Social and Economic Impact of Large Refugee Populations on Host Developing Countries V

by: Teo Pei Woon

“Social and economic impact of large refugee population on host developing countries” is an article published by the United Nation Refugee Agency (UNHCR),  dated 6^th of January 1997. The article is believed to be a fruitful conclusion and suggestion from meeting of the Executive Committee Of  The High Commissioner's Programme that brings response to severe impact of migration of refugees to the hosting areas. This article mainly discusses the impact of high refugee populations on social, economic and political life of host countries. The author also emphasizes the importance of international community in assisting to deal with flow of refugees to mitigate the impact generated by the presence of refugees.

            The general purpose of this article is to inform the target readers how the  mass inward movement of refugees can bring positive and negative impacts to a country  from aspects of social, economic and politics if no proper and effective measures are conducted . However, the writer states that the positive effects on the host society are hardly compensate for the negative consequences of such large concentrations of refugees.

            The writer also tries to convey the message about the facts of presence of refugees creates great impact and burden to local administration as the host government need to allocate large amount of money for giving asylum for refugees accommodation . The host country authorities divert resources and manpower from the insufficient demands of their own development to provide the refugees with considerable humanitarian aid . Moreover, a low income country has no adequate fund for programme organized to alleviate their sufferings. Some host countries expect that the international community will help compensate for the costs incurrred in handling the influx of refugees. It is observed that the author's intention is to highlight the obligation of international community and other concerned authorities in assisting accommodate refugees and bring this matter to their attention.

            Moving on to the language aspect of this article, the author uses simple and easily understandable language throughout the whole article. The writer has good vocabulary as well as good command of English. The writing style of the author is expressive and straightforward. For example, in paragraph 4, states that ' While most host governments generally have demonstrated a willingness to bear many of these costs, they are understandably reluctant to pay, as a price for giving asylum, the cost of additional infrastructure that may be needed to accommodate refugees. The tone and choice of words used by the writer indicated professionalism, with no biasness in terms of language style. No sounds of sarcasm are used throughout this article as it has been delivered honestly without using provoking words. The method of delivering points could be said neutral without playing of emotions on the readers.

         

           The article is expressed with proper rhetorical function to provide insight for comprehension of texts. The author uses exemplification with supportive and ample examples to illustrate a general statement. For example, 'A World Bank-sponsored study of uncompensated public expenditures arising from the refugee presence in Malawi recommended an emergency assistance programme in 1990-1991 of up to $25 million.' shown in paragraph 5. The reader can have a better understanding about the costs invested in refugee from the host governments according to credible and systematic analysis.

     

           Overall, looking at the points presented, this article proved to be well-written as it reached the objective of spreading informations on the risks of mass populations of refugees to host country and international society if no appropriate and practical actions taken. The article is able to put readers back into perspective and raise the awareness among them to the issues of how refugees impact us. The author had successfully delivered the points with well-constructed sentences that making clear stance of the author.

Social and Economic Impact of Large Refugee Populations on Host Developing Countries IV

by: Goh Ying Xian
   
     The article “Social and economic impact of large refugee population on host developing countries” is published by The United Nation Refugee Agency (UNHCR) on 6 January 1997. The article is the outcome from the discussion of Executive Committee of the High Commissioner’s Programme. UNHCR is the agency that mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. UNHCR aimed to protect the rights and well – being of refugees. UNHCR also ensures that the refugees exercise the rights to seek asylum in another State.


     The article basically discusses how the refugees influx impact not only the social, but also economic and political of the host country. Refugees are those persons who have been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster. The article claimed that poorest countries have the highest population of refugees. The article also claimed that influx of refugees will put the conditions of economy, service and amenities of those countries in a more severe condition and may affect the development of the host country.


     It is observed that the purpose of the article would be to inform readers of the huge impact that brought by the influx of refugees if we do not handle them in a proper way. The writer targets the public group who concerned about refugees issues and to provide more information about impact of refugees to the society.


     In terms of structure, the article begins with the example on the “Emergency Assistance to Rwanda” to introduce the point of view that how refugees influx affect the country in multiple aspects. The introduction is related to what is happening nowadays and hence able to catch readers’ attention. When it comes to conclusion, the article restated that the cost that needed to pay in order to provide the asylum to the refugees. However, the article encourage the international community to play their role to support those country that keeping refugees, so that the development of those countries will not be affected seriously by the refugees.


     Language-wise, it is observed the article was written in a manner that good transition and good structure sentences were used. The article also uses numbering and numbered the points in order. This makes the readers easier to read and have a clearer picture on the whole topic the article is trying to convey. The language is simple and hence, it is suitable for the reader groups from various fields. The writer writes with a tone of impersonal objective. The tone creating a serious atmosphere which makes the readers concern on the topic that the article is trying to present. The choice of word makes the writing straight to the point and the information that wishes to convey is easily accessible. The article s arranged in such logic way which makes the reader to think according to the analogy.


     The article uses various rhetorical functions to put forward its points. The article use exemplification to clarify its topic. The article uses ample examples such as refugees in Nepal, Tanzania and Mozambican to illustrate the conditions of the refugees. For example, the article written that “…in Ngara, in the United Republic of Tanzania, the recent refugee influxes meant that the local population was outnumbered by a ratio of approximately 4: 1…” clearly shown that the great refugees influx that lead to the imbalance in ratio of the locals and refugees that might affect the normal living of the locals.


     The article also uses causes and effect as the rhetorical function to explain the point. The article had shown that multiple cause that lead to the various effect. The article stated various reason that causes refugees influx such as, the poverty of the country, the economic, environmental and social situation as well as the political difficulties in particular countries. The impacts of the influx are refugees outnumbered compared to locals, economic straining, limited service and infrastructure, damage to the environment and harm one country’s development. The use of cause and effect is an effective way to present the idea id a more organised way with chronology.
Besides, the article also uses process as one of the writing techniques to show how something happens. For example, economy restriction may cause the refugees to become poor. Hence, they are forced to migrate to another country which will lead to refugees’ influx. The consequence of influx is that the refugees are outnumbered compared to the locals and eventually affecting the routine of the locals.

     In a nutshell, the article proved to be well-planned as it achieve is target of spreading information on the impact that brought by the influx of the refugees. It was easy to understand the flow of the article as the article is organized using numbers provided with ample data, yet keep simple use of English. This way of presentation allows the reader to think logically about what is happening if we do not handle the problem properly. Overall, the article is well written.

Social and Economic Impact of Large Refugee Populations on Host Developing Countries III

by: Ng Cheng Wei

The article “Social and Economic Impact of Large Refugee Populations on Host Developing Countries” is published by Executive Committee of High Commissioner’s Programme Standing Committee under United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),dated January 6th ,1997. UNHCR, also known as the UN Refugee Agency, is a United Nations agency mandated to protect and support refugees at the request of a government or the UN itself and assists in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country. The article mainly addresses all reader have to well aware the impact of large scale of refugee populations.

The purpose of this article is to inform the readers about the impacts of refugees influx. The presence of refugees compounds the already prevailing economic, environmental, social and, at times, political difficulties in these countries. Moreover, the presence of refugees, and demands on the already severely strained economy, services and infrastructure add to the extreme hardship affecting the local populations. In many instances, refugees become an added impediment to, or risk jeopardizing, the development efforts of the host country. Moving on the language aspect of this article, throughout this whole article the writer uses simple and easily understandable language. There is not much usage of bombastic words. But the writer has good vocabulary as well as good command of English. In his/her writing the author is very straightforward. For example paragraph 2 from line 13 to 15,the author says “In many instances, refugees become an added impediment to, or risk jeopardizing, the development efforts of the host country.” and paragraph 3,line 3 to 5 ,the author says that “Over time, their presence leads to more substantial demands on natural resources, education and health facilities, energy, transportation, social services and employment”. I like the ways of author’s writing, because the author doesn’t beat around the bush but presents his/her point as it is without any sugar coating on it. Apart from that, the author is very informal in his writing.It can be seen when author wrote this article with subjective tone where he/she added on the words that describe feelings, judgements, or opinion such as “means that”, “may causes”, “they can”, “may be”. Moreover, from the line 16 to 18 in paragraph 2 , “While the international emergency aid in response to such an emergency does have some positive effects on the host society, this hardly compensates for the negative consequences of such large concentrations of refugees.” The tone is tolerant. The words “does have some positive effects” show that the writer accepts the situation while recognizing that it could be better. At line 15 in paragraph 2 too, author say that “Their negative aspects may be felt long after a refugee problem is solved”. The tone is optimistic. The writer is expecting the problems to be improved soon.

The author has an impudent choice of words. There are some using words that are impolite in the article.For example the author refers to the larger number of refugees as refugees compounds. The author is biased in his/her writing ,because he/she gives more preferences, example and discusses more precisely the bad impacts. There seem like did not have any good impacts about the large scale of refugees in his/her writing. But his/her article got a lot of supporting details, data and concrete evidence as there are hard facts and figures and the most importing ,it is not only purely based on the author’s emotions or experience. This can be prove at paragraph 1, for example in line 7 “For example, in Nepal, in the district of Jhapa, 90,000 refugees represent over 13 per cent of the local population”, and in line 9 “ there were some 700,000 refugees among a local population of 186,000.”.\

In a nutshell, this article is very good to read due to the solid case with proven facts, figures , data and the language used by author in his/her writing. The author also succeeded in inform the readers about the impacts of movement of large scale of refugees populations to the host’s country. We do agree that the bad impacts of that movement is more than its good impacts.

Social and Economic Impact of Large Refugee Populations on Host Developing Countries II

by: Aiman Hakim

This article is mainly about a problem, a phanomena that clearly is happening today and is always at the topof every news. The writer express through his or her writting in the article mainly to inform about what is his opponion when facing refugees, especially when facing a large numbers of people that strictly different in race and ethnics. The writer also showed his expression of dissapointmen to the main reason that this problem is still not been handle seriously by the people that was supposed to be responsible. In the first paragraph the writer starts his article by criticizing the people that did not make any responses regarding to this issue. Thus highlighting the first step which is fixing the real problem when handling refugees.

Based on my observation, the main conten of the article effect of refugees in many aspects. The writers touches every aspect that would be most effected by a country when facing refugees. As an example, the writer listed his view on what will happened to the economic structure, the social and sometimes politices. He pointed what will be effected through past occasion accuring refugees in some countries such as Nepal and Ngara. The writer said in this countries “The presence of refugees, and demands on the already severely strained economy, services and infrastructure add to the extreme hardship affecting the local populations. In many instances, refugees become an added impediment to, or risk jeopardizing, the development efforts of the host country. Their negative aspects may be felt long after a refugee problem is solved”

But what is different about this article is that, although the writer is conveying the bad effects of refugees which is common to the people when it comes to refugees, but the writer also mentioned in this article some positive outcome that might and could happen when accepting refugees. To me this is very shocking, because very less people bring a positive prespective kind of view towards this problem. As an example , the writer said “The economic impact of refugees on host areas, however, is not necessarily negative”. The writer is saying that although refugees may bring some effects, but not all are negative. As example, the precense of refugees can also attract development agencies thus lead to the opening of development  projects on the host region. Not only that, it is also helps in terms of the creation of the employment, benifiting the local population direct or indirectly.

Looking into the use of language, to me the writer did a splendid job in using it wisely. As we all know, the writer is targeting a variety group of people such as the people of the country, politician, and also the leaders of any countries. The language that the writer used was acceptable due to the many level of audience. It can easily be understood and any people that read the article should not have any problem trying to figure what is the writer trying throw out to them.

In conclusion , the article prove to be a material worth reading, due to the current issue that is clearly going on in some country that many have misunderstood it. It is not wrong to comment about something but try to look it in both ways, with concrit facts and data. With that, I conclude that the UNHCR did an excellent job on the article.

Social and Economic Impact of Large Refugee Populations on Host Developing Countries I

by: Teong Kim Chay

The article ‘ Social and Economic Impact of Large Refugee Populations on Host Developing Countries’ was written by Executive Committee of High Commissioner’s Programme Standing Committee under United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This article was written on 6 January 1997. UNHCR is a committee that was established on 14 December 1950 with the objectives to protect and support refugees worldwide. UNHCR ensures the safety of refugees and also participate in problem solving that arises from this issue.

The purpose of this article is to inform readers regarding the impacts of influx of refugees on environment of host countries. The increase of number of refugees leads to the massive demand for natural resources and infrastructure in the host country. This leads to long term problem as some resources are not renewable. For instance in paragraph 8, line 4, ‘. Estimates of rural wood consumption in Somalia…’ has shown the extreme massive demand of refugees on wood supplies in host country. The host country has to open up more forests to fulfil the request in market.

The second purpose of this article is to inform readers the benefit of refugees in host country. The influx of refugees also allows the host country to learn additional skills that is initially from the refugees’ country. For examples, from paragraph 10, line 5, ‘refugees have introduced swamp land rice in Guinea… ’ has shown the benefits of influx of refugees.

 The author uses a formal tone to inform the readers on the impacts of refugees on the host countries. From the words ‘From the moment of arrival…’ in paragraph 3, the article has shown the tone used by author is formal.

The author is bias when this article is produced. The author focused more on the negative sides brought by refugees rather than the benefits. It is true that the author did touch on the benefits of influx of refugees, however, from paragraph 1, ‘…does have some positive effects on the host society, this hardly compensates for the negative consequences…’ has shown the bias of authors on refugees.

The strength of this article is from the examples given by the author. The author used a lot of good examples to support most of his points in this article. These examples have included with good data and are able to be related to real life easily by readers as they read this article. For instance, from paragraph 1, ‘…there were some 700,000 refugees among a local population of 186,000.’ has shown the accuracy of the examples given.

In conclusion, the article informed readers on issues that are raised in host country during the influx of refugees. This article is well constructed with simple sentences for readers to understand it easily. The article is not confusing and it pint pointed all the points directly.