Overwhelming needs, unbearable anguish ─ Refugee Day misery made in USA

Syrian refugees
in Lebanon

Syria emptied of its people self-destructs

Editing, comment by
Carolyn Bennett

“Humanitarian” wars maintain misery 

Discarded

Afghans under threat
by foreigners and
lethal weaponry

Afghanistan is the world’s “top ‘producer’ of refugees and has been for the past 32 years. One in every four refugees worldwide is Afghan; 95 percent of these are located in Pakistan or Iran.

The world’s second largest refugee-producing nation during 2012 is Somalia, land of another protracted conflict. The third largest refugees (746,700 people) are Iraqis; the fourth largest refugees are Syrians (471,400 people).

Somalis attacked
by  drones

M

ore than 45 million people, to the extent that records are kept or registrations filed, are refugees and internally displaced people. This figure, the United Nations says, is “the highest level in nearly 20 years.

Chaos of war, occupation
Iraqi displaced

“Every four seconds” during last year, alone, an individual “was forced to abandon” his or her home. “At the end of 2012,” says this week’s release of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) Global Trends report, “more than 45.2 million people were in situations of displacement.” The figure in 2011 was “42.5 million.”

Syrians
Forced displacement
Kurdistan camps
People should not have to
live this way

The spike in refugees, internal and external displacements, nearly half of all refuges below the age of 18, is attributed to the Syrian conflict.

June 20 

annual commemoration

World Refugee Day

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in what might be considered understatement, said the situation, even if only glimpsed, is an “enormous human tragedy,” conflict-caused misery that is tearing apart the lives of thousands of families: people separated by the “chaos of war,” millions forced to leave loved ones.

C

ompounding the misery suffered by individual people and families are whole countries and regions deeply affected, now and into the future. Countries taking in refugees and other displaced people suffer significant economic, social and political consequences. And developing countries are taking the brunt: they have taken in 81 percent of the world’s refugees; and more than half of the world’s refugees have fled five war-torn countries: Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Syria and Sudan.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres pointed to an estimated 1.6 million Syrians who have been displaced since the crisis started over two years ago, March 2011.

“The needs of the people,” Guterres said, “are overwhelming [and] their anguish is unbearable.” An entire nation with no clear political resolution in sight is left to self-destruct as it empties of its people and civil war slides into regional conflict.

Foreigners' hostilities: war, occupation, provocation  

Syrian refugees
New born
in Turkey

Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, et al

2011-2012 going forward

H

ardly a town or a city in Jordan has not been overwhelmed by people escaping Syria, says the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Much the same is happening in “Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.”

Since March of 2011, the conflict and foreign interference in Syrian Arab Republic have led to the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians.

By June of 2012

More than 78,000 people were estimated to have fled into neighboring Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq, putting increasing strain on the governments and local communities.

Jordan: some 21,400 Syrians had registered with UNHCR as of June 2012.

Lebanon: many refugees are in a precarious situation, with little or no financial resources.  Some 27,500 refugee Syrians are at various states of registration with UNHCR. In the port city of Tripoli on the Mediterranean in northwestern Lebanon and in Bekaa in central Lebanon are thousands of refugees awaiting registration.

Turkey: 24,300 estimated refugee Syrians

Iraq: 4,400 estimated and growing numbers of refugee Syrians

Syrian government: assisting 110,000 refugees.

Refugees
North Africa

By September 2012:

1.5 - 2.5 million Syrians had fled their homes for safer areas of the country and the UNHCR, even then, was facing “security constraints” causing its staff to “adjust and curtail some activities.”

Refuges

, 

, the homeless and uprooted, the displaced internally and externally, the stateless, destabilized and traumatized, are forced migrants, wanderers ─ phenomena resulting directly from wars, relentless foreign cruelty perpetrated against peoples and nations, institutions and infrastructures of Asia and Africa. This is a crying shame the causes of which must be stopped, not the effect commemorated or given photo ops for NGOs, politicians or movie stars.

Sources and notes

“UN spotlights plight of refugees as number of globally displaced hits 18-year high,” June 20, 2013, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=45225&Cr=refugee&Cr1=&Kw1=syria&Kw2=&Kw3=

  

UNHCR 2013 planning figures for the Syrian Arab Republic
TYPE OF POPULATION	ORIGIN	JAN 2013		DEC 2013
		TOTAL IN COUNTRY	OF WHOM ASSISTED BY UNHCR	TOTAL IN COUNTRY	OF WHOM ASSISTED BY UNHCR
Total		3,138,710	760,010	2,968,710	1,048,010
1. Refugee figure for Iraqis is a Government estimate.
Refugees	Afghanistan	1,750	1,750	1,750	1,750
	Somalia	2,400	2,400	2,400	2,400
	Iraq[1]	480,000	51,300	310,000	39,300
	Various	2,750	2,750	2,750	2,750
Asylum-seekers	Iraq	700	700	700	700
	Afghanistan	190	190	190	190
	Somalia	180	180	180	180
	Various	740	740	740	740
IDPs	Syrian Arab Rep.	2,500,000	700,000	2,500,000	1,000,000
Stateless people	Stateless	150,000	-	150,000	-

http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/page?page=49e486a76&submit=GO

“UNHCR chief visits Syrian border, calls for international support,” News Stories, June 20, 2013

http://www.unhcr.org/51c303656.html

http://www.unhcr.org/51c303656.html

http://www.unhcr.org/pages/4f86c2426.html

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