India needs to implement a strong domestic law for refugee protection 

Nandita Haksar

For the United Nations (UN) system, the rule of law is a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards.

Refugees have always been pawns in international politics but now they have taken centre-stage in international political stage with the distinction between refugee and migrants been blurred allowing governments all over the world to use them as scapegoats for everything from unemployment to climate change.

However, India had till recently been welcoming to refugees.

India has a reputation for tolerance and respect for diverse nationalities, religions and cultures. This is the image of India from the time India championed Third World unity or the spirit of Bandung as it was known in the Nehru years.

Even if in India the memory of the Bandung spirit is all but obliterated, people all over Asia and Africa still think of India as a haven for tolerance of diversity and when their countries are engulfed in deadly civil wars and conflicts they think of going to India in the hope of getting refuge, a safe harbour till they can return.

These deadly wars, conflicts and violence are the result of Western interventions and vested interests in grabbing natural resources. The bombing and violence in Iraq, Syria, the partition of Sudan, and the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has pushed people to leave their countries and many of them have taken refuge in India.

Most of these refugees have been through multiple personal tragedies, from seeing their loved ones killed or their family members kidnapped, the terrible trauma of leaving home and arriving at a new country with nothing except a few clothes and some cash which gets over in a few months as they navigate their way in their new environment.

That is how India hosts refugees from countries as far as Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and from