Day 223, Year of #Mygration: American elections inspires residents in Ifo refugee camp 8,000 miles away

In today’s blog post, Dr Fidèle Mutwarasibo, Visiting Research Fellow in the OU's Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership explores how Ilhan Omar, through her election to the US House of Representatives, inspired refugees in a refugee Camp she left behind twenty years ago.

I don’t have a direct experience of living in a refugee camp. My indirect experience has taught me some lessons. The first lesson is that when people leave their homes; when families are split up as a result of conflict, natural or human-made disaster, hope is the last thing on their mind. The second lesson is that it is possible to start life again after traumatic experiences. The third one is that we are all individuals and refugees are not any different. Categorisation and labelling are very common in the migration debates and are not helpful. I have worked with internally displaced people, asylum seekers and migrants. My spell with the Lutheran World Federation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) paved the way for my work with refugees and migrants in Europe. The most significant difference between the two situations is the fact that the refugees I worked in DRC had minimal options and had access to a bare minimum of resources.  They were very resourceful. They made the best of their situation. It would have been unfair to say that they had no hope. To an outsider though, their case looked hopeless. I vividly recall an expatriate asking me why the refugees I worked with in DRC were positive in spite of all the odds being against them. It was when I reminded them of the cholera epidemic that took thousands of lives before the refugees who fled to Goma in 1994 relocated to refugee camps (Mugunga, Katale, Kibumba and Kahindo) that the expatriate agreed with me that the situation could be worse. 

Based on my lived experience, not all the refugee camps get media coverage once the emergency phase of a particular crisis is over. Now and then, they get a mention, especially when the United Nations High Commission for Refugees run fundraising campaigns to get extra resources for the refugees they look after around the world. In the aftermath of the US elections dominated by, among other things, the ‘caravan’ heading to the USA border from Central America, a refugee camp got a mention. Fortunately, the mention was a positive one. One of its former residents, Ilhan Omar, won a seat in US House of Representatives last week. Ifo refugee camp is one of the four refugee camps that form the Dadaab Refugee Complex.  Dagahaley, Ifo, Ifo 2 and Hagadera are home to almost a quarter of a million refugees. In an article in The Guardian titled: 'She's made us proud': Ilhan Omar's journey from Kenyan refugee camp to US Congress, Jason Burke and Abdalle Ahmed Mumin reported on the celebrations in Ifo following the election of Ilhan Omar as member-elect of the US House of Representatives for Minnesota’s fifth district. She lived in Ifo refugee camp for four years before her resettlement in the USA. 

Good stories in refugee camps around the world are hard to come by. Such a good story inspires many people whose lives are on hold in refugee camps. Bearing in mind the fact that the earliest refugee camp in the Dadaab complex was set up in 1991, many young people have no heroes or role models to inspire them. No wonder it was important to celebrate the achievements of a former resident thousands of miles away.  The story also demonstrates, how, given the opportunity refugees can work as hard as everybody else. They may need additional support such as language tuition, recognition of prior qualifications, education and upskilling, counselling, bridging programmes, business start-up investment, orientation, and so forth. Moreover, nothing matters more than getting a welcome that includes acknowledgement and appreciation of their presence in their new home country. The welcome may take the form of mentoring, acting as cultural mediators, and pointing directions on where the support can be accessed. Refugees, just like other migrants thrive where they are accepted and not demonised and scapegoated.  

After the USA elections, I wondered how many among the people in the ‘caravan’, could if given the opportunity, emulate Ilhan Omar and other refugee luminaries, including: Madeleine Albright, Lord Alf Dubs, Henry Kissinger, Karl Marx, Karl Popper, The Dalai Lama, Anne Frank, Freddie Mercury, to name just a few. If we were to look closely at our networks, I am sure we will identify inspirational refugees, who despite all the odds again them, managed to start a new life and make a difference to our economic, social, cultural and political development. As highlighted in Friday's post blog by Carlos Azevedo, we should be slow to judge. We should open up to all members of the community irrespective of our differences, real or imagined.  

One of the features of the politicisation on the immigration debate is the use of symbols, metaphors and statistics. These overlook the fact that refugees are individuals with personal stories. Treating them as individuals can go some way in enabling them to start their lives again amongst us. It is often the case that their lives are on hold for years. In the case of Ilhan Omar, leaving her homeland Somalia, she spent four years in Ifo refugee camp before moving to the USA two decades ago. Worryingly the resettlement scheme that enabled her to move to the USA has been scaled down. According to the article mentioned above in The Guardian, as of 10 September, 251 Somali refugees have been resettled [in the US] this year, a 97% drop from the 8,300 admitted by the same point in 2016.