We all share a love for travelling but what if you do not travel by choice…
For many thousands this is not a hypothetical scenario or a rhetorical question.
Some people are forced to leave the land that they have lived on all their lives. They have no choice. 625,000 refugees from Rakhine, Myanmar, have been estimated to have crossed the border into Bangladesh since August 2017.
All around the world, people are forced to make the difficult decision, that will heavily impact the rest of their lives, to flee their own countries.
Reasons for fleeing can include: civil war, persecution, poverty, violence and natural disasters. These refugees are forced into vulnerable situations to flee from the dreadful situations in their own countries.
Through these journeys refugees hope for a better future for themselves and their family. A future in which they are safe; from persecution, violence and violation of human rights. However, these journeys share large risk and danger. Some are vulnerable to exploitation and human trafficking and through desperation many will take extreme routes to flee, with the very possible outcome of death. Thousands of poor men, women and children fleeing conditions, primarily in Honduras, intend to seek asylum in Mexico and the US. These people have traveled in extreme conditions in two caravans, each with 3,000 migrants, trailed behind by several groups with hundreds of more migrants.
The suffering does not end there, some will be detained by authorities, others to seek refuge at borders in camps with little resources.
In a recent interview with CNN a Syrian refugee shared that with the suffering refugees experience “a book could be written every hour of everyday”
Is travel a luxury taken for granted?
Saher Ahmed
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