Director of the Centre for Equity Studies, Harsh Mander, while referring to Swami Vivekananda’s historic address to the World’s Parliament of Religion in Chicago 1893, said, the government which claims Swami Vivekananda as its greatest icon has created a citizenship law which has just two filters to accepting the persecuted refugees, religion and nation, which are totally in contrast to what Vivekananda had said.
On the global statistics of refugees, Navsharan Singh, author and social activist, while moderating the panel discussion, said, “There are 70.8 million forcibly displaced people worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, human rights violation. Of this 70.8 million people 41.3 million are internally displaced. 56 million are refugees over half of whom are under the age of 18 years. 3.5 million are asylum seekers and there are also millions of stateless people who are denied nationality and access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement.
Navsharan added, “About 80 per cent of refugees live in the countries neighbouring their countries of region contrary to what we believe that all refugees are trying to enter the developed western world. Developed countries host only 16 per cent of the total refugees and the rest 84 per cent of refugees are hosted by developing countries. Around 6.7 million people are in the countries which are called the least developed countries. Altogether more than two-third, 67 per cent of all refugees worldwide come from these five countries Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia. And the host countries where most refugees are 86 per cent are Turkey, Pakistan, Uganda, Sudan, Lebanon, Germany and Bangladesh.”
The consultation on the possibilities of ethical refugee policy in India was organised by Centre for Equity Studies, in collaboration with Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung at India International Centre, New Delhi on February 5.
“In India, we don’t have an asylum law but we have citizenship law. We are skipping a very important step and going to the citizenship act which indicates that the intention is not humanitarian but to give citizenship to a particular religion. It is a political statement more than a humanitarian act,” said Roshni Shanker, Director, Migration and Asylum Project.
According to a senior lawyer, Prashant Bhushan, CAA is arbitrary on several counts. After all, it discriminates on the ground of religion, because it talks of only three countries, only religious persecution and the cut of date of December 2014. Long term solution to this issue is to frame a law which conforms to the standard operating procedure India has already announced.