EVERYBODY'S CHALLENGE - Jesuit Refugee Service | USA

Forced displacement is now a problem that affects every continent
and region of the world. During the last 20 years almost every
country in Africa has produced refugees, or received them. Whole
generations of people in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe
know no other life than that of a refugee camp. Denied an education,
children lack hope for the future. Adults lose their roles, their skills
and dignity. Communities are forced into dependency. Cultures atrophy.
Lost generations linger in legal, social and political limbo,
largely ignored by the international community. At moments when
high profile crises do attract media coverage, refugees’ lives are in
danger of distorted reporting...
Africa
Africa is the main refugee-generating continent, and also the most
hospitable to refugees. Political and ethnic conflicts in the Great
Lakes region, especially Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic
Republic of Congo, have generated millions of refugees in the last
decade alone. Most have remained within the region and within
their own countries, or have crossed into neighbouring Tanzania,
Uganda, Kenya and Zambia. The upheaval in Congo-Brazzaville,
largely unexamined in Western newspapers, has uprooted at least
half a million people.
The Horn of Africa still witnesses armed conflicts that force
millions to search for safety. The conflict in southern Sudan has
displaced over four million people. Eritrea’s struggle for independence
from Ethiopia spans almost 40 years, its latest bloody episode
fought out in a period of famine. Eritrea and Tigray, once allies, have
engaged in fratricide killing thousands. Somalia remains fragmented
after the post-Cold War collapse of Syed Barre’s dictatorship, artificially
propped up for too long. Those who flee such conflicts in the
Horn are to be found, for the most part, in Uganda, Kenya and Egypt.
In southern Africa, Mozambique continues to absorb millions
of people: refugees, demobilised soldiers and internally displaced
persons repatriating after years of war. Despite floods, a disastrous
cyclone and bitterly contested elections, Mozambique offers its people
increasing freedom and a growing economy. Angola should be
on the same path following the peace accord of 1994. Instead, it has
plunged back into a war fuelled by mineral wealth. The venality of
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