Refugees

Definition:

A person who flees his or her home to escape invasion, oppression or persecution.

Statistics:

- there are about 10.6 million refugees and 25.8 million internally displaced people (IDP) worldwide

- 75-80% of the world’s refugees are women and children

- Women and children refugees are vulnerable to violence and exploitation by military and immigration personnel, bandit groups, male refugees, and ribal ethnic groups

- Asia and Africa host the majority of the world’s refugees and 18.1 million IDPs

Personal Impact Story

Six days in the camp and already Hawa has five questions answered. Soon the form will be full and Hawa and her children will be granted asylum: a word she, at first, did not understand. Hawa thought when she arrived at the refugee camp that her children would have food, and that the fear would stop. But, the camp is filled with panic and the memory of cruel men from her own country who killed good men like her husband, and forced whole families from their homes. Men who killed and displaced entire families so their machines could tear apart the earth in search for oil.

One of the girls she met in the long line for food, the first person who smiled at her, asked Hawa where she was from. The girl was the first kind face in an unfamiliar and strange country, had fled from Sudan as well, with her uncle and brother. She told Hawa that if she and her children wanted safety inside Uganda, she would need asylum. That’s why Hawa agreed to visit the girl’s uncle who helped people like Hawa: women who couldn’t read or write. Asylum: that’s why Hawa agreed to his price, only because she needed his help to complete the form.
If Hawa had learned to read and write, she would have printed, in neat, clean letters of her own:

Name: Hawa Fentale
Sex: Female
Age: 24
Country of Origin: Sudan
Family Members: Husband (deceased)
2 Children (female: aged 3; male: 8 months old)

But Hawa cannot write. She can only look at the government form that weighs heavily in her hand and wonder what other questions remain. Hawa waits through the night unaware that there is a child growing in her womb, a child that does not belong to her dead husband. Between pangs of hunger and cries from her children, Hawa imagines what life will be like when her family is given refuge in Uganda, how as a stranger and a widow she will find a home. In the morning, she will bring the white government form to the girl’s uncle again and accept his price so she can answer another question.

*the above story is based on facts but is fictional, for actual statistics order 30 Days of Prayer for the Voiceless today