One of the less talked about side effects of the unjust and continued US led military campaign in Iraq is the subsequent displacement of people, mostly women and children, that are forced to flee from persecution and become refugees in neighboring countries. According to a study produced by the United Nations, the current number of refugees world-wide has risen for the first time in 5 years.
The total number of refugees rose by more than 14% last year to nearly 10 million, the UN refugee agency says. The number of internally displaced people also reached a record high of almost 13 million, the report says. Besides Iraq, conflicts in Lebanon, East Timor, Sudan and Sri Lanka were blamed for the rise in refugee numbers.
Furthermore, this doesn't include the 4.3million Palestinians currently displaced as well.
The report said the conflict in Iraq was largely responsible for the rise. Some 1.5m Iraqis are now estimated to be living as refugees in other countries, mostly neighbouring Syria and Jordan.
Considering that the next largest group of refugees are from Afghanistan, I think it is pretty safe to say that US military campaigns, not only kill people, but also displace them. But the bigger question for me is, what are the consequences of this displacement? What happens to people when they are forced to leave the place they know as home, go homeless, run in fear and look for protection from neighboring states, where the economy can rarely sustain them?
While our "leaders" sit pretty with greedy fists full of food.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Refugees, Displacement and the War..
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/5464
Weekly Feministing Newsletter
Feministing RSS Feed
NPR's All Things Considered reported on this yesterday. Apparently only a handful of displaced Iraqis have been able to emigrate to the US, even though the whole reason a lot of these people need to get the hell out is because they worked with us or other Western organizations. With that information, it feels like we're doubly responsible for these displacements: not only are we inciting conflict in countries like Iraq, but when the local population is willing to put themselves at risk to help our soldiers the US government turns their back on them.
"What happens to people when they are forced to leave the place they know as home..."
...or when they're told their whole lives that the only place they know as home actually isn't home and that they're refugees from someplace their parents left long before they were born?
I mean, I've even heard of people born in Iran being labelled "refugees from Afghanistan," as if they're not Afghani-Iranians.
I know of a group of Somali women who are trying to do just that. A lot of women are being displaced by the war there, and they've opened a centre to provide shelter and food for them. They're also running programmes to educate women about FGM in an attempt to reduce it.
I think this is a really important issue but don't know of any Western organisations that are helping.