"No one leaves their home willingly or gladly. When people leave their earth, the place of their birth, the place where they live, it means that there is something very deeply wrong with the circumstances in their country.
We should never take lightly this plight of refugees fleeing across borders. They are signs, they are symptoms, they are proof that something is very wrong somewhere on the international scene. When the moment comes to leave your home, it is a painful choice. And it can be a costly choice.
Three weeks and three days after my family left the shores of Latvia, my little sister died. We buried her by the roadside and were never able to return and put flowers on her grave. And I like to think that I stand here today as a survivor who speaks for all those who died by the roadside--some buried by their families and others not. And for all those millions across the world today who do not have a voice, who cannot be heard.
They are also human beings, they also suffer, they also have their hopes, their dreams and their aspirations. Most of all, they dream of a normal life.
I entreat you... when you think about the problem of refugees, to think of them not in the abstract. Do not think of them in the bureaucratic language of 'decisions' and 'declarations' and 'priorities'.
I entreat you, think of them as human beings who are touched by your decisions. Think of the lives who wait on your help."
-- Vaira VIKE-FREIBERGA, President of Latvia and former refugee
in opening statement to Ministrial Meeting of States Party to
the 1951 Convention and/or 1967 Protocol,
Geneva, 12 December 2001
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