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YOUTH ARE AWESOME

Youth Are Awesome, commonly referred to as YAA, is a blog written by youth for youth. YAA provides the youth of Calgary a place to amplify their voices and perspectives on what is happening around them. Youth Are Awesome is a program of Youth Central.

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HomeAdvocacyWhere we fail; tragedy strikes

Where we fail; tragedy strikes

The biggest crisis that we as humans face is the issue of insecurity. This exists on an incredibly minor scale, where we sit in the mirror and pick apart our every flaw, and on the major scale, where people cannot stay in their own country due to fear. The current refugee crisis that exists continues to be perpetuated for all people.

 

Specifically, I’m talking about the case of the very recent deaths in the English channel. To summarize, refugees from the Grande-Synthe camp in France were desperate to get to England. For a set of refugees, the only option they had were the people smugglers, who had cheap, inflatable boats. As all cheap things do eventually, with 30 people on the boat, the boat started slowly taking in water, before its engine gave out. 30 people were now thrown into the waters of the English channel. There were 30 casualties. 

 

The biggest issue I see here is not that these people were paying hundreds of dollars to be illegally smuggled across borders. It is that this was their only option. These people had no other way to get somewhere safe and to their relatives. Society likes to emphasize borders that exist for very little reason. This is echoed throughout all political policies. If you aren’t native somewhere, society thinks you should not be there. Of course, this statement itself is only around when it’s convenient, like we’ve seen with the indigenous people of North America.

 

The only way to fix this issue is to push more multiculturalism than already exists. With this, we need to love the intricacies that make us human. Our differences and our similarities. The more we push this narrative, the better society will be. We need to avoid these kinds of tragedies all when possible. That can only be done through forcing our understanding of all people and backgrounds.

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