Skip to main content

81 per cent Indians have "no objection" if fleeing refugees take refuge in the country

A new survey by a multinational advocacy group, Amnesty International, has said that 81 per cent of Indians would have no objection in welcoming into India people who flee war or persecution in another country. While this may appear to be quite high, there are 16 other countries where a higher percentage of people would be ready to accept refugees.
Thus, the survey – carried out across 27 countries based on interviews with 27,000 people – shows that Spain tops the list with 97 per cent of people saying they were willing to accept refugees in their country, followed by Germany 96 per cent, Jordan and China 94 per cent, each.
People willing to accept fleeing refugees in their countries
Surprisingly, Pakistan has a higher, 87 per cent, of people willing to accept refugees suffering from war and persecution than India. The countries with the lowest percentage of people willing to accept such refugees are South Africa 69 per cent, Poland 56 per cent, and Russia 33 per cent.
The survey has been released ahead of the next week’s World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul on 23-24 May in order to press for a new, permanent system for sharing the responsibility to host and assist refugees. The summit has been called by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to address the biggest humanitarian and refugee crises in 70 years.
Amnesty believes, there is a need to resettle 1.2 million refugees by the end of 2017, which is far more than the 100,000 per year governments are currently taking annually, but less than a tenth of the 19.5 million refugees in the world today.
People willing to accept refugees in home
“Governments at the World Humanitarian Summit must address the $15 billion shortfall in humanitarian funding highlighted by the UN at the start of 2016, putting forward more money to support both refugees and the countries hosting large numbers of refugees”, the Amnesty survey report says.
To yet another question posed by Amnesty, just about six per cent of Indians said they were ready to accept people fleeing war or persecution into their home. This is lower than people in 17 other countries out of 26 surveyed.
Significantly, as many as 11 per cent of Pakistanis – nearly double that of Indians –said they were ready to accept such refugees in their home.
While the Chinese topped the list with 46 per cent people welcoming such refugees in their home, followed by UK (29 per cent) and Greece (20 per cent), just about one per cent of people from Russia and Indonesia said they were willing.
To a third question whether people should be allowed to take refuge in other countries to escape from war or persecution, 65 per cent Indians said answered in the positive, which is less than people in 20 of the 27 countries surveyed.
Here, again, a higher per cent of Pakistanis, 81, said they believe their county should allow refugees from other countries. Germans tops the list with 94 per cent, followed by Syria (93 per cent), while in the rock bottom were Turkey 47 per cent and Thailand 27 per cent.
People wanting their government to do more for fleeing refugees
Asked if the government should do more to help refugees fleeing war or persecution, just 41 per cent of Indians answered in the positive, which is one of the worst among the 27 countries surveyed. People from two other countries – Thailand (29 per cent) and Russia (26 per cent) – showed a lesser inclination to this end.
The Refugees Welcome Index was prepared interviewing 27,000 people in 27 countries how closely they would accept refugees on a sliding scale: in their home, their neighbourhood, their city/town/village or in their country – or if they would refuse them entry to the country altogether.

Comments

TRENDING

Patriot, Link: How Soviet imbroglio post-1968 crucially influenced alternative media platforms

Adatata Narayanan, Aruna Asaf Ali Alternative media, as we know it today in the age of information and communication technology (ICT), didn't exist in the form it does today during or around the time I joined formal journalism at Link Newsweekly as a sub-editor in January 1979. However, Link, and its sister publication Patriot, a daily—both published from Delhi—were known to have provided what could be called an alternative media platform at a time when major Delhi-based dailies were controlled by media barons.

Morari Bapu echoes misleading figures to support the BJP's anti-conversion agenda

A senior Gujarat activist phoned me today to inform me that the well-known storyteller on Lord Ram, Morari Bapu, has made an "unsubstantiated" and "preposterous" statement in Songadh town, located in the tribal-dominated Tapi district. He claimed that while the Gujarat government wants the Bhagavad Gita to be taught in schools, the "problem is" that 75% of government teachers "are Christians who do not let this happen" and are “involved in religious conversions.”

60 crore in Mahakumbh? It's all hype with an eye on UP polls, asserts keen BJP supporter in Amit Shah's constituency

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

Breaking news? Top Hindu builder ties up with Muslim investor for a huge minority housing society in Ahmedabad

There is a flutter in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur area, derogatorily referred to as the "border" because, on its eastern side, there is a sprawling minority area called Juhapura, where around five lakh Muslims live. The segregation is so stark that virtually no Muslim lives in Vejalpur, populated by around four lakh Hindus, and no Hindu lives in Juhapura.

An untold story? Still elusive: Gujarati language studies on social history of Gujarat's caste and class evolution

This is a follow-up to my earlier blog , where I mentioned that veteran scholar Prof. Ghanshyam Shah has just completed a book for publication on a topic no academic seems to have dealt with—caste and class relations in Gujarat’s social history. He forwarded me a chapter of the book, published as an "Economic & Political Weekly" article last year, which deals with the 2015 Patidar agitation in the context of how this now-powerful caste originated in the Middle Ages and how it has evolved in the post-independence era.

Caste, class, and Patidar agitation: Veteran academic 'unearths' Gujarat’s social history

Recently, I was talking with a veteran Gujarat-based academic who is the author of several books, including "Social Movements in India: A Review of Literature", "Untouchability in Rural India", "Public Health and Urban Development: The Study of Surat Plague", and "Dalit Identity and Politics", apart from many erudite articles and papers in research and popular journals.

Justifying social divisions? 'Dogs too have caste system like we humans, it's natural'

I have never had any pets, nor am I very comfortable with them. Frankly, I don't know how to play with a pet dog. I just sit quietly whenever I visit someone and see their pet dog trying to lick my feet. While I am told not to worry, I still choose to be a little careful, avoiding touching the pet.

New York-based digital company traces Modi's meteoric rise to global Hindutva ecosystem over several decades

A recent document, released by the Polis Project Inc.—a New York-based digital magazine and hybrid research and journalism organization—even as seeking to highlight the alleged rise of authoritarianism in India, has sought to trace Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meteoric rise since 2014 to the ever-expanding global Hindutva ecosystem over the last several decades.

Socialist utopia challenging feudal and Brahminical systems: Kanwal Bharti on Sant Raidas’ vision of Begumpura

In a controversial claim, well-known Dalit writer and columnist Kanwal Bharti has asserted that a clever Brahminical move appears to be behind the Guru Granth Sahib changing the name of the 15th-16th century mystic poet-saint of the Bhakti movement, Sant Raidas, to Sant Ravidas.