Lefkoşa’s SOS Children’s Village has issued a fresh call for the TRNC to adopt policies that ensure the “integration and inalienable human dignity and rights” of asylum-seekers.
The organisation acts as a bridge to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), issed a statement to mark June 20’s World Refugee Day.
Its message read: “Twenty people are forced to flee their home, town or country in search of a safer and better place on average every 10 minutes.
“Last year, eight people per day died in the Mediterranean in their journey of ‘hope’ after being forced to flee oppression and war in their home country.
“No-one wants to put their family in a small boat and go to sea at the mercy of traffickers, but for those people the sea becomes a safer choice than staying on land. If that’s the case, we have to stop and think.”
The statement went on to say that the world was “witnessing an unprecedented humanitarian plight”, it said, adding: “As of today 68.5 million people have been forced to flee their home and ask for asylum in other countries; 25.4 million people have been refugees and half of those refuges are below 18, which means 13 million child refugees being deprived of children’s fundamental rights and trying to survive in the world, as a result of conflict, natural disaster and political instability they are not responsible for.”
Cyprus Today
