There is something unreal in the scenes we are seeing on the nightly TV news. Inflatable boats packed shoulder to shoulder with men, women and children crossing the Mediterranean in the hope of making a new and safer life in Europe. These are people fleeing for their life from war being waged between religions in Africa and the Middle East. The United Nations charter applicable to refugees demands that they be accepted and given shelter. This seems to be a collision between humanity and practicability. We are talking about the possibility that the southern states of Europe may be called upon to absorb numbers equal to their present local population.
This United Nations charter demands that the receiving country accept responsibility for recording the details and giving a number to all incoming migrants - and taking responsibility for their future well being. It is assumed that the combined countries of Europe will share in the distribution of finding homes for these people - and that is sadly lacking.
It is distressing to know that rescue operations have been scaled back because of costs - and opposition to this wave of new arrivals completely changing the the lifestyle of host countries - and that hundreds are drowning making an unsafe crossing of the Mediterranean. Perhaps the thinking is wrong and the attention of the United Nations should be concentrated in creating safe enclaves in the home countries of these refugees - and if necessary arming and training them in their own defence.
The present thinking completely ignores the cost and social upheaval of assimilating vast numbers of people with a different lifestyle, religion and customs on the home populations of countries that just happen to be geographically the nearest point to which such refugees make a landing. The United Nations pleads with other countries to share the load, but when they fail to respond - simply shrugs it's shoulders and walks away. Surely the receipient country receiving refugees has a right to maintain the customs and lifestyle that represent it's own individuality as a sovereign nation.
It seems to be the objective of the United Nations to put in place a peace plan - and mostly this rewards the aggressor. Religious intolerance is usually the base factor in oppression and in some cases it is actually the legitimate government of that country which is oppressing a sector of it's own people. They flee - because they lack the weapons with which to defend themselves. In many cases the only practical solution is a division of boundaries within that troubled country to create a separate homeland for warring religions.
The United Nations tends to completely disregard the rights of countries on the receiving end of refugee streams, but is scrupulous in defending the legitimacy of whoever is in power in a regime at war with it's own people. The time is long past in abiding by lines on maps drawn in colonial times to suit the great powers of those days. If that means sub-division and the creation of new countries to suit religious divide - then so be it !
The United Nations came into being at the end of the second world war and set it's charters based on the events that were happening at that time. Unless it recognises that we now live in a different world there is every chance that refugee flows will change and recreate frictions in other settled parts of he world that will recreate the divisions that caused people to flee in the first place.
Perhaps the most basic right that one person can give to another - is the means of self defence !
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