The combined impact of internal armed conflict and natural hazards complicated further the story of one displaced family forced to flee.
The string of humanitarian crises that beset the Philippines’ shores during the third and fourth quarters of 2013, ranked this country among the top 12 countries with new highest displacement figures. The combined impact of internal armed conflict and natural hazards complicated further the story of one displaced family forced to flee. The heroic nature, the story of courage and survival are the essence of World Refugee Day.
The world watched, listened intently, and heeded the appeal of this battered nation during the immediate aftermath of the deadly storm surge in November. Within a month, Eastern Visayas was carpeted with emergency tents for 120,000 families. Tent communities without electricity were lighted with solar lamps. When XXX cubic tons of debris was cleared, life-saving relief items continued to reach the most vulnerable women, children, elderly, persons with disabilities, and even indigenous groups in the remotest barangays. Six months on, the situation has progressed as a result of close coordination between the Philippine government and humanitarian actors that guaranteed a steady stream of assistance to the affected and most vulnerable. Notwithstanding the enormity of the task at hand, the collaboration of humanitarian efforts coupled with people’s remarkable resilience over the last six months ensured no famine, no disease outbreaks, and no secondary major displacement.
The internally displaced populations (IDPs) in Mindanao remain on the radar of the international humanitarian community after recurrent disasters– Washi in 2011, Bopha in 2012, and the Zamboanga armed conflict in 2013, deprived them repeatedly thereby disrupting their recovery. The signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro earlier this year paves the way for much-needed social and political reforms and for an increased in international funding towards recovery and rehabilitation programs, including creating an enhanced protection environment for IDPs.
Such exemplary responses, however, are not seen across other lingering and protracted emergencies the world is facing. The worldwide total of 51.2 million, largely driven by the crisis in Syria, Central African Republic, and South Sudan, represent a huge number of people in need of help, with implications for foreign aid budgets from donor nations and the absorption and hosting capacities of countries on the front lines of refugee crises. The quantum leap in forced displacement has exceeded 50 million for the first time in the post-World War II era. This new displacement figure is out spacing solutions. This dangerous deficit of peace causing these high levels of forced displacement demands humanitarian aid as an imperative and not merely as a cure.
It is against this backdrop that I remind that the refugee phenomenon is not a novel concept in the Filipinos’ consciousness. From receiving the ‘white Russians’ escaping persecution in the 1920s, to Jews fleeing the Holocaust in the 1930s, the arrival of Spaniards seeking asylum after a civil war, and more recently last two decade’s entry of 500,000 Indochinese refugees who either sought asylum or transited through the Philippines – these stories of hope and courage have been left out from history books, and unknown to most of us this generous country once hosted a safe and dignified environment for these refugees.
The tolerance and hospitality in offering protection to people fleeing persecution was legitimized years even before it became a party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The Government passed the Philippine Immigration Act of 1940. Section 47 (b) thereof reads that the President for “humanitarian reasons, and when not opposed to public interest” may admit “aliens who are refugees for religious, political and racial reasons…”
This text in Philippine law is remarkable for a number of reasons. First, it was adopted by the Philippines at a time when Europe, which often boasts about being the “cradle of human rights”, was engulfed in one of the most tragic episodes of humankind in the 20th century, generating millions of victims including refugees. The text is visionary as it was promulgated 11 years before the world agreed on the definitions of concepts including “humanitarian” and “persecution”. Credit goes to visionary Filipino lawmakers who drafted such a progressive and liberal text in 1940.
The argument here is: the Philippines has done it before, and it is capable of doing it again. Perhaps this is the time to return the kindness and generosity the global community by paying it forward even just to a portion of this large exodus.
The most urgent story of our time is the millions of families forced to flee. Too often it is a story of unspeakable horror, fear, and loss. But it is also a story of great courage and survival. It is a story of 50 million different beginnings. And 50 million endings. The challenge is not for the Government of the Philippines alone. Private citizens and corporate entities are enjoined to care and offer to help, to spell a hopeful ending to one refugee family’s story at a time.
Bernard Kerblat is the Philippine Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
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