“You know, those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back –it’s hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like.”
–Naomi Shihab Nye
None of us can imagine being in the position of a Syrian citizen; the horrors of war that they must have seen, the feeling of helplessness they got as they watched their homes being torn apart or the feeling of loss they felt as they watched their loved ones being taken away. In a state of utter distress, they turned towards the global community for assistance only to be disappointed by the lack of acceptance and willingness to offer a helping hand.
Due to the ongoing conflict in Syria, the world is seeing the largest refugee crisis in history with over 219,000 people crossing borders, abandoning all their assets, just in 2014. Barely self-sufficient states like Lebanon, which has taken over 1.5 million refugees who now constitute as one fifth of its population, are ones who offered to share their resources in comparison to countries like the US, that are more capable of providing assistance, who took around 1500.
On the other hand, even if they were allowed into a country, the living condition in refugee camps is appalling and is being compared to the Nazi concentration camps for their exposed, crowded and unsanitary nature leading to the spread of many diseases. As refugees are blamed to be a burden on the health sector and the economy of a country, to rob citizens of job opportunities and for increasing crime rate we forget that their situation was not their doing and our unsympathetic attitude towards them only exacerbates the feeling of dread and loss of a once stable life in their hearts.