Oyster Creek, Tex, Lawrenceville, Va and Murietta, Calif, are among the many localities that have strongly objected to having a shelter for the Central American children who need to be taken care of until their immigration status is clarified or they are deported. As past and future demonstrations remind us, possible locations in Connecticut, Iowa, North Carolina, New York along with several other states also have objected, some with extreme measures such as a demonstration complete with rifles. According to several reports including one by Sonia Nazario who has long studied the effects of illegal immigration on children, they are fleeing violence—usually from gangs—and most would be in harm’s way if they went back. I can’t help think that the more we take politics and ideology out of how we perceive this problem, the more we are able to see it as a humanitarian crisis, of minors trying to escape despair, poverty as well as violence. Maybe that’s why as I was reading about these shunned children, I remembered Holocaust survivors telling me about the instances of boats full of Jewish refugees who kept being denied access to port after port, until in at least one instance they went back to Germany where many of the passengers ended in concentration camps. I wasn’t surprised therefore when I read that Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts, had the same idea when while speaking to the Boston Herald he made a comparison linking the children and the Holocaust. Yet, when asked by the White House if he could help with a location in his state, he did not say yes, but said he would be thinking through a practical solution. I was told by those same survivors that the Jewish refugees’ plight and fate eventually played a role in the establishment of the state of Israel, for many in the United States understood but too late that something had to be done. If Deval Patrick and I are correct and there is a link with what happened to Jewish refugees, then we need to ask ourselves, are we making the same mistake again? Will some of the children have to go back to harm and be killed in order for us to grasp our human responsibility?
Danielle Levy
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Shining Through Strife
Zaatari Refugee camp in Jordan, home to 85,000 Syrians, is the world’s largest camp, and may be on its way to setting an example for the aid community because it’s becoming a city! Well, not a city like New York or London, or even like any smaller one, but a city in the sense it is organizing itself like an urban center. To an outsider it may still look like a slum or a Rio’s favella, but to those living there, there is a sort of address system, a barbershop, a flower shop, a rotisserie take out, a travel agency… some even have washing machines and can buy homemade ice cream. Much of what they have comes from the black market and from smugglers. They do steal electricity, and the UN officials at the camp are thinking of charging a monthly fee, making some low income Jordanians living nearby envious. Of course like any urban environment they have crime. And because it is a refugee camp, residents can each tell horror stories of what they have had to live through before and after they left Syria. There’s another camp, Azraq, located in a desert like area far from anything. The refugees there fight despair, while those living in Zaatari are feeling hope—making the human spirit so evident in the camp all the more striking for shining through the strife.
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In Afghanistan
It’s easy to feel downhearted about Afghanistan. That’s why reading about some of the changes there since 2001 can place our feelings in better perspective. In 2001 no girls attended school and only a million boys did. In 2012 there were 7.8 million pupils including 2.9 million girls. To be fair some schools are tents or operate in the open and there aren’t enough teachers, yet a movement seems underway and 36% of girls are said to be enrolled, a feat given the resistance and the obstacles. The status of women has been ameliorated. More than a quarter of parliament and government employees are women including some in the police and the army. Although violence against women is still a big problem, British officers are helping to set up a military academy that will include the training of 100 female army officers per year. Other signs are that in a country of 31.3 million, in 2012 there were 18 million mobile phones and life expectancy has risen a little from 56 to 60 years old. To note also is an important improvement in access to safe drinking water, which has gone from 4.8% in 2001 to 60.6% in 2011. Sanitation too has improved, 37% now have access to some type of toilets. Despite the eradication of polio being a persistent problem, the number of cases is declining, 37 in 2012 to 14 in 2013. Although opium was still the country’s main export, there are still large undeveloped resources of minerals and natural gas. When added together, one can’t help the sense that as the movement towards education and women’s participation grows—underground in need be—there is hope.