Humanity should come before everything else

I feel that refugee is a special term, separating us from other citizens. I don’t like the word, if you’re a refugee I feel like you have less rights than other people. No one chooses to be a refugee, they have suffered in their own countries and continue to face challenges during their journey to safety and even after they settle in a new country. Every refugee has a different story, tales of dreams, sadness, wars, death and horrendous conditions that will take years of kindness, love, safety and stability to recover from.

I am in the UK because things were no longer safe in Iraq. There are a lot of things I miss about home, but I miss my family the most. I am Yazidi, we have huge families and we like to share everything. I used to love doing things with my family but now, now my family is scattered everywhere. I lost many people I cared about to ISIS and the rest are in IDP camps. During the conflict we had no choice but to live in the IDP camps, but the conditions weren’t good. If it was truly up to me, right now I would like to be with my family celebrating New Year Eid and going fishing, hunting and camping with my friends in the Sinjar Mountains.
It is difficult that refugees who are seeking asylum can’t work. If we were allowed to contribute, I feel we wouldn’t be a burden on the state and the people would respect us more and it would help preserve the dignity of refugees.

I have a degree in Biology and in the future, I really want to continue my education and study further for a Masters and then a PhD in Molecular Biology. I love that the tiny organisms are like different worlds and I want to contribute towards researching human genetic diseases.

I would like the British Government to listen to the people from the Middle East. In my experience, they don’t seem to believe people like me who were persecuted and had to flee but they do seem to believe the governments that caused us to flee. To me it seems like they don’t believe the poor. They aren’t hearing the voices of the people.

I think people should change the way they think and deal with a human as a human. Humanity should come before everything else, family, nationality, religion or class. People have to embrace the differences to have equality.