Escaping Danger: Why People Seek Refuge in Other Countries

We hear in the news about people fleeing their homes to become asylum seekers or refugees, why is this?  Alma and Lucinda talk to Lance Bartholomeusz from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to find out:

·       The difference between refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants

·       Why so many people around the world are forced to leave their homes

·       What protections and rights refugees have under international law

·       The role of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) around the world

·       How refugee children are supported to go to school, stay safe, and build new lives

·       The challenges people face when starting a new life in a different country

You’ll also hear real examples of the UNHCR’s work, from helping Palestinian families in neighbouring countries, to supporting Rohingya communities in Bangladesh, to protecting displaced people in Ukraine, and how Uganda supports Sudanese refugees in Africa. 

When Lance was 10 he wanted to be a snake handler!

 References and Resources

 United Nations Refugee Agency

 United Kingdom for UNHCR

 Kate Blanchett on Statelessness

 Patrick Eba UNHCR’s policy and legal expert ‘Why do refugees need protection?’

There are more stories at www.unhcr.org under news and stories. Here are the latest stories relating to children: News and stories | UNHCR

There were 8.4 million asylum-seekers awaiting decisions on their individual applications at the end of 2024, the highest number ever recorded, marking a 22 per cent increase from 6.9 million the previous year. See Global Trends | UNHCR

If you've got any questions, ideas about a topic or someone to interview, get in touch, we'd love to hear from you!! You can email us at kidslaw@spark21.org, contact us through the website: www.kidslaw.info or through social media: Facebook, X and Instagram @KidsLawInfo

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See you soon in the next episode!

Transcript

Hi, I'm Alma Constance. 

And I'm Lucinda. 

And today we're here on the Kids Law Podcast to talk about how rules affect all of us, especially children. Did you know that children as young as 10 can actually be held responsible for crimes and might even go to court? Plus kids have special rights given by the United Nations. That's why it's super important for young people to know a bit about the law and how it can help protect them and others.

So, Alma, what are we going to look at in this episode? 

Well, today I would like to know more about why so many people leave their own countries and want to live in others. The media is full of stories and photographs of people, and often many children they call asylum seekers.

 Yes, it's a really tough and upsetting situation and there are lots of reasons why it happens. When you hear the word asylum seeker, it means someone who's left their home country because they say it's too dangerous to stay there. They hope to be recognised as a refugee in another country, which will give them special legal protection and rights under international law. Not everyone who asks for asylum becomes a refugee, but every refugee started out as an asylum seeker. Many people looking for safety are families, and a lot of them are kids just like you.

 Let's find out more from Lance Bartholomeusz, who works as the General Counsel and head of Legal Affairs Service at the United Nations Refugee Agency called the UNHCR. This organisation was set up to help protect people who have had to leave their countries to stay safe. 

 Hello Lance, thank you so much for coming to our Kids Law podcast and welcome, we are so glad to have you here. So please could you start off by telling us about the UNHCR in terms of what it does and tell us about the people it protects. 

 So well, thank you Alma, constant and Lucinda for having me on today. I'm delighted to be here to talk about UNHCR. So UNHCR or the UN Refugee Agency; we’re part of the United Nations and we started work in 1951; so after the Second World War.  And our main purpose is to help people who've had to flee their homes because of war or danger. So, since we started working in 1951, we’ve helped many different groups of people. We've got refugees, we have asylum seekers We have stateless people. We have people who we call returnees, so those who go home. And we have internally displaced people that we also help, for example, in Ukraine, those who stay within Ukraine, but have fled from the front lines of the conflict. So that's who we are and who we, work for and with. But let me speak a little bit more, in broad terms, what is it that we do. When we look at it at high level, there's three main things.  One, is that we protect the rights of the people that we work for and with.

 We help with their needs, and we help find solutions, and we do this all over the world. We work in almost 140 countries. We have over 1,500 NGOs, non-governmental organisations that we work with. And these will be from household names like Oxfam or Save the Children to grassroots NGOs that are led by refugees themselves. Let me maybe give you a few examples. So, protecting rights. There's a range of ways in which we do that. We can advise states on their nationality laws or their asylum laws. Sometimes we do what we call strategic litigation. So, we give authoritative advice on what international refugee law says. We also do things when people are fleeing their country and they've been subjected to great mental trauma or physical harm; we also promote their rights with our specialist partners. In emergencies, we are often amongst, the first responders to come out and we can deploy very quickly with tents, blankets, medicines, working with all our partners. We also give a lot of cash payments. So, this is a great way for families to be looking after their children and others, rather than us giving some food or a sack of flour to somebody. It's a little bit like we have in, in a family for me, I know what my family needs and if you can give me some money, then I can decide whether my sick daughter needs some medicine or I should get some food, or I should look for, for something else. So, I think that's something very important. And we've given cash assistance in over a hundred countries.  Many of it is, is digital payments, so through mobile money cards and this is something that's really appreciated by refugees and internally displaced people, to choose the assistance that they really need for themselves. 

And last bit about the finding solutions. What does that mean? Well, most refugees, when they flee their country, two out of three, stay in the in the country next door. And this is something that we see that most refugees want to go home and will go home when they can do so voluntarily and in safety and dignity.

And we see right now many, hundreds of thousands of people returning to Syria because things have changed, there. So that's one part. Other things that we do, is that we look where people can't go back to their country yet, to find ways of getting them included into the life of the country.

And this can be really basic things like being able to open a bank account, to get a sim card for your phone because so much these days comes through your phone, including if you're in Africa, mobile money, you really need, those kind of things. And lastly only 1% of people who flee their country are able to take advantage of the third solution, which is resettlement. And this is where after a careful refugee status determination, states will take, people in and resettle them for a new life.  One thing that I would just say, in terms of the protecting rights, one of the most important rights to protect is what we call ‘non-refoulement’. It's a French word, and it means that you should not send people back to where they're fleeing because they're in danger.

 So, could you help us understand what a refugee actually is, and are all refugees the same as asylum seekers or is there a difference between them and migrants? 

 Great question, and one that constantly comes up for us. So, first of all, who is a refugee is determined by an international treaty. So, an agreement between states called the 1951 Refugee Convention. And we, supervise this, convention. Refugee to put it in simple terms, it's somebody who has had to flee their country to another country because they are in danger. They're fleeing conflict, violence or persecution for who they are, for example, their nationality or race. And the important thing is they need protection of another state because their home, country state won't give them protection. where you have this well-founded fear of persecution. So, they need what we call international protection, the important thing is that they can't go back to their country. So let me give you an example when the Rohingya people in Myanmar were targeted by violence villagers being burnt down and over a million left Myanmar to go to Bangladesh they are refugees. So, asylum seeker, I think that you gave a great definition of it when you were speaking in the introduction, but that is essentially somebody who has. Led to another country and is in the process of being determined about what is their status. Now, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, says everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other country's asylum from persecution. There could be a number of results about what happens when you're seeking asylum, and we can come to that. Now, hat about a migrant? Because we hear a lot about migrants. Well, there's not a greed definition of migrant, but it is quite broad, and it is a person, that is on the move, who is left their country, but for reasons other than being a refugee. And the difference here is that most migrants can go back to their home country, whereas refugees cannot. Now, having said that I would say that as lawyers and as organizations, definitions are important, they tell us about where we should focus our work.But I think the thing that is for me and why I work for the, for a refugee agency, it's about the people. And I think that whether you are a refugee, an asylum seeker, a migrant, whether you are a, child or adult, we're all humans and we all have the same human rights, So the definitions do make a difference, but we still all enjoy our basic human rights 

You mentioned areas in the world which, are sadly suffering from conflict. Are there any other reasons why people need to flee their country? 

So, let's say you are an opposition, politician, or family and the government in power or the authorities decide to clave down on the opposition and they start to threaten you and your family. You flee. This would be a classic case of, seeking, political asylum. One I would want to raise, which is an interesting one is what about those say from the South Pacific or Pacific Islands where their islands are getting engulfed by the, the sea and they are losing their country.So, they're fleeing, they don't come under the refugee convention as such. They might do, for example, if they flee to somewhere and they're discriminated against in the delivery of assistance and then they have to move from that country because of that discrimination. They could be a refugee if you were a climate activist and you then had to leave a particular country because of the climate activism. Then that would be something that would make you a refugee, but climate is, as, as we know today, it is increasingly a big driver or cause of people moving from their countries. And while not sort of technically refugees, I think that we are seeing they're entitled to human rights. And we are seeing that there are many generous countries which are seeing that individual states can't deal with this alone. And so that this is like the refugee issue. This is something that together across the planet, we need to have solidarity for those who are affected by rising sea levels,

Could you share some examples of who the UNHCRi s helping right now and what problems those people are facing? 

Let me give for example, Uganda. Now, Uganda currently has more than 2 million refugees and many fleeing Democratic Republic of Congo, which is next door neighbour for Uganda, and Sudan which is to the north of Uganda. Now, Uganda has one of the most progressive open border policies and tries to integrate refugees. Into their life. So, what do we do to support? Well, we support the government through things like education, delivery of cash and shelter. Uganda is a generous country, but the economic situation is a big issue. So again, when you have 2 million refugees you add to the water that's needed, electricity that's needed, and also you have to deal with disposing of more waste. These are really basic things, but they're very important for countries and that's why countries like Uganda need, international burden sharing, it shouldn't just be on the neighbours to do this.  Let me give you an example of Sudan. It is one of the worst humanitarian situations that we've got in the world. It's a war that has been going on between Sudanese parties and we are helping people who have fled to Chad Central African Republic, Uganda, as I mentioned and it's tremendously challenging because people are coming with nothing. They have been through horrific unspeakable things. So, my friends and colleagues, like Dominique, our director of external relations, she's spoken firsthand with women and girls and terrible things have happened to them.  We record them with UNHCR and then working very quickly, for those who've suffered. with specialist trauma experts from our NGO partners and others let me give one last example.  I mentioned that we work with stateless people and one of the people who champions UNHCR's work on Statelessness is the actress, Kate Blanchard and she is a wonderful supporter. And she's been to a lot of the places where UNHCR works and I think worth worthwhile to look up how Kate Blanche had explained statelessness. We do some really interesting support to states and NGOs because if you are stateless, it can be because you don't have a birth certificate.You don't have a passport or a nationality. And where we see the particular issue with children is for example, a stateless school, that I met in Geneva. Now she'd come from Kenya, and she was from the Shona, people who'd come from Zimbabwe. And she could go to school, but she couldn't enrol to get her A Levels, eventually with lots of work from us, support from local politicians and NGOs, and eventually very senior ministers, they gave recognition to Shona, people in Kenya who were then able to register to be able to get their A Levels, O levels. And then were able to go to universities. So now this, young woman  has now got her bachelor degree and is on her way as a part of society.  Having an identity and overcoming statelessness can make such a difference in your life.

So, what happens to children when their families have to leave their home country? Can you share any examples of how the UN Refugee Agency help kids in these situations? 

One of the saddest and most complex situations that my UNHCR colleagues on the ground, the protection officers who meet people for the first time is when children come alone, called unaccompanied minors. But really these are kids of all ages. And we see this happens too often and it, has happened in Sudan, for example, where villagers are being burnt soldiers coming along or militants. And the parents just tell the children just run, run. And the children go, and they might go in different areas, team up with different, groups. Now, when they come and we meet them, there's some important things that, that we do. One of them is about family reunification. Again, we work with others, Getting kids together with family.  And I think, you know, for me as a parent if I were under attack, would I prefer that they run and survive? I would say yes. But I want us to be back together as a family the Refugee Convention, recognized that the unity of the family is essential to refugees. And so, this is one that we, with others in the system, when children have had to flee and they're recorded, then we try to bring them together. Last thing that I'll mention is education. And I think this is something that I've found some of my most rewarding moments at UNHCR is I've been into a school classroom in Uganda, which had 107 people in it, 107. So, it's not individual following by the teacher, but they were learning English and were learning English in a way through responses. So, they were singing and speaking together, they looked happy, and they were learning. I've seen as well in Afghanistan, I've been into Jalalabad and seen the great work that we've done with blind women, including young girls. Just a couple of years ago, again, supporting an NGO and a local blind professor who was teaching the, the women there. And then third, another type of education was the UN Relief and Works agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East. That I worked for about 12 years so that runs schools for Palestine refugees between the ages of six and 14 in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, west Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.And what I used to love there was speaking to the young girls and boys who were part of the school parliaments, which are in every school, and the conflict and resolution committees. And there I met some. Great children with wisdom beyond their ages.  Let me give you a quick example. I met one girl, 12 years old who was the vice chair of the Conflict and Resolution Committee in a school, in a camp in Lebanon, in Beirut. And I said how many disputes, have you, had to resolve or address this year? And she said, look, I've got a book where I keep the records of all the, the results. And I said, oh, so how successful are you? And she said, ‘mi'ah’ which is Arabic for a hundred percent. And I said, well, I need to understand how do you do this? And so, she showed me and she said, look, my father, who is a street vendor in the camp and my mother have always said to me, the important thing is not to be right all the time, but the important thing is to be able to live with others in peace. And I think if that is what schools that we can support is producing in young people, they are the likely leaders of refugees and others who can help find great solutions for refugees themselves.

So, what steps do refugees or asylum seekers go through when they arrive in a new country and what kinds of decisions or results might happen next?  This depends on which country somebody goes to. So, what we call a process refugee status determination is something that is a process for working out whether somebody who is seeking asylum is entitled to be a refugee under international law and get the kind of rights that states will give to those who are determined to be refugees. Now, there are many states who do their own refugee status determination or are the ones who process asylum seekers. So, if we are looking at the United Kingdom if you arrive at an airport then you will  see big signs in many different languages saying that if you want to seek asylum, then you should make that known to an official as you are entering. And then there's a process that goes on from there, which is taken forward by, the immigration officials and then the home office. But UNHCR in about 50 countries is the one that does refugee status determination. And in even more countries, we're the ones who record when people come into the country. So, I've walked in the steps of refugees who've crossed from South Sudan and from the Democratic Republic of Congo into Uganda. And there you will come to a reception centre. We'll record your documentation. We also in many, countries, record biometrics. What are they? Your fingerprints and your iris scans so that we can be confident that the person who is fled and is, with us. We know exactly who the person is. And then we have some of the basic information for those, particularly who might be resettled, or who are in particular need of protection.  Now, what are the decisions that could come from an asylum-seeking process?  Well, one, it could be determined you are a refugee and then you can get all of the rights that come with that, within the country’s laws, so this might be permanent residence and, a range of other elements. It may be determined that you're not a refugee, but you're still entitled to stay, but you have a different status. So, there is a category called ‘subsidiary protection’ in the EU that has been used for many in a refugee like situation. Or it can be determined, okay, you are not a refugee, you are not entitled to other forms of protection or a right to stay, and you don't have a right to international protection and therefore you leave the country. You can be deported. And then there's a question, are you able to go to your home country? Some home countries don't accept people back or it might be a danger to go back.  So, there are a range of possibilities from the decisions. I would just like to say that because international law determines whether you're a refugee and what your rights are, there's different ways in which it can be translated into states laws. So sometimes a refugee convention or a big treaty will be automatically part of a state's law. Sometimes it needs to be translated into national law. And under international law states have an obligation to translate their treaty obligations into the national law, but they might do it imperfectly. Why is this important for asylum processes and refugees? It means that often when you look at the refugee convention, you think, okay, somebody should be clearly a refugee and they've got a whole range of rights, right, to work, access to education, right? Not to be ‘refouled’, but they don't look like they're getting those rights in a particular country. And that's because there is often an imperfect translation of the refugee convention into the state's particular laws but international law says that they, have to translate it and they can't rely on a conflicting provision in their state law to say that's the reason why we didn't do our international law obligations.

You were talking about how if somebody has refused asylum, they'll be sent back. But then if that country refuses to bring them back, you'll send them to a neighbouring one. But how is that decided, which country to send them to if they can't be sent back to their home? 

Okay, this is a very challenging thing for states, and it is often something that states will do bilaterally. So, the EU, for example, has a framework in terms of mobility of people and the way that they share, those who come to, to Europe. But sometimes this can be difficult. And it will be something that will be up to the states concerned to try to find areas where people could go back to. Often this is worked through on a case-by-case basis, but it can be tricky. 

So, what actually happens to people after they become official refugees?

 It depends what country. But one of the things that we've seen is that when refugees are recognised in countries that give refugees the rights that normally go with refugees, they will be able to thrive, not just survive. So, what we've seen, an important part of when people get refugee status is being able to access work so they can pay taxes can access education. And once they're doing that, we see many examples of fabulous entrepreneurship by refugees. We saw in Poland, for example, we have a study done by a big accountancy firm that shows that Ukrainian refugees contributed a fair increase in GDP. So, the economic growth of Poland. And we see as well that when Ukrainians sought refuge in the EU they were given a status that allowed them to work and to contribute. So that is one of the big benefits. When people are recognized as refugees, they are able to contribute to the economy, to pay taxes, to become part of the fabric, and to be able to thrive and to make a positive contribution.

So, what kind of challenges do refugees and the countries they move to place? How does the UN Refugee Agency help solve these issues, especially for children and young people? 

I've mentioned some of the challenges that children have, and I think there's a range.  One is access to healthcare because you will have been through very traumatic situations. You might have had much of your money stolen and you might not have had much money in the first instance, to deal with being able to go to a pharmacy or at least to a GP. These things are very important, I think, and one of the challenges is that many refugees when they're fleeing big conflicts, they only go to neighbouring countries, and the neighbouring countries are not wealthy. So, there can be an issue of capacity of those governments to be able to not only give refugees the right to be part of the health system, but to have enough doctors and nurses and GPs and medicines to be able to take care. So that's a real challenge.  Secondly, education: access to the national education system. Now, if you're only away for a little time, if this is something that's only temporary being able to continue with your education in your own language and your own curriculum, can be important so that you can slot in back home. But if it's something that lasts a long time, and unfortunately a lot of situations last much longer because peace breaks out far less frequently than war then it's important that children can have access to the national education system. And this is something that we support both with our NGO partners who are education specialists, to be able to provide education to people, to have additional teachers that we, the international community pay for, and we can eventually teach the national curriculum so that refugee children can get a good start while they're away from home. Another element, that is important is having a national identity document and something that's recognised in a system. So much of what we do is electronic, to be recognised, to get a particular service. So, that's something that we can help as well with our work with governments to support them along with private sector tech experts so that the national systems can support refugees and others being part of the national identity system. 

I imagine when people have to leave in a hurry, they have problems with their documentation. So does the UNHCR have, a sort of protocol for what proof they may have to establish when they are seeking refugee status?

So, when we do a refugee status determination, we'll look at all of the evidence that comes across and thinking that in most countries and with most people, there's a big digital record. So, if there was an issue of a political position that people had taken and that they were persecuted for it, there would usually be something that they would be able to show or that we could find out on social media, that supports what people are saying. You raise a good question about documentation, what is interesting is that when people are seeing that there is danger, many will actually bring a passport. Having said that, many people don't have passports. So, what we also have responsibility in a role is in relation to convention documents and travel documents that can allow people without passports to, to travel.

 So, on a completely different path, can you tell us how you started working with UNHCR and as a general counsel and head of the Legal Affairs Service there, can you please explain your role? 

 Sure. So, my role at UNHCR is what I think is one of the best legal roles in the whole of the un. Because what I and my team do is that we support the operations of UNHCR, all of the contracting, the human resources, all of our relationships, our status as a UN body. So, we help our colleagues do the work. I have many other colleagues in the organisation who are refugee law experts. And we can leave the listeners some references to, watch some short videos of, for example, Patrick Iba, does a fantastic three-minute YouTube video on what is protection of refugees and why is it important. So, what I love about my job is that I help the whole organisation get the work done to support children and their families when they're fleeing violence. So, how did I get involved? I came from another refugee agency and for me, UNHCR was a logical next step because it was more global. It deals with refugees and more, but it's a doing agency and it's a supporting agency. And that for me is important. That's what drives me and my team and all of us at UNHCR is to think that that we can help make an, an impact on people's lives when they need it the most. So, I got it into it this way: I met a refugee as part of my first UN life. And it was the first time that I'd heard in the field such a story of strength and resilience. And at the time I hadn't, got a qualification in international law, but that was my moment, when in Kuwait I was interviewing, somebody with this amazing story and I thought, okay, that's where my life wants to be.

I have a question that I ask all of our guests, what were you like at 10 and did you have any ideas about what you wanted to do when you grew up? 

Okay, this is probably the hardest question that you've asked. I would say when I was 10, I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I grew up. As you can hear from my accent, I grew up in Australia.  What I recall from 10 was I wanted to do something with animals.  We've got lots of snakes in Australia, and actually I wanted to be a snake handler. But when I picked up a couple of snakes. When the second one that I picked up bit me, I quickly decided that this was not going to be the career for me. So, I didn't have any grand ambitions at the time, at the age of 10.  But I did love school, and I liked language.

Well, thank you so much, Lance. It was great to have you on the podcast today. Do you have any final advice for young people who would like to understand more about the work of UNHCR or refugees? 

I think two bits of advice. One, there's lots that you can hear about refugees, but I think go to the source where you can hear about real stories and positive stories. So, if you go to UNHCR.org we have a lot of stories there about refugees all over the world. We have an organization that is a companion organization in the UK called UK UNHCR, who have some great stories about refugees living in the UK. And that leads me to the second one, to get, to find out more about refugees and others. Have a look around you in your local community and reach out. And I think that you can have some great conversations like the ones I've had the privilege of having, whether in Lebanon, Uganda Somali land. Or elsewhere when you ask people to say, tell me where are you from? What are you doing now? You can have some of the most interesting conversations through just asking questions to people who are around you, in your community who come from a different background. 

 Really, really fascinating. Thank you very much.

 I'd just like to say thank you very much. I'm delighted to have been part of it.I think that our Constance and, and Lucinda, this is a great thing and for the focus of, of children. It's something that I've put my children onto. Great to meet both of you. Thank you. All

 Well, Alma, what do you think about what Lance told us? 

 Well, Lance told us about the difference between asylum seekers and refugees. Most people seek asylum because of dangers in their home country, so then they can be received as refugees and have the right not to be sent back. Only 1% of asylum seekers are given refugee resettlement status, and many will return to their own country when it's safe, such as Syria. And for some countries, UNHCR will assist those countries with money for education and shelter. 

 Yes. I thought it was very interesting that Lance mentioned too, that they were seeing another new reason for people leaving their countries in the South Pacific Islands. Rising sea levels mean that their land is disappearing.

 As we've learned, understanding the Lords and work of organizations like UNHCR helps you know more about your rights and responsibilities. We hope that our podcast will help you understand how laws are made and how the legal justice system works, and that this knowledge will help you make informed decisions not only about your life, but also when you are able to vote for an MP who will represent you in parliament and make the laws. Always remember, it's important to stay safe and reach out to a trusted adult or teacher. If you ever have any worries or questions, they're there to help you. For more information, you can always visit the kids law.info website. 

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Bye