{"id":2553,"date":"2017-06-12T06:51:28","date_gmt":"2017-06-12T06:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/socialchangeschool.org\/2017\/06\/farida-bena-through-migrant-eyes\/"},"modified":"2024-03-18T14:19:51","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T14:19:51","slug":"farida-bena-through-migrant-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialchangeschool.org\/en\/12\/06\/2017\/farida-bena-through-migrant-eyes\/","title":{"rendered":"Development, Migration and NGOs: \u201cThrough Migrant Eyes\u201d by Farida Bena"},"content":{"rendered":"
THROUGH MIGRANT EYES<\/a><\/strong>, the latest post by Farida Bena,<\/strong>\u00a0published on her Blog Kiliza, Listening to Southern Citizens<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/div>\n
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“Ever since I started working in development<\/strong> I have been struck by how little we talk about its linkages with migration<\/strong>. Most NGOs specialise in either\/or. Very few of them have the courage or the capacity to address migration and development together despite the fact that these issues are often two sides of the same coin<\/strong>.<\/div>\n
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If anything, the growing influx of migrants and refugees into Europe has forced us to start making that link in earnest. Never before have so many people been forced to flee their homes, nearly sixty million<\/a><\/strong> worldwide \u2013 the equivalent size of Italy\u2019s population. According to UNHCR<\/a>, the United Nation\u2019s refugee agency,\u00a0more than half of the Syrian population<\/a> has moved since the start of the war<\/strong> \u2013 exactly five years ago this month \u2013 either within borders or out of the country. Three quarters of Syrian refugees are women and children.<\/p>\n

We are all familiar with the grim images of refugee families desperately trying to escape conflict. Yet, do we actually know what they think, what they left behind, or what they seek?<\/strong> Of those sixty million we hear but a few sound bites in the evening news, anecdotal interviews that lead us to make the same assumptions about an Ivorian man stranded on a boat to Sicily as about an Afghani mother walking with her family to Germany. The arbitrary link that is often made between migration, refugees and terrorism only makes things worse, especially in the wake of the recent attacks in Brussels. \u00a0Where do we go to turn the picture straight?<\/p>\n

A starting point might be to look for more diversity in perspective.<\/strong> For example, the International Organisation for Migration<\/a> (IOM) runs a campaign called \u201cI am a migrant<\/a><\/strong>\u201d exactly to show that migration is diverse and far more nuanced than we tend to think. There are hundreds of different stories, from a Sierra Leonean journalist recounting\u00a0how she fled\u00a0civil war back home to a Pakistani young man explaining that\u00a0his family had no alternatives but to leave for the UK, to a Syrian father remembering how he convinced his four children to board a dinghy in the Mediterranean by telling them they would \u2018go fishing\u2019:<\/p>\n

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