More than 33 million refugees and internally displaced people
languish in the world today. A disproportionate percentage of
them live in Africa. Most have been driven from their homes by
armed strife. Such displacement is often overlooked in
discussions of the duty to protect civilians in warfare. Killing
civilians counts as a violation of the law of war, but uprooting
millions of people from their homes is not often counted among
war’s injustices. The conditions in which forcibly displaced
people are typically compelled to live, however, violate their
basic human rights. One can ask whether these conditions are not
nearly as bad as death itself. Abebe Feyissa, an Ethiopian
refugee, raised this question powerfully at a conference on
advocacy for the rights of refugees recently sponsored in
Nairobi, Kenya, by the Boston College Center for Human Rights
and International Justice in cooperation with Catholic Relief
Services and the Jesuit Refugee Service. After describing his
experience in a refugee camp in Kenya