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Refugees in Canada

Refugees and Human Rights

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person,

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 3

Refugees are created by human rights abuses. A person becomes a refugee when they flee from individuals or conditions that threaten their basic human rights. Therefore, the defense of refugee rights is also the defense of human rights. By working to prevent human rights abuses, we work to prevent the conditions that create refugees, and allow people to remain safe and secure in their home country.

The violations that cause refugees to flee take many forms:

• Individuals who are active politically or socially may be targeted by their governments (or other powerful groups such as armed opposition groups) if they are seen as a threat to power. Working as a journalist, denouncing human rights abuses - even membership in Amnesty International can make you a target for persecution.
• Whole communities may be targeted for persecution, often in the context of war. Examples of this have included Kurds in Iraq or Tamil villagers in Sri Lanka who fled ethnically-based human rights abuses.
• People may flee simply because society will not allow them to be themselves. People may be forbidden to worship as they want to, persecuted for their sexual orientation or be targeted because of other "identity"
• Women and girls are sometimes the victims of human rights abuses solely because of their gender. Perpetrators attempt to justify discriminatory practices such as female genital mutilation, honour killings and forced marriage by calling them "cultural practices." While Amnesty International (and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) recognizes the right to enjoy one's own culture, culture should never be used as an excuse to violate another's human rights.

Many people become refugees because perpetrators commit abuses with impunity; that is they go unpunished for their crimes. Human rights abuses are not always committed by the state; but at times when the state is unwilling or unable to protect its citizens from human rights abuses, many of these people flee and become refugees.

Amnesty International campaigns for the protection of all human rights and an end to impunity for human rights violators, in the hope of eliminating the need of people to become refugees while fleeing human rights abuses.