‘South Asia has the fourth largest concentration of refugees in the world’. Thus began the first article of Refugee Watch issued a decade ago. This apparently simple sentence reflects both the clarity of vision and concern of Refugee Watch and of course of South Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR) and Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG) – the two organizations, responsible for bringing out Refugee Watch – to the issues of refugees in South Asia.

We have selected portions of Anug Phyro's and Tapan Bose's apparently dated article, ‘Refugees in South Asia: An Overview’ only to show our readers how from the very first issue Refugee Watch relentlessly engaged itself with such a huge human crisis in this part of the world. However, besides the conventional South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries, some articles, included in this section, also narrate the situations in Afghanistan (historically, in case of Afghanistan) and Burma.

Another important piece, ‘Internally Displaced Persons in Sri Lanka’, by Joe Williams, is also a dated one, published in Refugee Watch in its second issue. However, notwithstanding the dated nature of data, it is indeed an extensive article on the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in a country that is, for more than two decades, torn in an almost perpetual ghastly strife. Williams analyses the geographical dimension of the problem and concentrates on north-east Sri Lanka, especially on the Jafna peninsula, mostly populated by the Sri Lankan Tamils.

The more refugees suffer, the more women suffer. Women and their dependent children constitute over 80 per cent of the world's refugee population. This sheer quantity makes the refugee issue largely and qualitatively a gender issue. In this section, a host of writers and activists pen the pains and agony of hapless women whose sufferings as ‘refugees’ reflect the general condition of their servitude to existing social conditions of oppression even during the so-called merrier times. But, this victimhood is only one part of the tale; the other part is the story of the rising of women as agents of resistance and change, and thereby of politics. Not only in the present times of so-called ‘empowerment’ of women, but in all the ages, they stood up to do so, employing the available means of their times. So do the refugee women of today's world: they suffer and struggle.

However, in the post-partition (1947) Indian subcontinent scenario, women suffered doubly when an attempt was made by the consensual decision of the prime ministers of India and Pakistan, to repatriate the ‘persons’ (mainly raped women), abducted during the outbreak of the worst ever communal riot on the eve of partition, on both sides. A law was duly passed by Indian Parliament on this issue. Paula Banerjee unfolds the politics of such an impracticable and insensitive approach towards women (because they constituted the highest number among these ‘persons’ and, secondly, although they were citizens, age wise, in the eyes of the law, but had no voice over the one-sided decision) by the androcentric newborn states.

21 Feb 2002

Dearest Aditi

How are you doing, hope things are fine there. You know, I really wished to deliver you better news than what I am writing here. I am sorry for not being able to write earlier, cos I was busy registering for the coming semester at the University. I am sure that you heard about the situation here, tension is increasing, and Sharon (the cow) is increasing things. The rise of the terrible and horrible situation meant to scare the Palestinians and to make them go back. 33 martyrs in 24 hours is a disaster, a catastrophe. Nothing would make them differentiate between a woman, a child, an old man, or anything else. You can say that the people here are full of fear, but they deeply believe that they have no other choice.

The history of human civilizations is also the history of human displacements. Civilizations are both inclusive and exclusive. They foster a sense of unity among different social/cultural groups in given times and places; create loose yet culturally homogenizing identities, and, by the same token, alienate others, who could not be fit in the schemes of such homogeneity; identify them as ‘aliens’ and even ‘enemies’; and, in may instances, purge them from the so-called geopolitical territories of given civilizations, giving birth to ancient Greek words like ‘exodus’ and ‘diaspora’.

There have been displaced populations for millennia. We are told in the Exodus how the persecuted and enslaved Israelites fled Egypt. In the sixth century, persecuted Muslims fled Mecca for Medina in the Hijra and the fifteenth century saw the mass expulsion of Moors and Jews during the Spanish Inquisition.

However, in the contemporary world, World War II and its aftermath was the watershed event in the history of the refugee problem. The tragedy of forced exile still exists and is growing throughout the world, so the last century has in fact been described as the ‘century of refugees’. Many of them, like the Palestinians living in numerous camps, have endured this traumatic experience for years or even generations, without ever having known any other type of life. According to an estimate, there were about 22 million refugees in the world in 2001.

India is generally considered as a generous host to the refugees compared to her neighbouring states. But, there is hardly any place for complacence. In recent years, government policies have become more stringent and discouraging. This is evident in the case of Sri Lankan Tamils (particularly after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi) and also in the case of Bhutanese refugees of Nepalese origin, who had been detained and then sent back to Nepal. It is time to review the situation of the external shelter seekers in India. But equal, if not more attention must be devoted to the alarmingly increasing number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in India, who have lost their homes on various accounts.

Samir Das and Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury in a very useful article seek to fill this gap, at least conceptually. In ‘Population Displacement in India: A Critical Overview’, they propose a very important ‘Typology of Internal Displacement’, which is immensely helpful, especially for beginners: both academics and activists. The authors classify this phenomenon into five broad categories and hold insightfully: ‘The fact that some communities are perpetually vulnerable to displacement than some others speaks of a deep – yet undeclared divide within the Indian society between the so-called “nationalist mainstream” and the outside’.

This section contains five articles. The first two reflect on the problems and prospects of refugee representation in creative literature as well as in the media. The business of representation is drawing keen theoretical attention in recent years. Modes of representation are being seen as arenas for textualizing and performing subjectivity. Essentially, ‘representation’ is a work of substitution. The process of representation substitutes somebody/something for the other, in order to re-present somebody/something with an ‘original’ point of reference. Thus, in the process, it becomes a kind of un/intentional distortion/deformation of ‘the original’, whatever might be the amount (lesser/greater) such distortion/ deformation.

The risk of such distortion/deformation runs through all attempts of representation. This can be done by an ‘outsider-powerful’ or an insider/self-representative. This point occupies the centre of a debate, which began since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism (1978). In this seminal work, Said famously quotes a line from Marx's The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, to describe the desire of the ‘outsiderpowerful’ (in this case, the Western ‘Orientalist’ scholars) to represent the (mute and weak) Orient: ‘They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented’. This desire to represent the mute Orient led the Orientalists to rebuild/refashion the Orient according their (imperialist) imagination.

Although the postcolonial self-representation (of the formerly colonized) seeks to invert the colonial/imperialist (distorted) representation of the native, the same theoretical objections can be raised against an indigenous self-representation, since it reintroduces the problem of the theoretical impossibility of simply producing a ‘true’ representation.

Can the marginalized speak? Can ‘we’, who have not lost our homes, truly understand the nuances of the words of pain and agony expressed by the displaced/refugees? It is a difficult task no doubt, especially from the point of the theoretical jigsaw, proposed by postmodern writers. But, disregarding such academic nonsense, people in every age have come forward to the suffering humanity – with sympathy to listen to their voices and with commitment stand by them.

Refugee Watch, the committed friend of the refugees/displaced people of the world, has occasionally sought to present such voices to its readers in the form of interviews or sometimes through ‘personal’ correspondence. The literature of marginalized voices, expressed in the forms of personal diaries, letters and interviews, also known as ‘testimonials’, should not be judged as statements of ‘pure’ truth. Beyond the conventional yardsticks of truth or falsity, they can be seen as catharsis – the process of venting out the emotions of the victim/marginalized. Thus, besides having factual and historical importance, they give us a chance to understand ‘the mind’ of the refugees, or rather ‘minds’.

In this section, we have chosen some of this literature, voiced by the victims and also by a sympathetic observer. Needless to say that the issues and problems raised here are very much relevant and living even today.

A true understanding of the problematic of rights of the refugees and the displaced demands a genuine understanding of the discourse and practice of a bunch of international humanitarian and human rights laws. Here, we define ‘law’ as a morally inspired system of rules, enforced through a set of institutions. Such a definition approaches ‘law’ from both a normative as well as a causal perspective. Seen from such perspectives, the study of law introduces us to the formal/approved patterns of the refugee regime. Simultaneously, it acts as a moral and practical tool to negotiate with various power formations, of formal or informal nature, both within and without the boundaries of nation states. In the following section, various aspects of this issue have been brilliantly discussed by well-known experts from around the world.

Jeevan Thiagarajah and Dinusha Pathiraja, in their thought provoking article, have offered a discursive analysis of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, with focus on the different types of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Sri Lanka and have found that ‘Sri Lanka has in many respects failed’ to address this issue. The authors await the completion of The Ending Displacement Act and hope that ‘it will be able to turn the lives of the internally displaced in Sri Lanka towards a better future’. On the other hand, Oishik Sircar, a bright young scholar of legal science, seeks to give the ‘increasingly self-contained discourse’ of international women' rights movement its missing link: the postcolonial angle.

‘Refugee’, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary tells us, is ‘a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster’. Thus, even this simple dictionary definition makes ‘refugee’ a person living on the edge of human existence and at the mercy and will of ‘others’ (i.e. the willing and, most of the time, unwilling, even hostile ‘host-states’). And, the definition becomes complex and varied if we move through various international instruments that defined ‘refugee’ since the days of the League of Nations and the definition provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Pooja Ahluwalia's ‘Ethical Origins of Refugee Rights’ thoroughly deals with these definitions, especially with the later ones developed by the UNHCR and other organizations under the UN. Although the UNHCR definition is seen by critics as ‘too narrow’, as it does not include all the reasons that clearly inform us why someone might actually become a refugee, it is the world's largest refugee rehabilitation organization that is striving to protect refugee rights since its inception in 1950.

Ahluwalia meticulously follows the evolution of the discourse of definition provided by the UNHCR since the 1951 Convention and the subsequent development of another crucial category of Displaced Persons. This thorough and meticulous nature of the article makes it ‘a must’ for all who care for refugee rights.

Up to 150,000 people in northern Afghanistan are said to be fleeing from advancing Taliban forces and making their way to the Tajikistan border. European aid workers in the area say the refugees are in a desperate situation – without food, shelter or medicines. The refugees are sheltering in the Pamir Mountains, a remote and inaccessible area near the international border, which has been closed by the Tajikistan government. […] ‘These people have nowhere to go. There is no food, no shelter, no equipment or medicine’, Afghan affairs expert, Ahmed Rashid, told BBC World Service radio from Lahore, Pakistan. […]

Aid workers say they are unable to reach the refugees because of the remoteness of the area. UN officials are now in Kabul trying to persuade the Taliban to allow aid convoys through before snow blocks roads and leaves the refugees stranded. The winter in the Pamir Mountains is only six weeks away and there is an urgent need to get food stocks to the refugees to last them through the winter months. The Taliban, which captured power in 1996, control 90 per cent of the country with just a small bit of territory in the north holding out. They have made several attempts to capture the remaining 10 per cent and extend their rule to the entire country.