Rights of Refugees

By: Tessa Bialek

This semester, my project has been to focus on the Rights of Refugees as they pertain to the Chapel Hill and Carrboro refugee population.

International human rights framework:

• 1951 United Nations Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, includes:

  • Commitment to family reunification

  • Freedom from discrimination

  • The right to wage-earning employment

  • The right to housing

  • The right to education.

Resources:

• Weekly interactions in a community ESL class

• Websites of local organizations

• Local newspaper articles

• Report: “People from Burma Living in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, An Action Oriented Community Diagnosis: Findings and Next Steps of Action” published in May 2007 <http://www.hsl.unc.edu/PHpapers/Orange_2007.pdf >

Chapel Hill and Carrboro offer many important services to the local refugee community, including:

• Free ESL services

• Health care

• Job placement assistance

• Resettlement assistance.

However, there are also many possibilities for improvement:

• The “People from Burma” study points to:

  • The inability of many to attend ESL classes due to schedule conflicts with work

  • Insufficient interpreter services

  • Lack of community organization

  • Lack of adequate health care knowledge as major concerns facing the local refugee community

• Also, since I began my research, there have been at least two cases of robberies targeting the local Burmese communities.

  • Leads to Fear

  • Doesn’t make the refugee community feel safe or welcome

• Celebrating the culture of the refugee community:

  • I could not find any information about celebrations of Burmese holidays or culture, even though I was actively seeking them out.

  • The “People of Burma…” report makes similar suggestions, noting the benefits of consolidating pertinent information on a website and trying to involve more people in the community (35). While their intention seems to be to make these resources available for the Burmese refugee community, a welcome side effect would be their availability to all Chapel Hill and Carrboro residents.

Economic Refugees:

• Based on a speaker from the NC Justice Center at the April 6^th Conference called 'Community Impacts of Local Responses to Undocumented Immigration'

  • Undocumented immigrants as 'economic refugees'

    • No legal definition for this exists - thus, undocumented migrants have no legal recognition or protection.

    • Everyone is worse off when people don't have equal rights, for example low income citizens in the same workplace as undocumented workers.

    • Many workplace abuses happen, ignored because the majority of workers are undocumented and thus, in our system, don't have the rights that they should have as human beings.

    • UN Declaration of Human Rights as relevant to the discussion of immigration:

    • Many of the problems facing the local undocumented immigrant community, such as community inclusion, availability of ESL and other services, and prevalence of crimes committed against them, parallel the problems facing the local refugee community. Thus, it is valuable to consider these two populations as linked.