Refugee organization decries 'warehousing' of world's refugees

Published: 2004-05-27

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- More than half the world's refugees spend their days isolated in camps where they have little opportunity to work or rebuild their lives, the U.S. Committee for Refugees reported May 24. While more than a million refugees and internally displaced people have been able to return home in the last year because of changing political situations in Afghanistan, Burundi, Angola and Iraq, more than 7 million of the remaining 12 million refugees worldwide live a restricted existence in warehouse-style camps, with little hope of improvement, said Lavinia Limon, executive director of the committee. "Warehousing is an ugly term," Limon said at a Washington press conference. "But it's not half as ugly as the reality." Many of the people in refugee camps and segregated settlements have lived there for a decade or more, the committee's annual World Refugee Survey said. "Clearly international law has been routinely violated," Limon said.

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