the syrian refugee catastrophe
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The Syrian Refugee
CatastropheApril 2, 2016 sarabiany.com
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“death is a risk I was willing to take
so I could live.”
Photo: Yannis Behrakis/ReutersCover Photo: sarabiany.com
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of Syria’s population has been displaced since 2011
1/2
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As if
160 million Americans
had to flee their homes past 5 years
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160 Katrinas
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0912/p01s01-ussc.html
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4,812,851UNHCR registered refugees
As of March 16 2016: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php
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6+ million Internally DisplacedMarch 2016: http://www.unocha.org/syria Photo: sarabiany.com
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6+ million Internally Displaced
Photo: sarabiany.comMarch 2016: http://www.unocha.org/syria
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“Syria has become a country of poor people,
with an estimated 4 in every 5 Syrians now living in poverty.”
UN Report 2015 http://bit.ly/1RVGaNU
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“life expectancy has shrunk from
76 to 56 years old”
UN Report 2015 http://bit.ly/1RVGaNU
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"has become the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era, yet the world is failing to meet the needs of refugees and the countries hosting them.”
- António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
August 2014 http://www.unhcr.org/53ff76c99.html
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This is not a natural disaster.
This catastrophe is manmade.
1345+ years of Assad family rule
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45+years of Assad family rule
• absolute power • sectarian, regional &
business networks • police state • utter brutality, exemplified by
Hama ’82 massacre • no independent civil society • hand-off from father to son
in 2000
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March 2011: “The people want…”
Photo: Daraa March 2011
16Photo: Homs, April 18, 2011
“The people want…”
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“The people want…”
Photo: Homs, April 24 2011
19Photo: Hama, July 22, 2011.AP
“The people want…”
20Photo: Damascus, 2012
“The people want…”
21Photo: Damascus, 2012
“The people want…”
22Photo: Jobar, Damascus, 2012
“The people want…”
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“We will sit here. We call it a fight until the end…They should know when we suffer, we will not suffer alone.” - Rami Makhlouf, May 2011 NY Times
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“Assad or we burn the country” The war in Syria was started to crush dissent.
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Mass detention & 'industrial scale' killing of detainees
A painting for Abdulla Omari called “ Detainee”
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In 2012-13, the fear of rape was the #1 reason Syrians fled the country.
http://thebea.st/1Tsj4Ur
28http://sn4hr.org/blog/2015/06/16/8049/
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Daily bombardment
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Broken “red lines”, chemical weapons attacks
https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/09/10/attacks-ghouta/analysis-alleged-use-chemical-weapons-syria
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“Starve until
Submission”
Photo: Reuters, Yarmouk, 2014
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Rebels & revolutionaries
Assad regime & allies
Kurdish groups
Jabhat-Nusra (AQ)
ISIS
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5 Key Groupings
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470,000 killed in 5+ Years
February 2016: Syrian Centre for Policy Research
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The ISIS advance in late 2014 added
to an already desperate situation
Photo Reuters: http://bit.ly/1TukFcB
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Russian intervention in the fall resulted in another spike of displaced Syrians
Photograph: Ghaith Omran/AFP/Getty Images
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Systematic sectarian massacres + rape campaigns
Air bombardment
ISIS advance
Russian intervention
European exodus
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The catastrophe didn’t make international headlines…
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Until…
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image of refugees in europe
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Worst catastrophe since WW2
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Migrant is not a Refugee
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935,008asylum seekers in Europe
http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php
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What has been the response in North America?
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"… accepting 25,000 Syrian refugees does right by both the safety of
Canadians and by the values that define us as a nation."
http://bit.ly/1ZV3kdj
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Syrian refugees admitted to the US
since 2011
3,054military aged males who
are unattached to families
2%
Source: U.S. State Department Refugee Processing Center Custom Report: http://bit.ly/1LoVa3p http://bzfd.it/1ZV15qv
However, in the US…
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Last September, due to public pressure Obama increased the quota to 10k Syrians in 2016 (out of 85k)
Photo: sarabiany.com
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“Ten thousand is not even close to being commensurate with the massive scale of the Syrian refugee crisis, nor in
line with this country’s historic global leadership in refugee resettlement"
David Miliband, president and CEO
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Islamophobia
Election Season Refugees
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One of the goals of the ISIS Paris attacks was to provide cover for a bigoted response in Europe & the US towards vulnerable populations fleeing both the regime & ISIS.
A fake Syrian passport was found lying nearby, left by the attackers.
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Bush suggested a religious test for Syrian refugees to ensure that Muslims are kept out
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Carson compared refugees to 'rabid' dogs
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Cruz supported Governor ‘rebellion’ to allow states to ban refugees
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Trump said he would deport the refugees already here & ban Muslims
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Rubio said ‘we can’t accept’ them and adjusted based on political rhetoric
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Christie insisted that the U.S. not even accept 5-year-old orphans
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Even when arriving in the US, life is difficult. resettlement support
assimilation language
commuting schools
work daily supplies social network
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Where are we today?
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Where are we today?
"We will not allow our assistance to be instrumentalized for a mass expulsion operation, and we refuse to be part of a system that has no regard for the humanitarian or protection needs of asylum seekers and migrants”
MSF on EU Plan
Photo by Alexander Koerner/Getty Images
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Where are we today?
The US is lagging well behind the goal to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees by end of
fiscal year October, and has only accepted ~1,200 in the past 6 months
Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reutershttp://bit.ly/1SvAef5
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“a whole generation is growing up in the camps of exile – these children who’ve lost a father to shelling, a friend’s brother to bullets, a sister’s husband to torture. When they grow
up and realize that life is more than a refugee camp, that it isn’t natural to lose
everything to tyranny … this generation will bear a culture of revenge and anger, and a
permanent sense of injustice.” - Activist Aziz Asaad, Guardian
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