Winnie Byanyima
Winnie Byanyima is Executive Director of Oxfam International. She is a leader on women’s rights, democratic governance and peace building.
Humanitarian06 SEP 2015
There are stirrings of a popular backlash against the negligence shown by many European governments towards the thousands of desperate people who have fled their homes. It seems to have taken the devastating photograph of three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi on a Turkish beach, where his body was washed ashore this week.
Thousands of women, children and men have died en route to Europe this year. Last week, over 100 people drowned when a boat capsized soon after departing the Libyan coast, while in Austria, 71 bodies were found in a truck.
It is scandalous and unacceptable that it took so long and so many deaths for a wake-up call. Underpinning this negligence is a created sense of fear that could be summed up in the following: What will these migrants bring to our communities? Who are these “other” people?
There are energetic but misplaced sentiments about fence building, repatriation and the economics of migration.
