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Emerging Infectious Diseases. Psychological evaluation of asylum seekers as a therapeutic process. Due to the report of the U. All asylum seekers have the right to an individual in-person interview and may be accompanied by a legal representative. Compare 8 U.
It has reiterated its humanitarian intake cap of 18, The reality is that only around places out of this total will actually be made available to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR to meet urgent global protection demands. That is a decline in the number available over recent years which was around In the meantime, rates of attempted suicide and self-harm on Manus Island are up , and there are reportedly efforts being made to begin winding back the Medevac legislation that has opened up reasonable possibilities for much needed mental health assistance.
The Asia-Pacific is a major host region for refugees and other displaced populations, accounting for more than nine million people that are of direct concern to the UNHCR. While the region has long been one of mixed migratory movements to, from and through it, and has also had to cope with major displacements due to conflict and internal strife, the region boasts very few countries which have signed the UN Refugee Convention or have any tailored asylum structures.
The lack of a consistent legal framework throughout the region makes it unclear what rights refugees can claim, what obligations countries have towards them, and what responsibility-sharing can be called on in the event of serious need. Some of that is already on the table, the result of a two-year UN multi-lateral process which began in September in New York.
It was designed to breathe new life into tired approaches to burden and responsibility sharing. The resulting new Global Compacts on Refugees and Migrants were endorsed at the end of The Global Compact on Refugees, signed onto by virtually all the United Nations General Assembly members with the exception of the United States and Hungary, has the potential to become a game changer. Intended as a blueprint for fairer, more predictable and sustainable international cooperation, it contains a plethora of activities that countries can consider in order to ease the pressure of hosting refugees, including building the self-reliance of refugees, expanding access to third countries through options like resettlement, and fostering conditions for potential return.
Assistance could enable refugees to be more easily included in national health and education systems as well as connected to job possibilities or land to farm. The Compact also encourages mobilisation of extra support through development channels, new forms of finance, preferential trade arrangements and private sector investment. UNHCR is the lead agency with respect to the protection of refugees and the internally displaced.
Along with the International Organization for Migration IOM , it is the lead agency for camp coordination and management.
In addition to persecution and conflict, in the 21st century, natural disaster sometimes due to climate change can also force people to seek refuge in other countries. Such disasters — floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, mudslides — are increasing in frequency and intensity. While most of the displacement caused by these events is internal, they can also cause people to cross borders. None of the existing international and regional refugee law instruments, however, specifically addresses the plight of such people. Displacement caused by the slow-onset effects of climate change is largely internal as well.
But through its acceleration of drought, desertification, the salinization of ground water and soil, and rising sea levels, climate change, too, can contribute to the displacement of people across international frontiers. Other human-made calamities, such as severe socio-economic deprivation, can also cause people to flee across borders.
While some may be escaping persecution, most leave because they lack any meaningful option to remain. The lack of food, water, education, health care and a livelihood would not ordinarily and by themselves sustain a refugee claim under the Convention. Nevertheless, some of these people may need some form of protection. A study by the Department of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine demonstrated that twenty percent of Sudanese refugee minors living in the United States had a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.
They were also more likely to have worse scores on all the Child Health Questionnaire subscales. In a study for the United Kingdom, refugees were found to be 4 percentage points more likely to report a mental health problem compared to the non-immigrant population. This contrasts with the results for other immigrant groups, which were less likely to report a mental health problem compared to the non-immigrant population. Many more studies illustrate the problem. One meta-study was conducted by the psychiatry department of Oxford University at Warneford Hospital in the United Kingdom.
Twenty surveys were analyzed, providing results for 6, adult refugees from seven countries. According to this study, refugees resettled in Western countries could be about ten times more likely to have PTSD than age-matched general populations in those countries. Worldwide, tens of thousands of refugees and former refugees resettled in Western countries probably have post-traumatic stress disorder.
Refugees are often more susceptible to illness for several reasons, including a lack of immunity to local strains of malaria and other diseases. Displacement of a people can create favorable conditions for disease transmission. Refugee camps are typically heavily populated with poor sanitary conditions. The removal of vegetation for space, building materials or firewood also deprives mosquitoes of their natural habitats, leading them to more closely interact with humans. The refugee camps were built near rivers or irrigation sites had higher malaria prevalence than refugee camps built on dry lands.
Children aged 1—15 were the most susceptible to malaria infection, which is a significant cause of mortality in children younger than 5. Since , reports of malaria cases in Germany had doubled compared to previous years, with the majority of cases found in refugees from Eritrea. The World Health Organization recommends that all people in areas that are endemic for malaria use long-lasting insecticide nets.
A single treatment of the nets with the insecticide permethrin remained protective throughout the 6 month transmission season. Access to services depends on many factors, including whether a refugee has received official status, is situated within a refugee camp, or is in the process of third country resettlement. The UNHCR recommends integrating access to primary care and emergency health services with the host country in as equitable a manner as possible. For example, primaquine , an often recommended malaria treatment is not currently licensed for use in Germany and must be ordered from outside the country.
In Canada, barriers to healthcare access include the lack of adequately trained physicians, complex medical conditions of some refugees and the bureaucracy of medical coverage. In the US, all officially designated Iraqi refugees had health insurance coverage compared to a little more than half of non-Iraqi immigrants in a Dearborn, Michigan, study. Within Australia, officially designated refugees who qualify for temporary protection and offshore humanitarian refugees are eligible for health assessments, interventions and access to health insurance schemes and trauma-related counseling services.
Providing access to healthcare for refugees through integration into the current health systems of host countries may also be difficult when operating in a resource limited setting. In this context, barriers to healthcare access may include political aversion in the host country and already strained capacity of the existing health system.
Local nationals now access health care in facilities initially created for refugees.
One potential argument for limiting refugee access to healthcare is associated with costs with states desire to decrease health expenditure burdens. However, Germany found that restricting refugee access led to an increase actual expenditures relative to refugees which had full access to healthcare services. Refugee populations consist of people who are terrified and are away from familiar surroundings.
There can be instances of exploitation at the hands of enforcement officials, citizens of the host country, and even United Nations peacekeepers. In many refugee camps in three war-torn West African countries, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, young girls were found to be exchanging sex for money, a handful of fruit, or even a bar of soap. Most of these girls were between 13 and 18 years of age.
In most cases, if the girls had been forced to stay, they would have been forced into marriage. They became pregnant around the age of 15 on average. This happened as recently as in Parents tended to turn a blind eye because sexual exploitation had become a "mechanism of survival" in these camps. Very rarely, refugees have been used and recruited as refugee militants or terrorists , [96] and the humanitarian aid directed at refugee relief has very rarely been utilized to fund the acquisition of arms.
Historically, refugee populations have often been portrayed as a security threat. In the U. S and Europe, there has been much focus on the narrative that terrorists maintain networks amongst transnational, refugee, and migrant populations. This fear has been exaggerated into a modern-day Islamist terrorism Trojan Horse in which terrorists hide among refugees and penetrate host countries. Cross-national empirical verification, or rejection, of populist suspicion and fear of refugees' threat to national security and terror-related activities is relatively scarce.
In Europe, fear of immigration, Islamification and job and welfare benefits competition has fueled an increase in violence. Breivik portrayed himself as a protector of Norwegian ethnic identity and national security fighting against immigrant criminality, competition and welfare abuse and an Islamic takeover. According to a study in the Journal of Peace Research , states often resort to anti-refugee violence in response to terrorist attacks or security crises. The study notes that there is evidence to suggest that "the repression of refugees is more consistent with a scapegoating mechanism than the actual ties and involvement of refugees in terrorism.
Kelly Greenhill counts 56 attempts to to employ the direct or indirect threat of mass migrations as a non-military instrument of influence. Perceiving refugees as a weapon prevents the possible solutions to refugee movement, such in the case of Humanitarian aid directed at refugee relief. The empirical verification of populist suspicion fear of refugees threat to national security and terror-related activities is relatively scarce.
Read more Refugee children come from many different backgrounds, and their reasons for resettlement are even more diverse. The number of refugee children has continued to increase as conflicts interrupt communities at a global scale. In alone, there were approximately 32 armed conflicts in 26 countries around the world, and this period saw the highest number of refugees ever recorded [] Refugee children experience traumatic events in their lives that can affect their learning capabilities, even after they have resettled in first or second settlement countries.
Educators such as teachers, counselors, and school staff, along with the school environment, are key in facilitating socialization and acculturation of recently arrived refugee and immigrant children in their new schools. The experiences children go through during times of armed conflict can impede their ability to learn in an educational setting. Schools experience drop-outs of refugee and immigrant students from an array of factors such as: rejection by peers, low self-esteem, antisocial behavior, negative perceptions of their academic ability, and lack of support from school staff and parents.
Aside from students, teachers and school staff also face their own obstacles in working with refugee students. They have concerns about their ability to meet the mental, physical, emotional, and educational needs of students. One study of newly arrived Bantu students from Somalia in a Chicago school questioned whether schools were equipped to provide them with a quality education that met the needs of the pupils. The students were not aware of how to use pencils, which caused them to break the tips requiring frequent sharpening.
Teachers may even see refugee students as different from other immigrant groups, as was the case with the Bantu pupils. With refugee children falling behind or struggling to catch up, it can overwhelm teachers and administrators.
Not all students adjust the same way to their new setting. One student may take only three months, while others may take four years. One study found that even in their fourth year of schooling, Lao and Vietnamese refugee students in the US were still in a transitional status. Furthermore, to provide proper support, educators must consider the experiences of students before they settled the US.
In their first settlement countries, refugee students may encounter negative experiences with education that they can carry with them post settlement.