Homelessness In South Sudan

1043 Words3 Pages

As the world became a witness to the liberation of Nazi concentration and death camps, the global community ubiquitously pronounced “Never again”— Never again can the global community idly stand by, with apathy, towards the iniquitous destruction of humankind and the widespread displacement of people. Unfortunately, as history has shown, this wishful thinking is yet to be upheld. In recent decades, the world has witnessed a substantial proliferation of widespread conflict, state-orchestrated oppression, and religious and ethnic persecution, resulting in a global diaspora of displaced peoples aching to return to familiarity, peace, and security. Importantly, alongside the proliferation of conflict and human rights abuses is the presence of gatekeepers—the …show more content…

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) 2016 annual report, the world is currently experiencing an overwhelming number of displacement, with approximately “65.6 million people… forcibly displaced worldwide,” roughly half of which are children (Edwards, 2017). As the humanitarian crisis in Syria and surrounding countries has devastatingly escalated and conflict continues to wage throughout South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, global displacement continues to rapidly proliferate. Throughout 2016 alone, 10.3 million additional people experienced forced displacement, rippling a catastrophic migration crisis into the developing countries surrounding the conflicts (UNHCR, 2016). Of course, as states surrounding conflict continue to open their borders with relatively open arms, accepting insurmountable waves of refugees and asylum seekers, the United States has effectively shut its ears to the world and closed its borders. In numerous capacities, the United States acts as a gatekeeper in the migration crisis—possessing the power to grant or deny asylum to refugees and asylum seekers, and more importantly, the power to provide or withhold platforms for bearing witness. It is in essence, bearing witness that is most fundamental to provoking empathy and the comprehension of human rights abuses worldwide, but as displacement figures continue to escalate into incomprehensible figures, apathy, “compassion-fatigue,” indifference, and ultimately, forgetting are again becoming the norm, even in an era in which extensive access to media and technology has provoked a transnational movement of human rights awareness (Kurasawa, 2007,

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