Today is World Refugee Day as declared by the United Nations. Did you know that in 2018 more than 13.6 million people fled their homes? According to the UN, more than 70 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to violence or persecution. The world’s displaced population is almost double that from a decade ago. This means that one in every 108 people on the planet is now displaced from home. That is a staggering figure.
In the same report Canada is being congratulated for taking in more refugees than any other country by accepting just over 28,000 refugees from around the world. Some 92,400 refugees were resettled globally in 2018 but still, that is fewer than 7% of those in need of a home. The yawning gap between need and response is dismaying.
I have been mulling over the statistic – 70 million people in need of a place to call home, or longing for the home they have had to leave. I have as the tagline at the bottom of my work email a quote from the French Philosopher, Simone Weil, “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.” I have always counted myself richly blessed that I have the privilege to still return to the very home where I grew up. My parents sold the farm to my brother and he, and now his daughter, has always made the family feel completely welcome and that returning there is always returning home. The bedroom my sisters and I slept in is still called, “the girls’ room”! I can’t imagine what it would feel like to lose that place but even if we did I could still drive by. It is not like losing my country, my kinsmen, my tribe, my culture, my ethnicity which is what many refugees must give up.
It was just over two years ago that we waited at the airport to welcome an air plane from Turkey carrying the Syrian family we had sponsored. They had started their travels hours before leaving Iraq and then transferring planes in Istanbul. I will never forget them coming through the sliding doors at the airport. We had been corresponding and skyping for a couple of years by that point so we knew them immediately. They had left their homeland and they carried all their possessions in four suitcases. Can you imagine putting your family’s whole life in four suitcases and knowing you might never get home again?
I have walked their resettlement with them and I know that they frequently say how grateful they are but I also know it has been very hard. They miss their country. They miss their family. When a birth happens here (as it did last August) or there, they feel so far away. When a family member dies and they are half a world away they feel so lonely. When cultural holidays come and they aren’t known of or recognized here they feel so isolated. The good news is they have formed a network of love here. People feel so close to them and we have learned so much from them. Having them in my life has broadened my global awareness and made me appreciate even more the richness of my heritage and inheritance as a rooted fifth-generation Canadian. We have all benefited from the tragic circumstances that made it necessary for them to come to Canada.
Someone gave me a button not long ago, “Jesus was a refugee”. On this World Refugee Day I am holding in prayer the many, many people who are, sadly, on the move.
