There’s a conflict making millions of refugees all over the world. You probably have already heard about it, but we’re sure you don’t know enough about this tragic event. Before start to talk about this, we need to clarify what a refugee is - a refugee is someone who has been forced to flee from his or her country because of persecution, war or violence.
After having fled, they usually look for aid in other countries which often build some provisory camps for these people. These camps are called refugee camps. Contrary to what you may think, getting to a refugee camp is not achieving safety at all. There, refugees face many dangers such as violence. In order to get to a real safe country, refugees have to reach safety, refugees have to go through long journeys, having to cross deserts or seas. During these risky trips, refugees are often exposed to lots of dangers as well as extremely hard conditions.
To be able to make these journeys, refugees leave everything behind and spend the savings of a lifetime. However, no one can assure that they'll be allowed to get into the chosen country.
But why do the countries do this? What allows them to reject people who are just trying to survive? Nothing, but they all have excuses to justify that. These places often hide behind the people’s fear either of terrorism or even of the possibility of an Islamic Europe. These fears are often associated with myths, lack of information, and fake news.
The governments tend to increase this unfounded fear with their speeches as well as the mass media with their news, and people tend to forget thatthe arrival of refugees can have more benefits than disadvantages, especially here, in Portugal: from helping our economy to populating desert regions in the interior and increasing cultural diversity.
So, here’s the real question, shouldn't we accept refugees, since they are people just like us? We certainly should, but we are too selfish, we can’t even see beyond our fears, we aren’t able to worry about those lives because we are safe and sound here and we don’t want to risk that safety for anything.
Written by Filipa Melo and José Mota
