The mis-treatment of refugees is making huge headlines in the US tonight, and in a timely coincidence, the World Day of the Refugees was observed in Belize today with an art exhibition which brings to the forefront the struggles of displaced persons. We spoke to the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees:
Kelleen Corrigan - UNHCR Protection Officer
"The exhibition that you're seeing here today is the Refugi Arte exhibition and it actually - this exhibition started in 2015 which became some of artist coming together to really talk about what's happening with in their language, artistic language that they know to talk about the crisis of people having to flee their homes and the initial start of the Refugi Arte actually came from 2015 when the young Alan Kurdi the young 3 year old Syrian boy who was washed up and found in Turkey. A lot of other spontaneously started to create and really talk about through their art the refugee crisis and so this is regionally. You'll see here a regional artist talking about what they see and you'll see a lot about people having to be uprooted and having to flee and unfortunately that's the reality and what we want is to help support Belize and other states to provide protection to these persons and ensure that they can have doable solutions at the end."
We also asked Corrigan about the broader plight of displaced persons, whose global numbers are more than ever right now:
Kelleen Corrigan
"Refugees are persons that are forced to cross borders to save their lives, to help their families, to run away from wars and violence and so there are more people now that are refugees than of anytime since we've been recording the statistics. This means that people all over the world are affected and we need to really ensure that there is a day, at the very least every day should be a day we consider how to provide protection and solutions for these persons but this is the one day a year at least that we're able to come together and really think about what is the plight that these people have suffered and how can we all come together to rectify the situation. UNHCR we keep the global figures that the states provide around the world as far as persons refugees and also internally displaced persons and other persons who's had to flee their homes and unfortunately 68 million persons have been forcibly displaced at the end of 2017, those were the numbers which is the highest number that we've seen at any time. The majority of those persons are actually coming to low and medium income countries, so countries that need support of other states that are able to help provide support for them, those are the kind of things that we are also are concerned about."
World Refugee day is being observed worldwide today.
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