Bodies crammed into the entrapments of makeshift tents, cries of unrest permeate throughout the camp brewing a cacophony of desperation: these are the sights and sounds coming out of refugee camps all around southern Europe and the Middle East. As refugees sacrifice life and limb to escape civil war and sectarian violence, they are promptly rounded up by military personnel from neighboring European and Arab countries and forcefully escorted to densely-populated refugee camps to await processing or deportation.
The horrors of war continue to mercilessly haunt these peoples in the camps, as verified reports confirm cases of rampant rape and sexual violence against women cloistered within its confines. Despite Germany’s unprecedented pledge to spend $6.6 billion on a projected 800,000 refugees, the estimated 28,500 resettlement spots within the country are minimally supervised and underdeveloped. Nearly 5,000 asylum seekers have been housed in dilapidated US military bases in the town of Giessen, western Germany. A coalition of international monitoring agencies and (four) women’s rights organizations drafted a letter addressed to the Minister of Integration and Social Affairs in the state of Hesse (Germany) exposing the neglect and abuse faced by the camp’s most vulnerable inhabitants:
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