PDF Format: Lesson 27: Rights of Refugees

Introduction

This Human Rights Correspondence School lesson on refugees provides information and statistics as well as case examples on refugees and their situation. Every part of the lesson has some accompanying questions for discussion. Questions are not all inclusive, they are only starting points for the discussion and for bringing out your own views and knowledge on the matter. The idea is to start from your own experiences and knowledge, so that discussion is created and you can learn from each other. Feel free to use information and cases according to your own needs and use other examples if needed. This lesson is mainly based on the web pages of UNHCR and Human Rights Watch.

The lesson has the following parts:

• Why do people flee? starts with stories from Bhutanese refugees and gives general information on why there are refugees in the world.
• Refugees in Asian introduces some recent cases from the continent that hosts the majority of the world's refugee population.
• Refugees in hosting countries discusses problems refugees face in hosting countries. It includes two stories from refugees: one presents an inhumane situation in Australian detention centre and the other tells a Vietnamese success story.
• Helping the refugees is a brainstorming session on how to work for helping refugees.
• Who is a refugee? is the final part and has definitions and statistics from UNHCR.