Refugee crisis: Facts, effects and possible solutions

Um Nawwaf (Syrian refugee in Jordan) will never forget the day three years ago, when the shells were raining down on the family’s home in Ghouta, Syria. “My daughter was looking for a place to hide, but she fell on a rock and hit her head and since then, she has been suffering from epilepsy. That was the final straw- we simply had to move.”
Um Nawwaf describes how hard it is to be a refugee: “I can barely afford to put a roof over my head. My son Nawwaf had to drop out of school and find a job to help me with the expenses.”
Barely holding back her tears, she says: “My heart breaks every time he leaves for work. He’s only 13 years old.”
With a glimmer of hope in her eyes, Um Nawwaf says: “I wake up every day telling myself that this is a temporary situation and that things will get better soon. I hope so.”

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/12/3-real-stories-from-refugees/

UN defines refugees as, “A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they cannot return home or are afraid to do so. War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries.” There are 21.3 million refugee in the world now who have been forced to leave their country due to many reasons like war, violence, disasters etc. Some of these people leave their country in search of better life in the developed countries via legal and illegal means while most of them are rehabilitated by the UN agencies, social organizations and NGOs.

Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia are the top three countries producing 53 percent of total refugee. Since civil war started in Syria, the number of refugee has increased to maximum i.e. 4.9 million. The people leaving from middle east to European countries has created a biggest crisis that Europe ever had faced since Second World War. The number has reached to 800,000 from the year 2013 to 2016. Beside them, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, Congo, Myanmar, Vietnam etc. have produced refugee in larger scale. The number of refugees from different part of the world suggest how big the problem is and why it hasn’t been successfully addressed. United nations, USA, EU and the neighboring countries has tried hard to rehabilitate all the refugees by providing them good food, shelter, cloths etc. and a job to carry on their normal life. But it hasn’t been that easy as thought and worked out on paper. Still, there are millions of refugees who are living inside tents without food, medicines and proper sanitation. Not only this, they have to live with disrespect and hatred within the society in other countries.

The collective effort of national and international agencies with enough financial aid can only solve this growing problem. The first and easy solution to this problem is distributing the refugees to different parts of worlds either temporarily or permanently and then use their skills in development activities. Refugees have great variety of skills by which any part of the word can be benefitted. It is not necessary that refugees should be taken to developed countries, they can also be distributed to developing countries with proper consensus between host nation and refugees.

Another solution to this problem could be forming a separate refugee nation where refugees from all around the globe can come together and start their new life. This seems to be an unlikely solution but this might be the best for decades to come. This earth is very big and we can definitely find a small portion of land to make a nation equipped with proper facilities and infrastructures. If we can invest huge amount of money for war, why can’t we invest for developing a nation? If proper facilities are provided, refugees will happily accept the proposal.

The effect of refugee in different parts of the world is unbearable, esp. in European countries. Hence, different governing bodies should come together to take out refugees from difficult situation, rehabilitate them with proper facilities and bring back their normal life either on the same state or neighboring state or distributing them to different parts of world or by making a separate refugee nation. Then only, the everyday hope of refugee like Um Nawwaf might turn into reality and millions of refugees can smile forever in their life.