Washington, DC, Jun. 22 (UPI) -- As desperate throngs flee Sudan's
Darfur region, under attack from the government in Khartoum, they add
to a global refugee crisis of some 12 million displaced people
worldwide. It is a crisis the United States must do more to address.
The
Sudanese military and government-backed Arab militias have killed some
30,000 Sudanese in recent months and swept another 1.5 million from
their homes. U.S. officials estimate that as many as 350,000 could be
dead by December.
New refugee camps are swelling. UNICEF
estimates that about 1.2 million of those forced from their homes
remain in Sudan, mostly in makeshift encampments. Another 200,000,
according to Refugees International, have streamed into neighboring
Chad, itself an impoverished nation with few resources to offer.
One
U.N.-run camp in Kounoungo, Chad, built to house 6,000 people, is
already overcrowded with 9,000 residents, and can only provide each
refugee with seven liters of water a day -- less than half the 15
liters considered a normal ration.
Food and water shortages
have been the biggest problems facing encamped refugees until now, but
other threats loom, with just-begun seasonal rains threatening disease.
The
relief groups toiling in the area say they have less money than they
need to stop the emergency from degenerating into a full-scale
humanitarian crisis. For months, the United Nations has been requesting
$171 million to assist 1 million refugees in Sudan and Chad.
While
the number of people in acute need has increased to 2 million since the
United Nations first estimated that cost, foreign governments have only
donated $50 million to date. The United States deserves kudos for
providing the largest share, but all governments must still provide
more.
In the United States, we must also reconsider our
misguided refugee policies. In the name of fighting terror after 9/11,
the United States stopped admitting any refugees at all for six months.
Admissions have been severely restricted ever since.
The
administration didn't even meet its own modest goal of admitting 70,000
refugees a year in 2002 and 2003. Around 28,000 were admitted in each
of those years, compared to an average 88,000 a year that the United
States allowed throughout the 1990s.
Disappointingly, the
administration has proposed a 2005 budget that cuts support for
refugees living in camps, and allows only enough funding to admit
45,000 next year. This is no time for such a miserly entry rate.
In
a disturbing trend, the U.S. Committee for Refugees recently found that
more and more refugees are being "warehoused," or confined to camps for
periods of 10 years or more. About 7 million refugees have passed that
decade mark already. This means that whole generations are being
brought up in squalid encampments, usually unable to own property or
travel freely. They have little shot at an education and are at risk of
violence and disease.
If the administration cannot be
persuaded to admit more refugees for compassionate reasons, it should
consider what the country could gain.
Refugees are a small but
important subclass of immigrants. Some of the most vigorous and
prosperous groups in the United States came originally to these shores
as refugees, and are part of the historical fabric of our country: the
Irish fleeing famine, European Jews escaping the Holocaust, Cubans
fleeing Fidel Castro and Chinese running from Communist oppression.
Moreover,
the notion that cutting refugee entries will improve security is
misguided. Not one of the 9/11 hijackers entered the country as a
refugee, because the admittance process is complicated, time-consuming
and unpredictable. Refugees who meet the U.N. criteria for resettlement
cannot even control which country will ultimately accept them, and are
as likely to end up in Australia or Europe as the United States.
When
refugees can safely return home, they often do. Since the fall of the
Taliban, more than 2 million Afghans have returned to their homeland.
Conditions in Afghanistan, while far from perfect, have improved
substantially since 2001. Sadly, most refugees cannot say the same
about the countries they left behind.
It's not clear what the
future holds for the refugees from Darfur. But we do know that the
Sudanese government and its militias have embarked on a genocidal
campaign to wipe out specific Darfurian ethnic groups, and prevented
surviving civilians from returning to their homes. Under these
circumstances, the rest of us have to consider the possibility that the
Sudanese who have fled may never go back.
Those who can't go
home must not be made to dwell by the millions in rootless, makeshift
camps. Working with international organizations and other governments,
we have to let more of them in.
Philip Peters was a State
Department official during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush
administrations. He is now vice president of the Lexington Institute, a
non-partisan think thank located in Arlington, Va.
