Global Campaign To End Refugee Warehousing
...people have been stuck in inadequate living conditions five years or more. These “warehoused” refugees are trapped in idle, meaningless, miserable life where they are deprived of basic human necessities and rights as the conflicts in their home country prolong their return indefinitely. Let’s face it: long-hoped for dreams of resettlements and repatriation are unlikely to be achieved in the short-term since source countries has to go through much-needed regime reforms. The important question is, as U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) puts it, “how are refugees to live in the meantime: like captives with their lives on hold or like dignified, free human beings?”
Perhaps few terms should be clarified at the outset to show relevance of this campaign to “access to shelter”. In prosaic terms, adequate shelter is a habitable refuge; but we live in 21st century where adequate shelter no longer means a roof over one’s head. The comprehensive definition is as follows:
“It [adequate shelter] also means adequate privacy; adequate space; physical accessibility; adequate security; security of tenure; structural stability and durability; adequate lighting, heating and ventilation; adequate basic infrastructure…; suitable environmental quality and health-related factors; and adequate and accessible location with regard to work and basic facilities: all of which should be available at an affordable cost. Adequacy should be determined together with the people concerned, bearing in mind the prospect for gradual development… ”
Simply put, shelter incorporates the idea of adequate environment, or surrounding in addition to tangible shelter, in which a person can live a normal life with basic human rights. In this essay, the term shelter will be used in this context.
U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) first took the...
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