Refugees Are The Greatest Casualties Of War

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The world’s refugee problem continues to grow. As civilians are no longer off limits in today’s armed conflicts, they are fleeing their homes in droves and we can barely imagine how difficult their plight is.

In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast we talk to Kenneth Miller, who has devoted his life to tending to the psychological needs of refugees throughout the world. He notes that social media makes us more aware than ever of their plight but it also fuels greater fear and misunderstanding. Miller points out the important distinction between refugees and immigrants and reminds us that unlike immigrants, who make a choice, refugees can’t stay in their homeland without being subjected to violence or even death.

While they are eyed with suspicion, data indicate that refugees can be a boon to their new home countries. Statistics show that the crime rate among refugees in the US and in Germany is far lower than that of the general population.To date, the number of Americans killed by refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or any of the seven countries covered by President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting travel is exactly zero!

And while they often arrive suffering from grief, depression and trauma, new therapies and welcoming communities have been the most healing.

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Full Text Transcript:

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Jeff Schechtman: Welcome to Radio WhoWhatWhy, I’m Jeff Schechtman.

When we talk about the refugee crisis in Syria, we’re really only talking about a small fraction of the world’s refugees. Literally hundreds of millions of people throughout the world are impacted by armed conflict and genocide. People in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, and many more. It’s hard for most of us to even imagine what these people go through, and the grief, and trauma they face. In a time of asymmetrical warfare, they are the new face of war. We’re going to look at some of this today with my guest, Kenneth Miller. He’s an international expert on the impact of armed conflict on civilians. He’s a psychologist who’s been working with war affected communities as a researcher, clinician, and filmmaker. He’s a professor of clinical and community psychology, and he’s the author of a new book entitled, War Torn: Stories of Courage, Love, and Resilience. Kenneth Miller, welcome to Radio WhoWhatWhy.

Kenneth Miller: Thank you, Jeff. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Schechtman: Tell us a little bit about how you got involved in this work with refugees initially.

Miller: I’ve always been interested in Latin American culture, and politics, and history, and one night when I was a graduate student in Michigan, I was studying clinical psychology, a couple came through town talking about this innovative expressive art intervention they developed in the highlands of Guatemala for families and children affected by the genocide that had happened there in the late ‘70s and on through the 1980s. And they were doing this really extraordinary work and I was so captivated. It’s kind of love at first sight. It didn’t involve a woman. It involved this remarkable way of working that brought together social justice and mental health work, really interesting cultural stuff, because these were Mayan Indians. And by the end of the week, I sat them down for about 24 hours and talked there, basically really listened for about the, you know, for 24 hours, everything they were doing and peppered them with questions. By the end of the weekend I was hooked, and I volunteered to go down to spend about a year and a half working on their project, and then bringing their work into the refugee camps just across the border of Mexico where Guatemalans had fled.

Schechtman: One of the things about talking about refugees and the stories that you write about in War Torn, and the scope of it is how big the problem is today, and how widespread throughout the world the refugee situation is.

Miller: It’s really extraordinary and, you know, one of the biggest shifts that’s happened in the last, really beginning with World War II, is that civilians have, are no longer off-limits, they are legally, but civilians have actually become the majority of those affected by armed conflict. It used to be much more, the soldiers, the combatants, that paid the price in physical and psychological injuries. But now you see upwards of 80-90% of victims of armed conflict, there are civilians, and often very intentionally.

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