Refugees and Human Rights, 60 Years Later

BEIRUT -- Sixty years ago, on December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a powerful, universal call to treat all human beings with dignity, respect, opportunity and equal rights. The 28 articles of the declaration are stunning in their simplicity, clarity and sheer human decency. The declaration remains a beacon of hope for those people around the world in situations of oppression, occupation or marginalization.

I especially admire the preamble, which says that, "...the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world," and adds that, "... if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law."

Also 60 years old this autumn is the Palestinian refugee situation. Curious about the linkage between these two anniversaries, I sat down for a chat in Beirut this week with Karen AbuZayd, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the body charged with meeting the basic needs of Palestinian refugees.

When I asked how she saw overall refugee conditions and needs, her reply was stark: "Of the 28 basic human rights in the Universal Declaration, not a single one is being observed in the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

In this anniversary week, it is worth recalling what happens when people's fundamental rights are ignored or denied for decades on end. AbuZayd's sole mandate is to provide the most basic human services to the refugees in the absence of a political agreement that ends their refugeehood. She knows about rights and refugees. 

She notes that in three of the five regions where refugees live -- Lebanon, West Bank and Gaza -- conditions are very bad and deteriorating in some cases. In Gaza, where she lives, troubling and measurable new signs of human distress are emerging, largely due to the impact of the Israeli closure of the borders for normal commercial traffic. Israel only opens the border once a week or so to allow minimum replenishment of UNRWA's stocks of food and medicine.

"Normal life has almost come to a halt," she says. "There is no money and so the banks and businesses cannot operate normally. Products smuggled in through tunnels are expensive and beyond the reach of most people. Basic services are erratic, including power, water, sewage networks. Cooking gas shortages are the latest problem, and we're now seeing people cooking with firewood in their apartments."

Even when charitable societies from Jordan recently sent in clothes and toys for children for the Islamic Eid el-Adha holiday, Israel did not allow them to enter. Two-thirds of Gaza's population is registered refugees who rely mostly on basic UNRWA food rations to survive, but these handouts only provide 60 percent of a person's daily caloric needs. UNRWA can just about keep refugees alive, but not much more than that.

"We're now seeing signs of the impact of the closures and the economic slowdown," she explained. "About half the children under the age of 5 years are anemic, and we're also seeing stunting among children, which takes years to develop." 

The attitudinal and political consequences of this are also clear. Anger, frustration and depression are fuelling two parallel trends: More and more people say they just want to leave in order to provide their children with an opportunity to live a normal life, while some politically active young men and women turn towards political extremism and militancy. The most troubling new phenomenon in this respect is the proliferation of very small groups of militants -- in Gaza but also in other parts of the region, like Lebanon -- who use the rhetoric of Al-Qaeda.

In contrast, in the two others areas where UNRWA operates -- Syria and Jordan -- refugees make good use of basic UNRWA services like education and health and otherwise largely take care of themselves. This is because in Syria and Jordan, she says, refugees are treated decently, enjoying virtually the same rights to work as citizens (most refugees are citizens in Jordan, despite living in refugee camps).

The juxtaposition is telling: when people enjoy basic rights, they focus on improving their lives and living in security and some hope for a better future. When they are mistreated and denied basic human rights, they become hopeless or desperate, and some embrace radicalism and militancy.

Sixty years ago this week, a Palestinian refugee population and a universal human rights declaration were both in their infancy. This is a timely moment to recall the relationship between the two concepts of refugeehood and human rights, and what happens when one is perpetuated, and the other denied.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.