World Refugee Update

   Working with refugees is an eye-opening experience; while we receive periodic surprises in our dailly and weekly interactions with them, their existence also forces us out of our municipal and national bubble. The world is big, even though Spokane and the United States seem fairly isolated, and things keep on happening "out there." This is an update on the latest refugee crisis in Africa.

   The European Commission Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO) reports that:

An estimated 110,000 refugees have fled from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) following inter-tribal clashes over fishing rights in October and November 2009. The majority of the refugees crossed the Ubangui river into the Republic of Congo and have settled in villages along a 600km stretch of the river

   Which is pretty terrible, but I suspect that we won't hear anything about it in the mainstream media for a few weeks. Or, perhaps, ever. Something else that probably won't show up in the mainstream media, now that the Olympics are over, is this Canadian hubbub: seven people have claimed refugee status after coming to Vancouver, BC, ostensibly to watch the Olympics. From Hungary, Japan, and Russia, Canada's Conservative Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is busy a) calling their claims "ridiculous" and b) preventing declared homosexuals from immigrating to Canada. Which makes me wonder if Kenney is in line with the rest of Stephen Harper's government.