Refugee Rights
- Akademi Rohingya
- Sep 26, 2021
- 2 min read
By: Farhah Nadhirah
Earlier this September, I had joined a 3-week course called Global Citizenship, hosted by Common Purpose in enabling students to become active citizens and help understand the purpose of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) alongside cultivating them to lead in the global issues they are passionate about. During my second week of the course, I came across a forum where they were discussing refugee rights. While numerous people, including myself, had voiced their opinion on the topic regarding refugee rights, there are a handful of people who had gotten confused between refugee rights and citizenship rights. The question is, what is the difference?
Refugee Rights
First of all, to understand their rights, we need to know who they are. Refugee is defined as "an individual who is outside his or her country of nationality or habitual residence who is unable or unwilling to return due to a well-founded fear of persecution based on his or her race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group" [1] So, what rights to refugees deserve?
A summary from an article by UNHCR called "Protecting Refugees: questions and answers"[2];
A refugee has the right to safe asylum.
Refugees should receive at least receive the same rights and basic help as any other foreigner who is a legal resident.
Refugees deserve economic and social rights; meaning access to medical care, schooling, and the right to work.
Based on the summary above, refugees are given the bare minimum of safety, rights, and help in comparison to Malaysia's citizenship rights or even a Permanent Resident status.
Why is it important to understand refugee rights? In my opinion, after being in charge of Sekolah Islamiyah's social media accounts for almost a year, I found a lot of the disagreements and negative discourse from the public is stemmed from their misunderstandings of the situation at hand. In my article "REFLECTING SOCIAL MEDIA: DO YOU SPREAD HATRED TOO?" [3], I shared my early findings of hate speech throughout social media and I still stand with what I said; everyone deserves a place to call home, education, and a future.
While I am not accusing the handful of students at Common Purpose of delivering hate speech, I do believe having a better understanding of the topic before voicing out your opinion or even having an opinion is important because if we keep making baseless assumptions and accusations, we will never be able to grow out of the prejudice and stereotypes that have been set on by others, which will lead to further injustice and discrimination. Thus, we should fully understand the situation at hand, before we jump to conclusions.
**This article is a personal opinion of the writer and does not represent Sekolah Islamiyah as a whole.
Comments