In 1951, world leaders came together to sign the Refugee Convention, making a promise that people fleeing persecution would have the right to seek safety. On the 75th anniversary of the Convention, CGRS is publishing a series of interviews with CGRS team members on the landscape of the global asylum system today and their work with CGRS to defend the principles enshrined in the Convention.

CGRS interns are conducting, transcribing, and publishing these interviews. To learn more about our work and how you can contribute, see our Get Involved page.

Interviews have been edited for clarity and concision.

The following interview is with one of our inaugural Refugee Leadership Fellows who fled their home country in Central Asia due to persecution they faced for their activism and documentation of human rights violations. Refugee Leadership Fellows are advocates and leaders in the refugee rights field who have themselves experienced forced displacement. Learn more about CGRS’s Refugee Leadership Program here.

Q: Displacement often affects every part of a person’s life. How did being forcibly displaced affect you emotionally and personally throughout your journey? 

A: I was the person who would fight for justice all the time, so my thinking about leaving was that “I’m not going to flee! I'm not going to run away, I'm going to fight for justice and I'm going to come back to my home.” If I knew that I would not see my closest family for almost six years, I would do everything that I could to at least hug them, no matter how dangerous it was at the moment. No day passes without me thinking about it, about them, about time together we missed forever because of the people who displaced me and most importantly because of the U.S. government's absolutely inhumane actions when it comes to the asylum system.

There is no differentiation left to me between the perpetrators of the crime and the enablers of such a regime. How do I describe the feelings burning me alive every day? How do I explain the pain of witnessing your mother getting older and not being able to be around her? How inhumane is it to ask us to wait ‘til there is no time left to see your loved ones and then gaslight us into being grateful? Leaving that aside, there are narratives about us being parasites coming from the highest level [U.S.] officials. Yet, the only thing parasitising here is this regime - on our vulnerability, having nowhere left to go, sending us into psychological limbo, denying us dignity and freedom we do have a right to, using us as political pawns in their corrupted lives. How do you explain this level of pain? I do not have an answer to that.  

Q: As we commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Refugee Convention, what do you believe is its lasting legacy?

A: The 75th Anniversary of the Refugee Convention is a reminder that the U.S. and the American society once understood the horrors of displacement and the responsibility to protect forcibly displaced people. This year’s anniversary is met with the U.S. government and American people turning their backs on us. However, there are those who remember the once-made pledge. I hope that the United States will uphold its commitments instead of sowing more challenges for people whose lives were already shattered.

Q: With millions of displaced individuals globally, how can the U.S. better honor the Convention and support asylum seekers, not only here in the United States, but internationally? 

A: I think the short answer would be to do the opposite of everything they’re doing. Everything that the U.S. government is doing, especially the current administration, is designed for us to self-deport, or not come here at all, or keep struggling while we are paying the same amount of taxes as everyone else does, without receiving any benefits in return. The U.S. government could at least reduce the backlog in interviewing people with pending asylum applications and issuing work authorization documents, could terminate ICE contracts nationwide, could demolish ICE facilities and other detention facilities, or at least improve their conditions. It’s also insane that there are private prisons or private contractors for detention centers, as well as more and more asylum-related fees being introduced or increased, like an annual asylum fee for pending applications. It creates a situation where there is incentive for the U.S. government to create even more opportunities for those private prisons to hold more detainees in them, while collecting more and more money from people with pending asylum cases which do not improve our situation whatsoever, breaking the justification used to introduce such fees.  

In terms of media coverage, we could at least not be portrayed as criminals that we are not and as parasites that we are not, because again, we are here because we would die otherwise, we are asking to work, and we are asking to contribute, but we are told we have to wait. 

Q: What message would you like policymakers, advocates, and the public to hear about asylum seekers that you feel is often overlooked or misunderstood?

A: That we are human beings. We are the ones whose humanity was stripped from us once already — and the cruelty with which our lives are handled here does not stay neutral. It sides with the very people who dehumanized us. Not seeing our families for five to ten years, being forced into poverty, waking up every day afraid our lives will be taken from us again...These are not policy outcomes — they are inhumane choices. And still, we pay more in taxes than we receive back. We build communities. We heal you. We feed you. We raise your children. We contribute to your science, your art, every part of American life. So tell us — how are we the threat when your own people in power dismantle protections for American people themselves? It is not us who cut your Medicare. It is not us who shut down relief programs. It is not us forcing you into student loans. It is not us taking your rights away. I wish American people would open their eyes and shift the hate and humiliation we receive towards people in power who actively hurt them.

Q: It’s also important to talk about the psychological effects on people who are forcibly displaced and are often ignored. 

A: When I got to the U.S., I was in a master’s program and I was in school. There were also other forcibly displaced people, but they were forcibly displaced by war or other armed conflicts, so they didn’t understand that my struggle was different from theirs and more internal. I think for a lot of people, when they think of safety, they think of physical safety, but psychological and emotional safety is a very crucial component of overall safety. 

A lot of displaced people experience PTSD and complex PTSD. A lot of displaced people experience depression and they fall into substance abuse, trying to find a short term solution. I was experiencing bad nightmares, I couldn't speak properly, I was frozen inside my body, and that was very scary and I think I'm just coming out of that. 

I think the psychological trauma also affects the physical body, especially the brain. I think when we talk about the asylum system, we also need to talk about psychological wellbeing and how to help people rebuild their psychological wellbeing. And there are very great organizations who do that work. There is one particular organization in the Bay Area called Partnership for Trauma Recovery, and they primarily provide therapy for people who are forcibly displaced and for survivors of very severe human rights violations. It is very important to have more of those kinds of support systems,  because forcibly displaced people need that support. It’s not just about physical safety, it’s also about emotional safety.