At holding centers in Germany, reports have surfaced that Syrian Christians have faced attacks by other asylum seekers. It is disturbing to hear of attacks on Syrian Christian asylum seekers by fellow Muslim asylum seekers at German reception centers—I am sure the blame for these outbreaks is...
Alan Kurdi’s death speaks to the continued horrors stemming from a ravaged Syria. Though the images of death have become numbingly common, the picture of a young Syrian boy washed up on the shore of a Turkish beach is devastating. The juxtaposition of a dead child on one of the world’s most...
If refugees formed a country, it would be the 24th most populous in the world. To paraphrase William Gibson, the post-apocalypse is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed. Many of our post-apocalyptic stories—Mad Max, The Road, World War Z—feature desperate people on the move...
Children of empires bred on ideologies such as “the white man’s burden” are struggling to cope with a changing world and are unleashing violence on imagined enemies. On June 17, Dylann Storm Roof, a fanatical white supremacist, killed nine African Americans at the historic Emanuel African...
Policymakers fiddle like Nero while refugees face destruction and death, says cartoonist J.S. Paul Locke. The global refugee crisis is at levels not seen since the end of World War II. The Institute of Economics and Peace reports that out of 130 people, at least one person is currently a refugee...
The problem is not our empathy, but the apathy created by our inability to do anything about our emotion. There is no waiting space inside the Dar es Salaam airport, departure passengers sit outside to wait for their flights. It was on these uncomfortable benches, while eating Pringles and...
The realities that over 150,000 Rohingya refugees face are filled with risk, fear and uncertainty. Imagine the choice between throwing your fate into the hands of notoriously abusive human traffickers or staying in a place facing the highest risk of genocide in the world. This is the choice...
The key to solving Lebanon’s multiple crises is rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. On March 5, Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam convened his cabinet for the first time since early February. Sessions were previously suspended over disputes concerning the mechanism that will be...
Instead of being able to attend school in their homeland of Syria, children are forced to run around the streets of Istanbul, day and night. I am currently in Turkey, my first time in the country, and I am ashamed to say that I don’t understand any Turkish. I am staying by Taksim Square, a...
As the Syrian refugee crisis deepens, charitable trips have turned into publicity stunts. Despite aid convoys developing into an institutionalised process of our global charity sector, the increase in the number of humanitarian relief convoys sent out is not proportionate to their affectivity in...
Palestinian, Iraqi, and Syrian refugees in Jordan, share similar experiences of life in exile. This is the last of a two part series. Read part one here. Employment Another area demonstrating the standard of living for these refugees results from a lack of citizenship, employment, freedom of...
The registration of refugees is designed to protect. But its system of conditional aid has distanced the concept of aid from its universal roots. Everyday hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are forced to flee their home countries in search of refuge. Leaving with little more than...
Repatriating refugees in the Great Lakes region often disregards individuals' circumstances, and may even put them at risk. A Refugee Life Jean-Marc is Burundian by nationality, but has never lived in Burundi. In 1976, he was born into exile in Rwanda where he lived as a refugee until...
