Asylum Seeker and Refugee Crisis as a Humanitarian Tragedy in the Contemporary World

Abstract

In the contemporary world, the increase in the number of people, who have become asylum seekers and refugees involves many humanitarian tragedies. The escape from a life in the shade of oppression and violence with the only hope of having a better life may sometimes result in a fatal end. Even though one of the target destinations of this type of migration is the Western countries, asylum seekers and refugees are seen as persona non grata in these countries. In this respect, the asylum seeker and refugee crisis, which constitutes the general scope of this paper, will be discussed and analyzed from a humanitarian perspective by considering the reactions of the Western countries to this problem. Today, this problem causes many political debates and crises in the Western countries. The rise of extreme right in the Western world is one of the biggest obstacles to adopt a humanitarian approach to this problem. At this point, the main argument of this paper is that the reactions towards the asylum seekers and refugees in the Western countries have a neo-racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic tendency, and that the current socio-political conjuncture seriously threatens the hopes of those people with different cultural, religious, linguistic or ethnic origin, who seek a peaceful coexistence in the world.