. To cross the Darien Gap can take anywhere between five and fourteen days. Over half a million people crossed the Darien Gap in 2024. Those who employ guides or smugglers and are able to pay exorbitant rates have the easiest passages.

In order to be comfortable, refugees, particularly those struggling with a foreign language, have settled in areas populated by their brethren, and have continued with the misaligned tribal values from which they have fled. They have continued to wear the clothing and they carry objects to identify their religion or tribe. In my opinion, religion should be in the heart and mind, rather than in its ritual attires and artifacts. In Islamic culture, the Hijab (headscarf) and Abaya (total body clothing) are worn as a sign of modesty; men are expected to lower their gaze from female forms, as a sign of modesty. Sikhs wear their Kirpans (daggers), uncut hair, and turbans as a sign of military superiority over the Hindus in their homeland in India. Christians carry their crosses to identify their membership in the supposedly superior Christian faith, and Jews wear their Yamulkes (skullcaps) to do the same. They all feel that their clothing and artifacts give them their identity.

In France and in Quebec, there has been a government-integrated policy of civic and language training. In government schools, no religious clothing or other objects may be worn or carried; the same rule goes for all government employees in positions of authority. Students in France following these rules have had better academic success; there has been a 7.8% increase in graduation by Muslim girls. The policy in Quebec has not yet been quantified. These policies have been attacked from all sides as signs of overreaching by the government, and they are having difficulty being accepted by the first generation of immigrants, but they have certainly resulted in quicker assimilation by succeeding generations.

                                    Tony Ferdinand