Too often, we forget the power words may have,
sometimes even, the power of just one.
There are statutes,
and there are sentences,
words that condemn, and words that protect.
And when we speak about exile, words are plenty!
There are words that dehumanize, words that simplify,
words that reject, and words that repel.
And yet, behind all these words,
there are human situations;
something unique, complex, painful, often difficult…
destinies of exile.
And these destinies, for ten years, I have worked for Amnesty International,
alongside refugees, for refugees, I have come across them.
Let’s consider Aisa’s destiny.
Aisa is a 22-year-old young woman from Ethiopia.
She lives with her loved ones, her family, in a province.
It is a family of political opponents.
They oppose the intrusive central power because they demand
the autonomy of the province in which they live.
Police raids, they know them well!
The father has disappeared.
The brothers are forced to hide.
And then, one day, this is one police raid too many.
Aisa sees her mother killed before her eyes.
So, Aisa has no choice, and she runs away. She is afraid.
She goes to some relatives, in a town not too far away from her native province.
At that time, we call Aisa: “displaced”.
Aisa attempts to rebuild her life, somehow or other.
But the threats are becoming increasingly clear: she has been spotted.
She really feels trapped.
She thinks that the next on the list could be her.
So she decides to leave, that time a little farther: for Sudan,
by crossing, illegally, the border between Ethiopia and Sudan,
to join a community of fellow compatriots.
At that time, we call Aisa: “clandestine”.
Aisa tries to resume work in order to make some money,
and, especially, send it back to those, male and female who she behind,
to continue her family’s fight.
Unfortunately, things do not move in that direction.
Sudan threatens the Ethiopians with deportation to their country.
And Aisa knows what that means: torture, arrest, or even worse.
So, Aisa hits the road to exile again,
and goes even farther from her native country.
She crosses the border of Libya…
illegally.
At that time, we call Aisa: “illegal”.
In Libya, although a young lady, alone, and foreign in a rather hostile country,
Aisa manages, nevertheless, to find a job: domestic worker in a house.
The threats rain down, and the hits too.
The spectre of forced prostitution lurks.
At that time, we call Aisa: “illegal worker”.
The threats are too intense. She is afraid and alone.
So, with some compatriots and others, she boards a boat
to try to cross the Mediterranean,
and reach the European lands, find a place of safety.
From our European coasts, when she is in her boat, Aisa,
we call her: “migrant”.
But actually, Aisa will be stopped by the Maltese authorities,
and handed to the Libyan authorities, in the Mediterranean.
At that time, we call Aisa: “expelled”.
She’ll spend one year in jail, with hundreds of others – one year!
One year in the hands of the guards, and in overcrowded cells.
But, in a manner of speaking, luck smiles at Aisa as she manages to escape
and cross the Mediterranean again.
To step backward is no longer possible for her.
She manages to cross that sea and reach Italy.
In Italy, Aisa has no help, no support,
no advise, no information.
So, she just stays there, doing nothing.
And at that time, we call Aisa: “undocumented”.
Then, in an ultimate burst of courage and hope, Aisa sets off for England,
advertised as an El Dorado.
But at the end, she’ll stop here, in Paris, in France, in this town,
where she’ll submit an application for asylum with the prefecture.
At that time, we’ll call Aisa: “asylum seeker”.
But, in Europe, asylum seekers have no choice.
They can’t seek asylum in the place they want.
It must be, necessarily, in the country that has identified them
in the first place, and for Aisa, it will be Malta, because it is Malta
that stopped her in the sea and sent her back in Libya.
This system has been implemented by the so-called “Dublin agreements”.
So, at that time, we’ll call Aisa: “a Dublined”.
And this is at that time that I met Aisa, at Amnesty International,
in our permanent legal support services for receiving refugees.
And we have helped her to obtain a status, her status.
Because Aisa, we called her:
displaced, clandestine, undocumented, expelled, asylum seeker, Dublined
But in reality, from the very beginning, Aisa was a “refugee”.
It is her sole and unique status.
Since 1951, July 28th precisely, “refugee” is a legal status,
and a status that protects.
The states have agreed by signing an international convention
to grant protection to those, male and female, who are deprived of it
from the authorities of their countries of origin,
or the country of their nationality.
A refugee is someone who cannot stay in his-her country,
because of being under threat there, or even facing persecution.
That is why it’s a person allowed
to cross a border illegally.
If asked to show identity papers, a passport, a visa,
an entry or an exit authorization, these people would be trapped
in their own country, in their executioners’ hands.
A refugee, is someone who cannot go back to his-her country,
because he-she is afraid of being persecuted.
This is why the states, today,
have an absolute prohibition on returning the refugees in their countries.
We become refugee when we cross the border of our country
in order to take refuge on the other side.
And we become refugee until proven otherwise.
That is, it’s kind of like the presumption of innocence.
You are a refugee as long as there is no proof
that you have no fears in your country.
To be a refugee means to enjoy a temporary protection –
a legal status –
which lasts as long as necessary.
Your nationality does not vanish. You do not have another nationality.
It is simply put into brackets.
To be a refugee is to have the right to settle, to settle again,
in order to live… to live again.
To protect the refugees, it is not an opinion,
nor a favor,
nor a generosity,
it is an o-bli-ga-tion.
“Refugee” is a term that protects, really.
So, there are all the others words we hear,
which are often used
by people who believe they know, but actually do not know,
or who have hardly anything to do with human suffering and solidarity.
So, let us never be mistaken again!
Thank you.
(Applause)
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