Shame on us - 82.4 million refugees

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

The Dominican saint and theologian Thomas Aquinas says that what we need to note is what is being said and not who it is who says it. I think you could argue the pros and cons of that.

Earlier this month I was scanning the letters page of The Irish Times when I spotted a letter written by Siobhan Walsh. While I was working in the press office in Concern Worldwide Siobhan was also working with Concern and we met on a number of occasions.

She is now chief executive officer of Goal. Goal is an international humanitarian response agency, founded by Irish journalist John O’Shea in 1977.

Siobhan’s name caught my attention so naturally I read the letter. The treasure trove that it opened for me.

The following day, Sunday, June 20, was World Refugee Day and Siobhan was highlighting the plight of refugees.

Some of the statistics are simply horrendous. There are 82.4 million refugees around the world and it is the highest number ever recorded. Approximately 34 million of that number happen to be children. That is simply shocking.

And for you and me those figures are just numbers.

When I read Siobhan’s letter I was on a three-day break in West Kerry with everything at my disposal. 

But so it is with me every day. I never have to worry where I am going to sleep or how I’ll manage to get my food. I take it all for granted. Is it possible for someone like me to understand what life must be like for refugees?

Reading Siobhan’s letter and then going off and finding out more information on the subject I began to feel ashamed of myself. I can get agitated if I find out I have run out of oranges for my breakfast. And what are we doing as a nation for refugees? Since the beginning of 2020 Ireland has resettled 250 refugees. 

Sweden, which has a population twice the size of Ireland resettles 5,000 refugees annually.

Since last November a war in northern Ethiopia has caused two million people to lose their homes.

Pope Francis has referred to the Mediterranean as ‘the largest cemetery in Europe’. He is talking about those poor miserable people who have paid large sums of money to smugglers to flee their homes and then end up at the bottom of the sea.

The picture is bleak.

Surely we in the West have a grave responsibility to bang heads together to come up with a solution to the problem of refugees.

Right now Ireland has a seat at the UN Security Council. As an Irish tax payer may I scream out to our representative on the Security Council to fight like hell on behalf of the 82.4 million refugees.

Refugees are forced to leave their homes usually as a result of war and violence. They’d much prefer to stay at home but they simply can’t.

To think that the weaponry that is driving people out of their homes is the same weaponry that is making billions for the armaments industry and the large corporations that support them.

Why do we let this cruelty happen?