An overview of the Syrian Refugee Crisis

(these are not my pictures)

Currently, many families are fleeing from Syria, and it's an issue that so many people don't know about. Today, in my history class, my teacher asked about the crisis at hand, and at most there was a handful of students who knew what was going on. This crisis has been going on for four years and there were still people who weren't aware. If he had asked a question about Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber, the entire class would have known something about the artists, but on this topic, there were few who knew.  To understand a crisis, you need to know its history. This crisis started with the  hopeful Arab spring "noun: a series of uprisings in Arab countries, beginning in Tunisia in December 2010, in which protesters challenged the existing authoritarian regimes." In result of this, dictatorships were put down, but then new dictators were soon put in their place to replace them. The president of Syria, Bashar Al Assad has refused to give up power and resulted in fighting back in the most inhumane and violent ways including having children tortured and gassing his own people. When I was reading things about this issue on the internet, I saw that many things were titled with migrant instead of refugee. A migrant is a person who leaves their homeland to go to another by choice. They leave because they want something new, whether it's a job or for school or something along those lines. A refugee in words of the UNHCR is  "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country." The refugees who are risking their lives to leave their homeland are not leaving because they want to . It's because they have no other choice. This is a refugee crisis. Since the Refugee Convention in 1951, the refugees have been given certain rights in international law such as if they've entered a country illegally because of danger in their country, they are not to be turned around. Rules such as this have been agreed on by most countries in the UN for over 65 years. Countries do not have to abide  to this until refugees have arrived into their country, and in places like Europe, refugees have arrived. If there was a safer quota system to get refugees into places like Europe that would benefit many, but that's not politically popular, and there would be so many more refugees coming their way. Europe benefits from the dangers of smuggling people into its areas, and that will keep happening until another solution has come into play. To add to this, Syrians are not the only refugees that are fleeing.  



There are people taking dangerous journeys on blow up boats for a chance to give themselves a life for their families. So many of these families have young children, and they're willing to risk everything for a chance. They find this chance of risking everything at sea safer than staying in a place of all that they have ever known. Their home has became the mouth of a shark, and the long amount of walking to the sea cloaked with exhaustion is worth running away than being left as prey. A single chance. They're running off of little food and taking long treks for  a chance. They're risking their lives during the worst time of the year for the sea along a short path for freedom.To bring this to perspective, in the resort town of Bodrum in Turkey and off the coast of the Greek island Kos, a number of bodies have been washed up along the shore from a boat that didn't make it. Some of whom were children, more specifically, young children. If we're really going to face the facts, 11 million people, this is half of Syria's population, has either died or fled their country. Currently, there are refugee camps formed by the UNHCR packed with people with nowhere to go to. Because of the fast increasing numbers, the UNHCR has either the money or resources to provide enough shelter or food for the growing number of people. In a video that has been constantly playing on the news, you can see officials throwing food at mobs of people. The lucky ones are the ones who can grab the food. But because of the closely packed people and the lack of water, the little that there is, is not completely sanitary and there is a high chance of the spread of diseases like cholera and polio, and there aren't enough medical supplies to combat it. As much as the countries around are saying that this is a bad ordeal, not many countries have allowed large amounts of Syrians to enter.  What country is to blame for all of this?  Everyone. Yes, the Assad regime takes a chunk of the blame, but the rest of the countries are not doing enough to help . Check any set of statistics. Countries are taking little or less than they had before. Places in like the states itself where we  have taken fewer refugees than Brazil. A day ago, from mounting pressure for the United States to accept refugees from the EU, Obama released a statement that we would take in 10,000 refugees, but thinking about how little of a fraction that is to the overall total is crazy to say the least. And to that statement, it was followed with disapproval from many people in the American government. In many situations where there is a large number of refugees at hand, many countries react in a way to say that it's not their problem, and they have to protect their own people. We are all people that make up a human species that lives together on the same Earth. If it's not our problem, then whose it it. When these people are being oppressed and treated less than a human where it's resulted in many being killed, it is everyone in power's fault. Our species lives in such an interconnected world, and the world's people are our people, whether or not their from our country. If one country in the endless list of countries had accepted those young children and their families, their deaths have not taken place. Once the picture of the young boy was passed along through social media, it affected a lot of people, because inside, we all knew that the blood was on all of our shoulders.  The world has legal obligations to these people in distress in hand with ethical obligations. If the world had seen crisis in other countries as their own problem before  it ever reached them personally, solutions would be reached far earlier. In recent times, many people in the EU have shown support in welcoming refugees at places train stations and football games, and slowly the government has noticed and slowly made steps forward, which is a hopeful sign. This will be a longterm expensive process. Until the root cause is stopped, there will be a nonstop of flow of people. The world has an ethical and moral right to help these people, as well as give economic help to the many bordering countries shouldering large amounts of Syrians with little resources.

This beautiful young Syrian boy summarized all that they wanted, and we want that for them too.

Donate today:

http://donate.unhcr.org/international/general/#_ga=1.29610806.829388110.1441552177

Learn more about this problem:

http://www.unhcr.org/55df0e556.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/world/middleeast/obama-directs-administration-to-accept-10000-syrian-refugees.html?_r=0

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/07/europe/europe-migrant-crisis/

http://www.vox.com/2015/9/11/9309973/syrian-refugees-us

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/11/the-politics-of-the-syrian-refugee-crisis-explained/
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24583286
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-six-charts-that-show-where-refugees-are-coming-from-where-they-are-going-and-how-they-are-getting-to-europe-10482415.html