Most of us who read travel magazines travel by choice. We travel to visit family and friends, to see sights, to hike mountains, to relax on beaches… Even those of us who travel for work are at least getting paid for it. But what if you were forced to travel? What if you couldn’t go home?
According to the UN Refugee Agency, 68.5 million people around the world have been forced from home. About 25.4 million of those people are refugees, 40 million are internally displaced, and 3.1 are asylum seekers.
That 68.5 million refers only to forcibly displaced people. IOM estimates that there are 244 million international migrants globally, which is about 3.3 percent of the world’s population.
With so much of the world’s population on the move because of necessity, not always choice, we thought we should devote some space to this other kind of travel. The Unsettled column will feature interviews with directors from the UN Refugee Agency, International Organization for Migration, International Rescue Committee, and other organizations. We’ll talk to migrant workers and refugees around the world, learning more about what it’s like to travel seeking work, or flee because of war, natural disaster, hunger, or religious/national/social/racial//political persecution. We’ll also talk to authors, journalists, photographers, and filmmakers who have reported extensively on these issues.
For today, we’re going to leave you with some definitions. These are terms that will come up in the column often, but are sometimes confused. These definitions are taken from IOM, and if you have some extra time I highly recommend you check out their interactive global migration flow map, too. It’s fascinating to see where people have moved around the world. (Plus, clicking on the U.S. and watching colored dots zoom in from around the globe and settle in various size balls representing almost 47,000,000 people is pretty cool).
We love traveling for fun–we built a magazine about it. But we also think it’s important to pay attention to other reasons people travel, especially when those people number in the hundreds of millions. Stay tuned for more from Unsettled, and if you have a region/issue/person/book/et cetera you think we should cover, please get in touch.
Terms to Know
Asylum seeker – A person who seeks safety from persecution or serious harm in a country other than his or her own and awaits a decision on the application for refugee status under relevant international and national instruments. In case of a negative decision, the person must leave the country and may be expelled, as may any non-national in an irregular or unlawful situation, unless permission to stay is provided on humanitarian or other related grounds.
Forced migration – A migratory movement in which an element of coercion exists, including threats to life and livelihood, whether arising from natural or man-made causes (e.g. movements of refugees and internally displaced persons as well as people displaced by natural or environmental disasters, chemical or nuclear disasters, famine, or development projects).
Immigration – A process by which non-nationals move into a country for the purpose of settlement.
Internally Displaced Person (IDP) – Persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border (Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, UN Doc E/CN.4/1998/53/Add.2.). See also de facto refugees, displaced person, externally displaced persons, uprooted people.
Migrant – Any person who is moving or has moved across an international border or within a State away from his/her habitual place of residence, regardless of (1) the person’s legal status; (2) whether the movement is voluntary or involuntary; (3) what the causes for the movement are; or (4) what the length of the stay is.
Refugee – A person who, “owing to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinions, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country. (Art. 1(A)(2), Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, Art. 1A(2), 1951 as modified by the 1967 Protocol). In addition to the refugee definition in the 1951 Refugee Convention, Art. 1(2), 1969 Organization of African Unity (OAU) Convention defines a refugee as any person compelled to leave his or her country “owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole of his country or origin or nationality.” Similarly, the 1984 Cartagena Declaration states that refugees also include persons who flee their country “because their lives, security or freedom have been threatened by generalised violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violations of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order.”
