Suffering Humanity

"There is a multiplication of new crises. The Iraq-Syria crisis gained the dimension of a mega one ... and at the same time, the old crises have no solutions."
"We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before."
"It is terrifying that on the one hand there is more and more impunity for those starting conflicts, and on the other there is seeming utter inability of the international community to work together to stop wars and build and preserve peace,"
"[Turkey's willingness to open its borders] has a special meaning in a world where so many borders are closed or restricted, and where new walls are being built or announced."
Antonio Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees

Global Trends 2014

Afghanistan not so long ago was the world's largest source of refugees. Now that distinction is Syria's. The scale of humanity whom conflict worldwide has forced to flee their homes is enormous. A record 59.5-million refugees have been created in the world; people fearful of losing their lives, leaving all that is familiar and dear to them, including possessions and future hopes, to desperately attempt to find haven elsewhere in the world.

The mind boggles at the sheer scale of such human wretchedness, of men, women and children; the elderly and the infants all reliant on the charity of international aid organizations, the United Nations, to step forward to offer them a modicum of shelter and food and medicine. Their misery and their need is impossible to accommodate in a manner that would give them hope for the future and the future of their children, the need is that great.

Becoming refugees, the hope is that they can be settled somewhere, in some country of the world where they can find a place for themselves, where they can be employed, schooled, healed of their trauma, to become citizens wholly appreciative of a new opportunity opened to them. The reality is that scant few of these refugees ever make it out of the camps holding them; their lives in a miserable holding pattern of limitless waiting.

According to UNHCR, 38.2 million people have been displaced within the borders of their own countries; an increase over the past several years. Syria accounted for 11.6 million of those internally displaced, while 3.9 million Syrian refugees are languishing, hoping for relief from their purgatory in 107 countries. Syria remains the leading source of refugees after four years of civil war; while for the past 30 years Afghanistan had led the pack.

A mere 126,800 of the total number of refugees was able to return to their homes.

Both Turkey and Pakistan were the recipients of the bulk of the refugees emanating from their neighbours. In Turkey's and Pakistan's instances, both countries agitated and aided extremists to unseat or destabilize their neighbours. In a sense, their intake of refugees from those same neighbours represent due punishment for their roles in prosecuting societal conflict. The refugees they have absorbed had no need of punishment.

The UNHCR report detailed how in region after region, the number of refugees and internally displaced people is on the rise. In the past five years, at least 15 conflicts have erupted or reignited: eight in Africa (Côte d'Ivoire, Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, northeastern Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and this year in Burundi); three in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, and Yemen); one in Europe (Ukraine) and three in Asia (Kyrgyzstan, and in several areas of Myanmar and Pakistan).

Nowhere does the report make mention of the unassailable fact that the major source of destabilization internationally and the producer of most of the world's refugees are dysfunctional Muslim states whose brand of Islamist ideology creates the conditions for violent oppression and desperate retreat.