WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A REFUGEE?
In theory, refugee settlements are temporary places where people can find safety and support until it is safe for them to return to their own country, their own homes. The reality is far different.
To be a refugee means to become permanently homeless – to be without a country and without any of the rights accorded to citizens of the country in which the refugees are housed. Refugees depend on impersonal government (and international) agencies for food, shelter, and safety. Everything they have is temporary and subject to the political whims of politicians elected by and responsive to others.
The myth that they will be able to return to their home excuses the shoddiness of their housing, the callousness of their treatment. But refugee camps are, in fact, not temporary. Families live in them for decades, often restricted to specific areas, forbidden to work, forgotten and living without hope.
Very little thought is directed towards integrating refugees into the local economy, into the host country’s population, or into finding a permanent home for them elsewhere. Their future is put off as generations pass. Back home, their abandoned properties disintegrate from neglect, or are taken over by the oppressors that drove them out. In the camps, former scholars and professionals once highly respected for their wisdom and skill in their home county, now watch helplessly as their grandchildren grow up to become near illiterate scavengers.
When Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in 1971, Bengalis who opposed independence were stripped of their nationality and placed in camps managed by the ICRC (International Committee for the Red Cross & the Red Crescent) with the expectation that they would be sent to Pakistan. Decades later, these individuals and their descendants still reside in these camps in Bangladesh. The population has increased significantly, resulting in highly cramped conditions. What were once camps on the outskirts of cities have now been engulfed by urban sprawl, transforming into slums.
(Palestinian families have been living as refugees in various Middle Eastern countries since 1948.)
For Afghan refugees in Pakistan, this “temporary status” has stretched on for over 40 years, during which many of their villages in Afghanistan, including essential infrastructure like orchards, cultivable land, and canals, have been destroyed due to ongoing conflict and natural disasters, making the prospect of return increasingly unfeasible.
In addition to refugees from other countries, Pakistan must also deal with internally displaced persons (IDPs) whose homes have been destroyed by floods, drought, earthquakes, or conflict.
For all of these refugees – displaced populations – there is no going back and no going forward.
So let’s take a moment to examine the details of the lives that these refugees actually endure.
Refugees are often housed in camps where their mobility is restricted. In some countries, they are entirely confined to these camps. Refugees are typically provided with basic housing, typically tents. In some cases refugees are allowed to build structures from mud or other materials they can find at hand. This was the case with Afghan refugees in Pakistan in the 1970s and 80s who were often settled in rural areas. But more recent arrivals from Afghanistan have been settled in tented camps in or near urban areas.
These camps are typically provided with WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) facilities that are constructed according to standards set by the UN to provide for the refugees’ bathing and toilet needs. But international standards mean “one size fits all” and take no account of the local customs and needs of the refugees for whom they are intended.
The WASH facilities in the tent camps of Pakistan, for example, feel unsafe to the Afghan women:
“Sanitation is a problem. We used to take showers in our fortress-like homes. Now we have to walk through crowds of strangers to public tents that contain wash facilities, including showers and toilets with only a piece of cloth hanging between us and people we don’t know. Many of us feel dishonoured and disrespected by such facilities, where every sound can be heard and we cannot be sure that no one sees us. We prefer to dig a hole in the floor of our tent.”
The unsuitability of these facilities is obvious to anyone with knowledge of the local culture, but humanitarian organizations and UN agencies are obligated to follow standards set by their international headquarters in Geneva and New York.
During the current IDP crisis in Pakistan (which started in 2008), the flour provided to the IDPs was processed to remove starch, as western aid agencies believed starch-free flour would be healthier. However, this decision overlooked cultural and practical considerations. The IDPs, who were used to baking local flatbread, found it nearly impossible to use the starch-free flour on their traditional cooking plates, as the bread would break apart. It also wouldn’t adhere to the walls of traditional ovens, called Tandoors. Those who could afford to do so often sold the provided flour at a low price and purchased starch-containing flour at a higher cost. One IDP complained about the unsuitability of starch-free flour, adding:
“We are malnourished and need starch; we are not obese, suffering from diabetes and heart disease, sitting behind desks like the officials of the aid agencies.”
Additionally, the games introduced in child-friendly spaces, such as badminton, cricket, and games involving dice, are often not well-suited to life in the camps. Badminton, for instance, is impractical due to the open and windy conditions of the camps. Games using dice are culturally viewed as immoral and satanic, making them unacceptable for the community. Cricket, though popular in some regions, requires pitches that are seldom available in the camp settings. Once again international aid has failed to meet local needs. A better approach would be to promote indigenous and traditional games for the refugee children.
For women, especially, the transition from their former homes in rural communities to crowded urban camps and slums, has imposed new restrictions. It is in response to the dangers in the city that women have put on the burka, so that no one can tell who is young and who is old, who is beautiful, who is weak, who is vulnerable.
“When we lived in our village, our houses were like fortresses. We would go to the streams, gossip with each other, collectively bake bread in tandoors, and accompany the cattle to the pastures. Ever since we came to this camp, we are living in tents that are hot like hell during the daytime and freezing cold in the evening. We are surrounded by total strangers. If we sneeze It is heard across the tented village. We used to go out among our neighbours freely for work or socializing. Now we are afraid to leave our tents, and to protect ourselves from the gazes of total strangers, we have resorted to burkas, which are hot and uncomfortable and have limited visibility and restrictive mobility.”
“We used to travel freely around our home village. We gardened and brought vegetables into the house and cooked. We collected eggs and milked the cows. We foraged for wild spinach and other edible plants. We worked from dawn to dusk, and then would go to a deep sleep. But now we are confined to our tents and can only eat whatever food we are provided with. We seldom ate rice at home, but now we are provided mostly with rice and a bit of wheat flour from which the starch has been removed making it unfit to be baked into traditional breads. Where once we ate fresh vegetables, even wild vegetables, now we get mostly lentils.”
This kind of transition from freedom in the country to isolation and despair in the city is not limited to refugees from other countries. Internal migration from rural to urban areas brings similar restrictions on women’s lives and similar isolation for the men. As families move into urban slums, they find themselves surrounded by strangers with no outdoor activities possible and no protection from century-old traditions and systems that had been put in place in the community to keep women and children safe.
For example, in “women-friendly spaces”, aid agency employees educate women about their rights in accordance with the United Nations Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). However, this internationally mandated approach overlooks the loss of local mechanisms to protect these rights.
The isolation and despair of both men and women, along with agencies’ failure to recognize local customs, have led to increased family conflicts in the camps. These conflicts cannot be resolved simply by citing a list of women’s rights.
Women are sometimes convinced by aid workers to leave their families and seek refuge at a women’s shelter home. But during an assessment of a women’s shelter home in Abbottabad, Pakistan, we assigned two of our female colleagues to visit the shelter—one posing as a woman needing assistance and the other as her friend. The shelter was managed by a male warden who subjected them to intrusive personal questioning. The shelter’s conditions were dire. Some women were living there with their children, and due to limited space, they had to sleep shoulder to shoulder on thin cotton mattresses on the cold floor, even in winter temperatures as low as -1 degree Celsius. The shelter felt like a jail.
For example, the women need permission from a magistrate to leave the shelter, even for a hospital visit. But this permission can only be granted during official hours and can often take several days. And even with permission, the women must be escorted by police to the hospital in order to ensure their safety. This is also required to prevent women from escaping to return to their families.
Tragically, a woman in the Peshawar shelter home died because her appendicitis burst while awaiting permission. This shelter is just a stone’s throw away from a major hospital.
All the women in the shelter, when it was assessed, expressed a desire to reconcile with their families, from whom they were separated due to minor disputes or issues related to their rights. Many of these women reported feeling misled by NGO activists who had assured them that seeking refuge in the shelter would help pressure their families into granting them their rights. However, they were not informed that the shelter operated like a jail, governed by outdated colonial laws that required women to establish the fact that their lives were threatened in order to be admitted to the shelter. What they were not prepared for, was that to leave the shelter, they would have to prove that the threat had diminished, a long and complex legal process that requires a lawyer’s involvement.
The current shelter system is clearly deeply flawed. It is a poor replacement for a rural, community-based practice that provided temporary refuge for women with a prominent local woman, while family mediation with local elders searched for a solution that was fair for all.
There is a pressing need for activists and NGOs to establish more suitable shelter homes or halfway houses or to reestablish a community-based solution to family conflicts. They may need to lobby the government for necessary legal reforms that require shelters to provide comfort and respect, and to allow women themselves to decide when they are safe to leave. A first step would be to change the reporting and funding requirements that are currently based on the number of women housed in the shelter, to a system based on the quality of the shelter experience and the effective resolution of family problems.
For men, the transition to life in refugee camps is equally difficult. In their home countries, they were the family providers. But in the refugee camps they had no access to jobs, no way to provide anything beyond the food and clothing distributed by aid agencies. Whenever they went to the tents where their families stayed, the children would cry for food familiar to them, and for sweets or toys that were impossible for the men to provide. The fathers would often come to feel that it was better not to go to their tents, where they felt helpless. Instead, they would sleep in the mosques at night and spend their days outside, a short distance from the family tent so that they could be available to protect their families in an emergency, but not be subjected to constant requests that they could not fulfill.
The stress this would put on the family, of course, could lead to domestic discord and even to the loss of his wife if she ended up locked away in a women’s shelter.
As climate stresses, natural disasters, economic declines, and the violence of warfare cause major disruptions in all parts of the world, displaced persons are immigrating in increasing numbers. But as the number of refugees goes up, financial aid to support them is declining. Refugees once welcomed, and then tolerated, are increasingly singled out and unfairly targeted as the cause of the very international economic downturns and violent events that originally displaced them. The act of immigration itself becomes increasingly dangerous, and even those who seem long established in refugee camps can find themselves suddenly being uprooted and deported back to their homelands.
This is happening in Pakistan today. Afghan refugee families who have lived in Pakistan for decades are being forced to return to Afghanistan—where the lack of international aid makes access to opportunities and basic services even more limited than in Pakistan. Once back in Afghanistan they find themselves in IDP camps in their own country if their villages have become uninhabitable. In addition, they are at risk of being treated as criminals by a hostile government.
One Afghan said:
“We’re being asked to return to a place where many of us are seen as collaborators—interpreters or informants who supported interrogators now despised by those in power. What kind of welcome can we expect? Repatriation is not just a matter of returning; it is a question of survival. I wish we had stayed neutral and resolved our differences from within. Now, we are caught between two extremes—nationalists at heart, yet stranded as asylum seekers in cultures we do not belong to. Return is not just difficult—it is life-threatening.”
The issue of repatriation of refugees is both difficult and complex.
The decline in aid funding for refugee settlements reflects shifting priorities among global powers—particularly the G7, which controls a significant share of international aid. As new geopolitical crises emerge—such as the wars in Libya, Syria, and more recently Ukraine— attention and resources are redirected. This shift has left long-standing crises, such as the Afghan refugee situation, underfunded and deprioritized.
As one Afghan refugee elder put it:
“We were used in the war between the West and Russia. And when they started a new war with Russia in Ukraine, they forgot us. Soon, they will forget the Ukrainians too, once the global spotlight moves to another conflict zone.”
There are internal issues behind deportation as well.
When Afghan refugees first arrived in Pakistan, they were primarily settled in tented camps located in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. These camps were initially equipped with basic utilities such as electricity and water. Over time, the refugees began constructing mud walls around their tents, and within a year, many camps had evolved into informal villages comprising mud houses. Those with greater resources gradually built concrete structures to replace or expand their dwellings.
What began as temporary refugee settlements gradually transformed into semi-permanent villages, sometimes spanning several square kilometers. Aid agencies supported this evolution by providing health and education facilities, including an engineering and medical school. The development of such permanent infrastructure complicated efforts to repatriate the refugees, as the camps had turned into well-established communities.
Decades later, government policy changed and launched special operations to dismantle the houses and marketplaces built by refugees, as refugees were forced to return to Afghanistan, and IDPs needing shelter were introduced into the area and placed in tented camps where once concrete structures had stood.
At that time, Pakistan was experiencing repeated internal mass displacements due to both man-made and natural disasters. However, under the new government policy intended to discourage permanent settlements, the IDPs were now barred from building walls or constructing mud rooms around their tents to make structural improvements. This restriction led to significant hardship and resentment, with displaced Pakistani citizens expressing frustration over their exposure to harsh weather conditions and the perceived inequity of being denied basic improvements that had previously been allowed for refugees.
Government and aid agencies often justify this policy by arguing that permanent structures hinder the process of repatriation. Conversely, IDP families argue that they are being forced to return to their destroyed villages without adequate support or enough financial aid to rebuild their homes or reclaim their agricultural land. And Afghan refugees, who once felt gratitude to Pakistan at least for providing safety as a host country, now feel resentment at the current policy expelling them.
“After losing everything, we worked hard in Pakistan — often in the low-paying jobs that many Pakistanis refused to do. Now, once again, we are being pushed out. We are not even allowed to take our own assets with us, as if our years of labor and sacrifice mean nothing. This is not just displacement — it is the deliberate stripping away of our dignity, our livelihoods, and our future, leaving us with nothing but fear and uncertainty in Afghanistan.”
“We were born and raised in Pakistan, yet today we are treated as if we don’t belong. Pakistan gave us schools, language, and a life here, but now it wants to push us out to a country we don’t know, with no opportunities and no hope. Is this the reward for all the years our families lived and struggled here?”
“I am in 11th grade, and now Pakistan wants to send me back to Afghanistan in the middle of the school year, destroying my future. There are no real educational opportunities there, and I don’t even know their system. I was born and raised here; this is the only home I know. It was Pakistan’s wars, politics, and interference in Afghanistan that forced our families to flee here in the first place. Now, after using us for decades, Pakistan is pushing us out as if we are worthless. Why should we pay the price for problems Pakistan itself helped create?”
“We stood with the Western forces and with Pakistan from the very beginning of the Afghan conflict. Now we are branded as traitors. The privileges we once had have been stripped away, and worse, we are being forced back to Afghanistan — where persecution, retaliation, and violence await us. I beg the authorities in Pakistan to refrain, at the very least, from deporting those of us at greatest risk if sent back to Afghanistan — especially women and girls, journalists, and human rights defenders. I urge Pakistan to work with UN agencies to identify Afghans like me who face the gravest dangers. Sending us back is not just a journey across a border, it is pushing us into fear, persecution, and possible death.”
“Pakistan is pushing my family into disaster. I live with a chronic illness, and I know my treatment will be cut off. Mothers like my wife, children like mine, will face empty hospitals. Afghanistan’s health system is already collapsing, and hundreds of thousands more like us will only break it further. This is not neglect — this is forcing people into death and suffering. The world must not stay silent.”
Pakistani’s respond by mistrusting the refugees and accusing them of ingratitude.
“I cannot ignore how Afghan refugee camps have long been seen as safe places for terrorists to regroup and gain support. Time and again, the media has reported their involvement in criminal activities and even their links with external powers. This is how they repay us for hosting them for more than four decades — with suspicion, insecurity, and threats to our own people.”
“Whenever there’s a cricket match between Pakistan and India, most Afghans cheer for India. Their social media is full of support for Indians. And this after we’ve hosted them here since 1979! We gave them shelter for over forty years, and still they stand against us. That’s why people say, never trust an Afghan.”
When aid is given to refugees begrudgingly and then that is followed by wholesale deportations, the result is mutual resentment and suspicion, which cannot benefit peaceful relations between those countries going forward.
Ideally, repatriation of refugees and IDPs should proceed only with the informed consent of the affected populations. To ensure that their home environment is genuinely conducive to return, representatives of the displaced communities should be taken to assess their villages before being returned to the area. But this is not happening.
The world needs to find a more humane way to address these issues. At a time when conditions for refugees are even more unstable and desperate than ever, it doesn’t hurt to remember that there are other ways of dealing with these problems. Refugees can be welcomed and integrated into societies, and they can make important contributions to the local economy, especially if they are located in areas similar to their homeland. This has happened and could be encouraged to happen again.
For example, when Afghan refugees arrived in South Waziristan, Pakistan, in the early 1970s, they noticed that the land resembled their native terrain, where they used to grow orchards and vegetables. At that time, the local population of South Waziristan were primarily herders, with limited agricultural activity dependent on water from a system of canals. The refugees introduced their knowledge of irrigation by digging experimental tunnel wells, a technique developed in their homeland. Once the water began flowing, they partnered with local landowners to transform the barren lands into productive orchards with vegetables cultivated between the trees. As part of the arrangement, refugees shared 50% of the income with the landowners.
This innovative approach was soon adopted by the locals, turning the area into a thriving region known for apples, apricots, and various other fruits and vegetables. This transformation would not have occurred if the refugees had been confined to camps as they were in other parts of the country.
The world needs to learn from this experience in Pakistan. We already have a growing number of climate refugees, fleeing floods and drought and forest fires and other extreme weather conditions brought about as a result of climate change. The numbers will only continue to grow as increasing parts of the planet become uninhabitable. Refugees will overflow the camps set aside for them in the fewer and smaller areas that can support life, and their mistreatment and inevitable resentment will inevitably turn at least some of them into the danger their hosts already suspect that they are. This is a recipe for disaster. We simply cannot continue to herd people into isolated communities of poverty and despair and then forget about them.
It is not only dangerous, it is wasteful of human talent and ingenuity at a time when we need everyone working together to preserve life on our planet.
We need to turn our refugee ‘problem’ into a refugee ‘opportunity’. Instead of treating refugees and IDPs as burdens, as potential terrorists, as scapegoats for economic and environmental disasters, we need to welcome them as valued partners able to contribute to the economic well being of their host country. This shift from suspicion to generosity and hope requires a systemic shift that will allow us to find humane and practical solutions in local communities that can transform the nature of the refugee crisis worldwide.
At Focusing Initiatives International, we believe that such solutions can be found by listening. We listen to people in communities, tapping into local wisdom to determine which issues are crucial, what resources are available, what solutions are practical. Listening leads us to the discovery of people who are already thriving under adverse conditions and allows us to learn from them. Listening transforms both the listeners and the speakers, who are unleashed and energized when they realize that they are being heard. Listening designs programs that actually help communities heal instead of programs that provide the wrong kind of WASH facilities, the wrong kind of flour, the wrong interventions in family disputes.
The result is a model for the development of thriving communities, where the entire population is engaged and empowered. When a community takes the lead in finding and implementing its own solutions, individual refugees can find meaning in their daily routines and nurture hope for their children and grandchildren. They can build on their past to create their future, whether that means returning to rebuild their home country or creating a space for themselves by contributing to the well being of a welcoming host country.