{"id":7662,"date":"2023-05-04T07:22:39","date_gmt":"2023-05-04T07:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/?p=7662"},"modified":"2023-05-04T07:22:39","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T07:22:39","slug":"how-talking-about-humanity-and-not-crisis-can-aid-all-refugees-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/how-talking-about-humanity-and-not-crisis-can-aid-all-refugees-right-now\/","title":{"rendered":"How Talking About ‘Humanity’ and Not ‘Crisis’ Can Aid All Refugees Right Now"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u2018Call this a moment for action, not a crisis.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

BERLIN<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Unfortunately, many human rights groups, aid organisations, and media outlets are repeating the mistakes of 2015 and 2016 by using messaging that inadvertently triggers fear of refugees. This time, instead of fuelling a sense of crisis, we should build a narrative focused on solutions to create confidence in our societies\u2019 ability to support refugees.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Right now, we\u2019re seeing an outpouring of support for Ukrainian refugees. But history warns that the current goodwill will likely dissipate over time if people in host countries start to feel overwhelmed by a mix of crisis, urgency, and fear \u2013 leaving the door open to divisive politicians who scapegoat refugees and\u00a0harsh\u00a0migration\u00a0policies\u00a0that\u00a0cause harm\u00a0to\u00a0people seeking safety.<\/p>\n

Once again, daily headlines are sounding the alarm about the ever-growing number of people fleeing the war in Ukraine. UN agencies constantly repeat that this is the \u201cfastest growing refugee crisis since World War II\u201d and that it could soon turn\u00a0from crisis into \u201ccatastrophe\u201d. Meanwhile, the media ask how Europe will handle this \u201cwave\u201d or \u201cflood\u201d of\u00a0refugees.<\/p>\n

This language of weather and climate disasters is often accompanied by images of large crowds of distressed people. The tone and visuals subconsciously make people in host communities feel powerless and want to keep the problem at bay. Even the less dramatic language used to talk about the movement of people across borders, such as\u00a0migration \u201cchannels\u201d or \u201cflows\u201d, conjures destructive natural forces, and the responsibility of countries to receive and host refugees is almost always referred to as a\u00a0burden.<\/p>\n

Instead of depicting the scale of the crisis as dire to the point of being unmanageable, we need to tell stories that nurture the goodwill that encourages countries to open their doors and continues to motivate people to go to train stations to help strangers.<\/p>\n

Brain science\u00a0shows us that people who feel\u00a0hopeful are more likely to feel compassion. When we feel fear, our brains are wired to focus on our\u00a0own safety and self-interest. In political terms this translates too easily into seeing people who are fleeing from danger as a potential threat.<\/p>\n

In the face of situations like Ukraine, it\u2019s natural to use fear-based messaging that creates outrage to shame governments into action and sympathy to raise funds from the public.<\/p>\n

But outrage burns out fast. The\u00a0Mindworks Lab\u00a0\u2013 created by Greenpeace to understand how the human mind works during emergencies \u2013 talks about a crisis timeline, where public response moves from a\u00a0\u201choneymoon\u201d phase\u00a0of mass support to disillusionment and compassion fatigue. Stories about faceless masses of people on the move hasten that process. Message testing consistently shows that care and compassion are\u00a0more effective frames\u00a0for this conversation than eliciting pity.<\/p>\n

Without a clear story about how we can solve the situation, constant crisis messaging risks creating despondency. Worse still, it can make people support drastic, cruel measures that offer a false sense of control: such as\u00a0pushing people back from borders\u00a0and sending refugees to island detention centres, as\u00a0Australia has done\u00a0and the\u00a0UK is currently discussing.<\/p>\n

This is what we saw happen in 2015 and 2016: Following an initial moment of welcome, voices calling the arrival of Syrian refugees to Europe a \u201ccrisis\u201d and an unmanageable \u201cburden\u201d drowned out the humanitarian impulse to provide safe haven, paving the way for the rise of authoritarian-minded populists across the continent.<\/p>\n

To avoid repeating this scenario, we need people to believe in a human-rights-friendly solution. Humanitarian, refugee, and migration groups need to explain how we can make supporting refugees work for all of us. That is why the most important message people need to hear when people are fleeing war is what German Chancellor Angela Merkel\u00a0said in 2015, \u201cWe can do this!\u201d<\/p>\n

This means fewer urgent updates on the numbers of people fleeing Ukraine and\u00a0other conflicts, and more about getting people ready to welcome them. Yes, we absolutely have to talk about the world\u2019s problems. But how we talk about them can either make people feel hopeless or convince them that there is something we can do about it.<\/p>\n

We have to get away from talking about countries like containers with a limited amount of space. Instead, we have to talk about how a society’s strength is measured in its capacity to care for people. It\u2019s also important to let people on the move tell their own stories, talking about their resilience and their aspirations so that we can relate to them as equals rather than pity them.<\/p>\n

Better yet, focus on the real issue here: whether host countries are welcoming enough. Creating a stronger culture of welcome is the only way to replace narratives and policies of cruelty and indifference towards people on the move.<\/p>\n

Problems occur when fear makes communities closed to people who are different. By amplifying voices and stories of people who want their communities to be\u00a0open, diverse, and welcoming, we can model welcoming behaviour,\u00a0nurture welcoming attitudes, and\u00a0change the narrative around migration. We can then work on extending that welcome to all people on the move.<\/p>\n

People need to see the solution in order to support it. This means that humanitarian aid organisations and human rights groups can make a big difference by showing images \u2013 in their press releases, marketing content, social media, and when speaking to the media \u2013 of a world where people move and are\u00a0welcomed through small, everyday actions. The media can take a similar approach. When we, our friends, family, and neighbours start seeing these stories and repeating their message, humanity starts to become our new political common sense.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Call this a moment for action, not a crisis.\u2019 BERLIN Unfortunately, many human rights groups, aid organisations, and media outlets are repeating the mistakes of 2015 and 2016 by using messaging that inadvertently triggers fear of refugees. This time, instead of fuelling a sense of crisis, we should build a narrative focused on solutions to […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[217,100,172,101,118,211,236],"blog_country":[92,197,148,71,235,234],"facebook":[],"youtube":[],"twitter":[],"class_list":["post-7662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-compassion","tag-forced-displacement","tag-germany","tag-humanitarian-action","tag-migration","tag-refugees","tag-ukraine","blog_country-europe","blog_country-germany","blog_country-global","blog_country-india","blog_country-russia","blog_country-ukraine"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7662"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7672,"href":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7662\/revisions\/7672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7662"},{"taxonomy":"blog_country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog_country?post=7662"},{"taxonomy":"facebook","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/facebook?post=7662"},{"taxonomy":"youtube","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/youtube?post=7662"},{"taxonomy":"twitter","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peoplebeyondborders.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/twitter?post=7662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}