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Ear to the Ground

Refugees on the Rise

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Posted on Jun 18, 2008
Syria Refugee Camp
UNHCR / John Wreford

The Al Tanf refugee camp in Syria holds several hundred Palestinians who have fled their homes in Iraq.

A U.N. report Tuesday estimated the number of the world’s displaced refugees in 2007 at 11.4 million, a majority of which the U.N. says come from the U.S.-led conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Analysts also say the number of refugees threatens to grow even more due to new concerns such as climate change, environmental degradation and increasingly scarce resources.


The New York Times:

The number of refugees crossing borders to escape conflict and persecution increased last year, and threatens to continue to grow because of factors like climate change and scarce resources, the United Nations refugee agency warned Tuesday.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees oversaw the care of 11.4 million refugees in 2007, including about 400,000 people who were enduring conflict in their own countries, the agency said. The total was 9.9 million people in 2006.

“We are now faced with a complex mix of global challenges that could threaten even more forced displacement in the future,” António Guterres, the high commissioner, said in a statement.

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By Arabian Thoroughbred, June 18, 2008 at 1:18 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

A keen observer and a concerned universal humanist does not need to wait for the yearly U.N. official report to tell him or her that this humanistic disaster is getting worse with every passing day.

Just as a result of the criminal U.S. war in Iraq, and Afghanistan over 3 million people were made miserable refugees. If we add this number to the almost one million Palestinian refugees created by Israel’s wars, then that tiny part of the world, called the Middle East, has born the heaviest percentage of refugees resulting from criminal colonialist wars.

Forget about the thousands of deaths and the untold level of destruction to infrastructures, Israel and the U.S. are responsible for the misery of those, at least four million refugees, many of whom in their misery would envy the dead!

Sad as it might be to be reminded about this explosive humanistic and world security problem,I am a little relieved that there were no media gimmicks used to obscure one of the major causes of these man made disasters by stating that “the majority of which the U.N. says come from the U.S.-led conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Sadly, however, what the U.N. report does not touch upon is that this huge and increasing number of refugees constitutes the most serious threat to world security. So, the next time the U.S. is hit by another “terrorist” attack, it would be only a case of chickens coming home to roost!

And though we would always keep saying that two wrongs don’t make a right, nevertheless, because it’s part of the helpless human nature, many would continue to believe and say that revenge is the most sweet thing to do in the absence of universal justice.

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