KASESE, THE SOUL OF UGANDA'S HEART

OBSERVE REFUGEES RIGHTS: RELIEVE THEM OF PLIGHT.

kansmus@gmail.com

Human rights are moral principles for everyone, are protected by natural and legal rights in municipal and international law and describe certain behavioral standards.

The world must be heedful to and cognizant of the fact that the refugees' prime desire is to witness the end of anarchy, the terminus of human rights violations and to see the Genesis of reparations in their home countries. That noted, it is wise to affirm in consonance that the refugee crisis calls for urgent response to refugees' lives and rights before pacifism, is reinstated home.

Over centuries, from Hammurabi era to Socrates doctrines to the Justinian revolution to the 1215 magna Carta to the shackles of slavery and anti-slavery crusades and to other erstwhile human rights revolutions, it is evident that the rights of the refugee have not been vividly addressed even by the original authors of human rights. Profound, though now eminent, these old laws even in their metamorphosis addressed the question of the locals who above all, guaranteed by unfair laws, were masters to refugees who they treated as slaves.

Many incidents with an iota evident of refugees rights violations have occurred until recently after the second world war when the world was tormented with vociferations questioning refugees’ rights transgressions. Those most affected, though have somewhat forgotten their history, were mindful of the horrors encountered by their compatriots in the countries to which they fled, drafted the Universal Declaration of human rights and adopted it on 10th December, 1948 which clearly answers the refugee question when painstakingly interpreted. Since the rights encapsulated in this declaration are neither country specific nor socially particular but explicitly universal in vindicating the rights of people of every creed, gender, race and ethnicity, whether citizens or not, they thereupon become the irrefutable reference insofar as deliberating the refugee rights dilemma.

On 28th July, 1951, the United Nations convention relating to the status of refugees was adopted; to attempt to remedy the aftermath of the globalised spillover of the second world war. This convention defined a refugee as someone who has a well-founded fear for persecution because of his or her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion and outside of his or her country and is unwilling to avail him or herself to the protection of that country or to return there in fear of persecution. But the decades that followed presented a globalised crisis than the expansion on the account of the 1967 protocol as the problem of displacement spread around the world mainly due to anti-imperial rebellions and the struggle for power in the then infant Africa and Asia.

This globalised crisis raised more concerns about thus more definitions of the refugee. Therefore, OAU (Organisation of African Unity) in the 1969 convention defined the refugee as, "Any person compelled to leave his or her country owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or whole of his/her country of origin. In 1984 as the refugee monsoons blew wildly beyond the oceans, though blowing even worse today, a colloquy of Latin America statesmen and jurists adopted the Cartagena declaration which defined refugees as, "Persons who flee their countries because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by generalised violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order." All these definitions of the refugee portray one fleeing the violation of human rights. Therefore, violation of the refugees' rights in the host communities is a double rights violation and denial.

Considering the pull versus push analogy, the refugees are pushed out of their countries by human rights violations and pulled to the host communities by the human rights observance or slower tide of violations. Push factors from both their home and host communities squeeze refugees and denies them their rights. Though pull factors tickling from both sides favours the realisation of refugees' rights and ends the causes of refugee crisis, an arena for pull factors has not been armoured with ample priority.

Though knowing one's rights is a right in itself, most refugees do not know their rights. In the light of this, some refugees are comfortable in the reality of substandard treatment considering themselves as undeserving in host countries. According to article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights, everyone is entitled to all the rights it sets forth without discrimination or bigotry on margins of sex, race and birth. But most important is that national and social origin are not withstanding. Therefore, the refugee is entitled to identical rights as the citizens with a limit on a few such as suffrage rights which they too can enjoy after attaining citizenship.

Article 4 of the same declaration asserts that no one shall be subjected to slavery or servitude. This finds credibility in the fact that people and more specifically refugees are not tradable and shouldn't be taken advantage of such as through inadequate pay. Given refugees' right to employment, trade unions should also address rights of employed refugees. Equal pay for equal work like the nationals is the refugees’ merit and nothing slightly less.

In observance of ordinances that be shield the refugee rights, we must guard against agony in all its manifestations bearing in mind recognition of refugees as people before the law but not as unworthy border crossers. Therefore, devoid of prejudice and draconian motives by the judicial apparatus, the refugees need a just hearing in courts of law and refugees should be protected from arbitrary arrests mainly those pinned on their status as refugees.

Given the right to move from disaster country to peaceful countries and the right to return to the home country willingly not by force, the principle of non-refoulment must be held. In addition, the refugees must be exempted from reciprocity; exempted from being treated in the way their home country treats them. This exemption is largely because the refugees do not enjoy the protection of their home country and principles that guide that protection which are tainted by infractions unless they are mutilated to a citadel mindful of human rights.

Vulnerability is an issue not to be mithed and obfuscated in the mosaic of details. Women refugees, people with disabilities, elderly and children deserve special attention. Child refugees need the right to education or the education of their home country should be recognised in the host country so as to advantage them in search for jobs. The children born by women refugees are as Innocent and as important but sadly as prone to disease as those born by native women. They deserve the same health protection notably immunisation as their fellow children in host communities.

Noteworthy, gender not being neutral, provisions to gender cannot be neutral.  Women refugees lack reproductive health services due to high costs yet they are being subsidised for native mothers. Women refugees, as mothers to stateless children, need the right to prenatal and postnatal care, rehabilitation and trauma healing.

Winners versus losers mentality; Given that the Universal Declaration of Human rights encompasses all subscribers, it should be more important than individual state sovereignty mindful of the fact that it makes no sense to have life at one periphery and deaths on the other yet lives could be saved by fleeing across frontiers. In observance of this declaration, we are all winners of the rights embedded therein regardless of where we are, either as citizens or foreigners.

In human wisdom, however much it is a domestic thought that human rights are guaranteed by humans, they have been violated by the same. In other words, the tension between locals and refugees is confirmatory to how beastly mankind is to fellow humankind. It is imperative to draw a link to the fact that without concerted citizens' effort, but government's alone, to uphold the refugees’ rights in their small communities, we shall seek progress all in vain in the larger world of human rights.

As for host countries and their citizens, it is only when they take refugees’ rights seriously that they understand their own and see the measure by which they too need protection. But more disheartening is when the compassion of host citizens for refugees is more than that of host governments. Yet the governments ought to demonstrate how phobia in all its realms is distressing and to praise the conscience that we were born free in dignity and rights, we are brothers and sisters of the same world. Sad to note, given that it is historic, the scourge of war is not near its end and no sequence determines who is next. Therefore, those who sow hospitality and succor will reap them in reciprocity when their turn to face disaster and subsequent fleeing comes.

Refugee rights are limitless and efforts to actualise them should be as endless as the onset of ever flowing pent-up waters moving rocks along their torrents falling into a plunge a countless fathoms deep.

By KANSIIME ONESMUS

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