Reducing suspicion of “the other”
Frederik Smets, Communications and Advocacy Officer, UNHCR Regional Representation for Western Europe
Media and public debate seem these days to be dominated by a good deal of fear and a lot of this fear seems to be sparked by something or someone we could call “the other”. Be it immigrants or refugees (they are not necessarily the same), people of a different religion or political opinion, with another language or culture.
For the benefit of this Dialogue, I will focus on the arrival of people from other countries and cultures on our shores.
More than one million refugees and migrants arrived in Europe last year. Most of these people hail from parts of the world devastated by years, if not decades, of horrific violence. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia are topping UNHCR’s statistics about refugees. 2015 and 2016 also saw a steady flow of people from West Africa and other regions who are, legally speaking, no refugees. We sometimes say these people are “economic migrants”. Many paid smugglers to cross the Mediterranean Sea in routes leading to Greece and Italy and onwards to other countries. Thousands lost their lives during the attempt.
Most of the people caught up in this mass population movement did not choose to move to other parts of the world.
The world is currently witnessing one of the largest refugee crises it has ever seen. In 2015, 65.3 million people were displaced a result of war, violence or persecution. 21.3 million crossed a border, left their country, and became what we know as “refugees”. 40.8 million were forced to leave their homes but were unable to, or chose not to leave their country. They are known in our jargon as Internally Displaced Persons or IDPs. In addition to this, 3.2 million people were seeking asylum. This means they lodged a claim to become recognized as refugee in another country, but they are awaiting the result of a vetting procedure which will determine whether or not they are entitled to refugee status.
Think of these figures in other terms. Worldwide, a mass of people larger than the population of France is displaced as a result of war, violence and persecution. One in every 113 people on the planet is now forcibly displaced. Last year on average 24 people per minute were forced to flee. These are staggering figures.
Are we to fear this group of “other”? Here are two things we can do.
Educate young people. UNHCR has recently embarked on a renewal of its educational materials and will soon be reaching out to schools and teachers across the continent to offer the educational sector the right information, the facts and figures that will hopefully inform objective debate on refugees and migrants and ease some of the fears that may have arisen.
It is my experience that many prejudices can be refuted by providing objective information about refugees. And as time passes and assuming that some of the crises we see today will continue for at least some time, we need to make sure citizens know the facts from a young age so they can participate in honest and open debate when they start taking responsibility in our societies. Getting the facts right eases suspicion of “the other”.
Start local. Interact. On many a lecture or event, citizens ask themselves where refugees and migrants can be found and what impact they have on local communities. Most European towns and cities are now hosting refugees or asylum-seekers.
I often start by asking how many people have actually met refugees and/or asylum-seekers in their own town.
Depending on the location, you will always have a few people raising their hands. Many of these people volunteer to help the refugees or asylum-seekers in their local communities. Secondly, I always let these volunteers speak out about their experience in interacting with refugees or migrants. You usually get stories of how people managed to be of enormous help to the new arrivals in town just by helping out on very practical day-to-day things like going to the supermarket or filling out some paperwork.
I then usually tell people that interaction with other people is the best thing to help refugees and migrants. Volunteering to help a refugee or migrant with a small thing for half an hour a week usually has a larger impact than many other things we can do as individuals. Knowing “the other” and meeting face-to-face also usually drastically reduces fear of “the other”.
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