Right to seek safety.

WORLD Refugee Day is celebrated every year on June 20 to draw attention to the plight of refugees and to honour their struggles and heroism. As well as focusing on the rights, needs, dreams and aspirations of refugees, World Refugee Day also seeks to mobilise both public opinion and political will to assist refugees not just in surviving troubled times but also thriving in their adopted homes. This year's overarching theme espouses the right to seek safety as a basic human right.

The right to seek safety is predicated on the notion that refugees should be welcome wherever they come from; and wherever they are forced to flee they should be entitled to safety and protection. According to UN estimates, 79.5 million people were forcibly displaced in 2019, 26m of them refugees. However, a large portion of the refugee population is clustered mainly in the developing world: nine out of the top 10 refugee-receiving countries are part of the developing world, with the sole exception of Sweden.

This clearly reflects the uneven distribution of the refugee burden and the hypocrisy of the developed world that are reluctant to help people in need despite their vast resources and their role in creating the circumstances for the displacement of such a large number of families from their homelands. Moreover, in view of the exposed hypocrisy of the West in their contrasting treatment of Ukrainians and Afghans, this year's theme for World Refugee Day assumes even greater significance.

While Europe has laid out the welcome mat for fleeing Ukrainians, for the Afghans and those from other undesirable countries it has proved to be an impenetrable fortress. Many commentators have noted the stark contrast between the sympathetic media coverage of Ukrainian refugees with the pejorative portrayal of people from other conflict-ridden countries such as Syria and Afghanistan. Political pundits were also quick to detect racial undertones in the ensuing coverage, with Western reporters openly describing Ukrainian refugees as 'one of them'.

Refugees should be welcome wherever they come from.

This approach has also reflected in the European countries' openness and willingness to help displaced Ukrainians. The UK government, for example, is encouraging British families to take in Ukrainian refugees in return for cash, while its home office has introduced a new controversial scheme to repatriate all asylum seekers reaching Britain through the English Channel. Meanwhile...