refugee

refugee

A person who:(1) has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group;(2) is outside the country he or she belongs to or normally resides in; and(3) is unable or unwilling to return home for fear of persecution.

Refugees may include those fleeing from war or civil disturbance of any kind; a permutation is that of an ‘internally displaced’ person who moves within the borders of one country for the same reasons. The mortality rate of refugees is 60-fold greater than that of a similar non-displaced population; it is highest in children and is due to measles, diarrhoea-related illnesses, acute upper RTIs, malaria and is in part related to the virtually endemic protein-energy malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies that characterise the refugee state; diarrhoea is the most common cause of death (36,000 children die/day of diarrhoea).

Part of that terrain is revealed in the traces of ongoing human activity shown in these photographs: signs of vandalism and graffiti, and also evidence of habitation, of the covert lives led by immigrant squatters and economic refugees who have entered these spaces illegally (as Hernandez himself has).

Within Catholic social teaching Popes John XXIII (Peace on Earth) and Paul VI (Call to Action) further argued that not only political but also economic refugees should have the right to emigrate and immigrate and that nations everywhere had a moral duty to try and receive as many of these citizens as reasonably possible.

The government, with all its warts down there that overthrew a democratically elected leader, has not been torturing and persecuting those who don't pass the screening to determine whether they are political or economic refugees.

The region has been hit over the past two decades by a series of incidents in the Mediterranean, with tens of thousands of migrants seeking to reach Europe by small craft and fishing boats, with catastrophic consequences and the loss of life on dangerous boats carrying economic refugees from North and West Africa.

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