[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 13213-13214]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           WORLD REFUGEE DAY

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, today, on World Refugee Day, we 
recognize the millions of innocent people who are living as refugees 
due to violence, unrest, and natural disasters. Each day, refugees 
struggle to survive in an unstable environment where they are often 
unable to further their education, make a living for themselves, or 
obtain adequate health care.
  The struggles refugees face are unimaginable. Being forced to flee 
your home, often to encounter precarious, crowded living conditions in 
a strange place, is particularly treacherous for women, given the 
pervasive problems of sexual abuse, beatings, and sometimes torture. 
Displaced people who make it to refugee camps have often already 
survived extremely difficult situations as they cling to the hope that 
they will one day be able to return to their homes.
  Protracted conflicts and humanitarian crises increase instability and 
negatively impact the livelihoods of refugees we have seen this in 
countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, eastern 
Chad, Jordan, and Syria. In each of these countries and in many other 
places around the world, national and international nongovernmental 
organizations confront challenging circumstances to meet the basic 
needs of refugees and protect their human rights. The international 
community and host governments must make it a priority to ensure 
support and access for these groups so that they can serve vulnerable 
refugee populations. Every time a refugee dies from an easily 
preventable disease or from living in unsanitary conditions, we are 
failing to live up to our collective responsibility.
  But we cannot accept disaster response as the only option. We must be 
working harder to create systems that anticipate and prevent conflicts 
from arising so we can stop mass displacement before it even begins. We 
need to use all our resources to prevent such crises from occurring.

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  As we recognize World Refugee Day, we acknowledge the strength and 
survival of refugees, and we commit not just today, but every day, to 
work towards creating a world where governments fulfill their basic 
responsibility to protect their citizens.

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