Heidi wrote this past week wanting to draw attention to the fact that many of the refugees hitting the shores of Europe are from North Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan — NOT Syria. She had seen this in Debka File, an Israeli news group…
http://app.debka.com/p/article/25278/Turkey-and-Saudi-Arabia-hit-back-for-the-Obama-Putin-Syrian-pact-
If we or anyone else had ever implied that all or even most were from Syria, we apologize. This is a GLOBAL wave of migrants, spurred in part by multiple economic and political realities. And frankly, some are just trying to find a better life.
Reliable UNHCR source data points to the fact that in 2016 more than 60% of the refugee movement towards Europe is triggered by the Syrian crisis:
http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/regional.php
drill down data:
http://popstats.unhcr.org/en/persons_of_concern
Even the big total number of all refugees arriving in Europe in 2015 isn’t as much compared to the 4.8 million refugees in the countries surrounding Syria. Not even talking about millions of IDPs within Syria.
Those are facts. But what is important: What is a Christian response and attitude to that?
“Just” trying to find a better life sounds just too easy when you hear first hand again and again what it meant for those, risking their life often more than once during their journey. How desperate must one be?
Sure, there are no easy answers for the big political issue. Having seen with my own eyes the situations in the Middle East, Central Asia and now the Balkans, I will not want to judge anyone risking that journey, but show compassion towards the individual.
A NGO worker in the Balkans