Free Human Cargo by Caroline Moorehead

time the asylum seeker has laid down roots. Overstayers, those who fail to leave when their visas or papers run out, are simply tolerated, making it possible for the public to argue that governments are incompetent. The situation also encourages asylum seekers to regard their journeys as worthwhile, given that deportation may never happen. In any case, airlines are reluctant to accept deportees, who may refuse to board unless handcuffed, and ordinary travelers object strongly to becoming witnesses to forcible deportations.
    Some $10 billion is being spent annually by governments to deal with a relatively small number of asylum seekers * —807,000 people applied for asylum in 141 countries in 2003—while humanitarian organizations find it impossible to raise a fraction of that money for the considerably larger number who remain in camps in the developing world. This $10 billion is about twelve times what UNHCR receives to look after more than 17 million refugees, displaced people, and others “of concern” to them around the world. Whether in Europe or North America, large sums go each year to patrolling borders: Canada takes in 13,000 refugees each year, but spends $300 million controlling its borders—ten times what it contributes to UNHCR. Today it is the world’s poorest countries, in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, that bear the burden for receiving the displaced: 90 percent of refugees in fact stay in their own regions. In 2000, when the countries of western Europe were complaining most loudly about the sacrifices they were making and the money they were spending on asylum seekers, the top receiving countries for refugees were in fact Iran, Pakistan, and Tanzania. In 2003, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Liberia, Tanzania, Yemen, Burundi, and Sierra Leone all reported the arrival of substantial numbers of refugees.
    Confronted by the global spirit of intolerance and unease, mindful of the ways in which Western states have taken to manipulating the definition of a refugee to suit themselves, Lubbers has launched a series of new initiatives intended to make governments reaffirm their commitment to UNHCR’s original mandate and to pay a fairer share of the costs for helping the world’s refugees. In the wake of criticisms about UNHCR’s failure to assess and analyze its own performance, its embroilment in scandals involving the sexual exploitation of people in camps, and its apparent reluctance to contemplateinstitutional change, there has been much talk about improving and strengthening the implementation of the Convention, through monitoring bodies or special rapporteurs.
    As of 2004, only about 145 countries of the world’s 190 have signed the 1951 Convention, and even those violate its articles every day.
    * In 1967, intertribal conflict in Nigeria led to the secession of the eastern region, which became the Republic of Biafra. Never widely recognized, the new nation collapsed in 1970, and the area was reincorporated into Nigeria.
    * In 2002, there were 587,400 applications for asylum to thirty-seven countries, down 5.4 percent from 2001. The decline was highest in Australia (-50 percent), followed by the United States (-11 percent).
    * In 2003-2004, the cost of handling asylum seekers in the UK was estimated to be £835 million, the equivalent of £34 for every household in the country. The UK also contributed 5 percent of UNHCR’s budget.

• PART TWO •
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LEAVING

• 2 •
GLI EXTRACOMUNITARI
Sicily’s Boat People
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    We are old, Chevalley, very old. For over twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of superb and heterogenous civilisations, all from outside, none made by ourselves, none that we could call our own.
    — GIUSEPPE DI LAMPEDUSA,
THE LEOPARD
    N ene and Vera Sciortino were watching television when the storm broke. It started abruptly, a sudden torrential downpour, and by midnight a great gale had risen and hail began to fall—solid balls the size