REFUGEE QUOTES
quotations about refugees
We came here to find refuge
They called us refugees
So we hid ourselves in their language
until we sounded just like them.
Changed the way we dressed
to look just like them
Made this our home
until we lived just like them.
J.J. BOLA
"Refuge"
To be called a refugee is the opposite of an insult; it is a badge of strength, courage, and victory.
TENNESSEE OFFICE FOR REFUGEES
It is useless to describe to you the fear, the crying, the smell of death surrounding us until we left that day. Useless to describe how many people in my family, how many friends perished in that very city we all called home. Useless to describe that until we arrived in Lisbon all of three us, even me at six, did not believe we had made it alive. Useless to say that even after all of it was over, the sound of Guy Fawkes fireworks still threw me into a frenzied state locked in my undergraduate accommodation crying.
YOVANKA PAQUETE PERDIGAO
"Do a Little More: A Black Woman Reflects on Global Crisis", For Harriet
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won't let you stay.
WARSAN SHIRE
"Home"
No one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land.
WARSAN SHIRE
"Home"
I'm here in this place that should be Heaven on Earth: on the island of Lesvos, Greece. You can see turkey in the distance. Gorgeous hills. Quaint villages. Mighty coastlines. But as we drove along the coastline to get to the North of Lesvo, we could see that the beaches were all littered with rubber boats and life jackets. It's haunting. and yet so easy to ignore as just trash if I didn't know the refugees' stories. If I hadn't hugged them and seen their smiles. If I hadn't seen the desperation in their eyes. If I haven't heard the stories of what they when through to get this far from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and more.
ANITA WING LEE
"When Did We forget? How the Refugee Crisis is Revealing Our True Capacity as Humans", Huffington Post, February 5, 2016
In countries where people have to flee their homes because of persecution and violence, political solutions must be found, peace and tolerance restored, so that refugees can return home. In my experience, going home is the deepest wish of most refugees.
ANGELINA JOLIE
interview, BBC News, April 8, 2004
The old model of help for refugees, which is that you've got short term social service and that came from the international community and when the war was over you went home, that's broken down because the average refugee is out of their own country for 17 years.
DAVID MILIBAND
"Global refugee crisis is here to stay, says humanitarian chief David Miliband", Reuters, January 19, 2016
Only last week, new statistics showed that children in London who don't have English as a first language were outperforming the national average at GCSEs. Immigrants and refugees who come here want to integrate and want to contribute -- if we give them the opportunity.
JONATHAN PORTES
The Independent, January 31, 2016
I do not know where I am going, where I have come from is disappearing, I am unwelcome and my beauty is not beauty here. My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing. I am the sin of memory and the absence of memory. I watch the news and my mouth becomes a sink full of blood. The lines, the forms, the people at the desks, the calling cards, the immigration officers, the looks on the street, the cold settling deep into my bones, the English classes at night, the distance I am from home.
WARSAN SHIRE
Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth
The refugee crisis is a direct result of both colonialism and in the modern era, neo-colonialism, the more sophisticated incarnation of modern capitalism, implementing its own barbarism under the perverse justification of 'humanitarian' intervention. In other words, as Europe's thinking goes, "It's not enough that we used to occupy and colonize you, you clearly remain incapable of governing yourselves, and so therefore, it is our job to come and do it for you, and to democratize you in the form of bombs and McDonalds. When you come to our shores fleeing our bombs, we will do anything and everything to avoid blaming those who should be blamed including politicians, the wars they advocate, and the consumerism we worship." It is this psychology, or psychological deficiency depending on your view, which underpins the origin of the refugee crisis, and also which now, rather than seeking to diagnose it, will do anything to explain away what is happening--except of course look at the actual cause.
RICHARD SUDAN
"Gangs, populism, and conspiracy theory overshadow West's role in refugee crisis", RT, February 2, 2016
I want to lay down, but these countries are like uncles who touch you when you're young and asleep. Look at all these borders foaming at the mouth with bodies broken and desperate.... I spent days and nights in the stomach of the truck; I did not come out the same. Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body.
WARSAN SHIRE
Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth
Seeking asylum is a human right.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying--
leave
run away from me now
i don't know what i've become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here
WARSAN SHIRE
"Home"
Refugees are neither seen nor heard, but they are everywhere. They are witnesses to the most awful things that people can do to each other, and they become storytellers simply by existing. Refugees embody misery and suffering, and they force us to confront terrible chaos and evil.
ARTHUR C. HELTON
The Price of Indifference: Refugees and Humanitarian Action in the New Century
Refugees are not terrorists. They are often the first victims of terrorism.
ANTONIO GUTERRES
Twitter post
I would have surrendered the God I don't possess,
I would have learned three or four symbols,
and thus discouraged,
thus loyal, ashen,
invariably like an atrocious memory,
he would have responded,
he would have transformed me into manners,
he would have convinced me like everyone,
refugee in the universal hunger,
saved forever and for nothing.
MARIO BENEDETTI
Only in the Meantime & Office Poems
If we lived in a just world, all nations would protect their citizens' human rights. But that's not our world. Refugees are just one result of injustice. Crucially, they didn't cause their plight; rather, they are victims of profound injustice. Because their home nation cannot or will not protect even their basic human rights, they must migrate in search of protection. They are entitled to this protection, as all of us are, simply by virtue of being human.
PATTI TAMARA LENARD
"Who should pay for the refugees? Here are five possible answers.", Washington Post, February 8, 2016
The exile is a singular, whereas refugees tend to be thought of in the mass ... What is implied in these nuances of social standing is the respect we pay to choice. The exile appears to have made a decision, while the refugee is the very image of helplessness.
MARY MCCARTHY
Occasional Prose
Since refugees are a global problem, the search for solutions must also be global.
GIL LOESCHER
A World Where Everyone Belongs