With the rise of populist nationalism and majoritarianism, the displaced are facing an unprecedented pushback around the world. Last week, the Lancet pointed out that one in every eight people in the world is on the move today, driven by economic, political, demographic, environmental and socio-cultural forces. However, even as migration—including movement propelled by climate emergencies—is emerging as one of the biggest concerns in the 21st century, the rights and lives of refugees are coming under inhumane pressure.
In this context, it is a solemn moment to remember that, stung by the partition’s humongous refugee crisis, India has not ratified either the 1951 Refugee Convention, which serves as the principal legal document defining refugee status, or the 1967 Protocol that removed geographic and time-based limitations on the status. These treaties flowed from 1948’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the high-minded document that underlined the newly-formed UN’s purpose. Today, with its resolutions observed more in breach, the warnings of its secretary-general ignored and the funding of its agencies gutted, the UN system is becoming increasingly comatose. The Lancet pointed out that the World Health Organization’s Health and Migration Programme faces an uncertain future barely five years after being set up; the health journal warned of the devastating consequences of its closure for millions of refugees around the world.
Even with its ad hoc approach to refugees and hardening policies along the eastern borders, India today hosts over 80,000 Tibetans and their government in exile. About the same number of Myanmarese are in India; in 2023, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that more than 40,000 of them were in Mizoram alone. But even while India is deporting an increasing number of people identified as ‘illegal immigrants’, a large number of Indians are being deported from the other side of the world. This March, the external affairs ministry informed parliament that between 2009 and 2024, a total of 15,564 Indian nationals were deported from the US. All of it points to a world increasingly drained of the empathy and fraternal ethos that underpinned the post-world war system of global governance. As they discuss a new order to replace the old one, leaders must keep their eyes and hearts open to the realities of those beyond their borders—in the spirit of ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’.