Being an immigrant is very difficult. I know from experience what it’s like to leave everything you know and have behind and go towards an unknown. And in our case we didn’t have to pay smugglers, we didn’t have to walk across borders, we had passports, visa, purchased our own plane fares and weren’t fleeing war. So when I read that the number of refugees and displaced persons from wars and persecutions has reached 68.5 million, I shudder. These are 68.5 million lives which have been (more…)
refugees
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War and Suffering
The war in Yemen has just entered its fourth year. The war in Syria is 7 years old, the war in Sudan 5, the war in Afghanistan 15. War and suffering go together. For example, in Yemen which has already been called a humanitarian crisis :
- in March 2017 an outbreak of cholera spread to a million people by the end of the year
- an estimate of 2 million children are out of school
- 2 million people, nearly 3 in every 4 people are dependent on humanitarian aid to survive
- besides cholera there has been dengue fever malaria and diphtheria, while the fear and possibility of those diseases returning is real
- the destruction of hospitals and infrastructure make rendering aid more difficult
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Climate Change Migration
It’s easy to speak of the consequences of climate change, but being faced with potential numbers of one of its consequences is a wake-up call. The World Bank recently issued a Report “Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration” saying that if current trends continue and we do nothing by 2050, 143 million people would be climate change refugees. The reasons are due to causes we’ve already heard about: decreased crop productivity, water shortages and rising sea levels. Of course (more…)