UNC Human Rights: Rights of Refugees

Tessa Bialek

The 1951 United Nations Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees enumerates the rights guaranteed to refugees. Noteworthy guarantees are: a commitment to family reunification, freedom from discrimination, the right to wage-earning employment, the right to housing, and the right to education. These are valuable and essential standards to which all places with refugee populations should commit themselves.

Refugees are people who have lost their country. They are refugees from a conflict that endangers them or a government that persecutes them, people needing safety, resources, or a place to call home. The UNHCR – United Nations Refugee Agency - describes this “world of the stateless – people who do not have the right to own a passport of any particular state, who do not have a country to call their own and who often have minimal, if any, access to the kind of basic political and social rights that most citizens take for granted” (Questions and Answers, 4). Without a state to protect them, refugees are dependent upon the international community and people around the world to ensure their rights.

According to the North Carolina Division of Social Services, in 2006 more than 1500 refugees to the United States were resettled to North Carolina. Many of the refugees come to the triangle area. In my research, I found a blurb on the website of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants website that I thought I would share with you all tonight: “Some of the most welcoming and best-suited places in the United States for the refugees and immigrants who settle here are the smaller cities and towns beyond the main urban centers in which those newly arrived have traditionally concentrated. These smaller communities can offer services and opportunities not available or affordable in big cities. These communities are eager to welcome, support and integrate a diversity of foreign-born new residents” (“Preferred Communities Program”).

Every Wednesday morning, I help in a local ESL class. Currently, the class consists almost exclusively of refugees from Burma. Through my weekly interactions with these wonderful people, I have learned about many of the services (including the free ESL class) offered to local refugees. And, I have to say, I'm impressed. There are language classes, community-member sponsorship programs, job findings services, and more. I would like to think that Chapel Hill and Carrboro are prime examples of the aforementioned "most welcoming and best-suited places" for refugees.

However, it is vitally important to include a continued commitment to refugees when making Chapel Hill and Carrboro human rights cities. Though there are wonderful services offered to the refugees I work with, there are also serious deficiencies. The ESL program doesn't have the funding for new books, dictionaries, or enough teachers. In my class, the most beginning level, it is not unusual for there to be more than 30 students and only one or two teachers. Often, my students quit coming to class after only a few weeks because they must begin working. The students who do have work do not have it easy. Two students clean buildings on campus from midnight to 8am, coming to English class after 8 hours of work. Another student, supporting a wife and three children, has to work two jobs because he was only given 35 hours of work each week at his primary job - 40 hours would have required that he be given benefits. As you can see, there is room for improvement. I hope that the local refugee community and international refugee rights standards are important considerations as the steering committee begins the Human Rights Cities process. Thank you.