Imagine if every single person in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Virginia had to pack up and leave home. Half would be able to flee to Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Peru and live in slums there. The other half would have to find some other place in the United States to live or settle in an abandoned house.
That is what life is like for the 5 million Iraqis–out of 28 million citizens there, almost one sixth of the country–who are refugees to other countries or displaced in Iraq.
“They are fleeing from creditable threats to their own safety and their family’s safety,” Jake Kurtzer, Refugee International advocate, said. Nearly 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed.
“What we’re beginning to see is that Iraqis will sell everything they own,” Arlene Flaherty, Catholic Relief Services representative, said, “everything, to buy a plane ticket to be a tourist in Lebanon, then live there illegally.”
Middle-class Iraqis try to flee the country to Syria and Jordan, principally. But conditions in these countries are poor. Take Syria for instance. It is a country slightly larger than the American state of North Dakota and populated by roughly 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in addition to their 19 million citizens.
Syria’s surrounding countries, Jordan and Lebanon, are holding about the same amount of refugees despite being much smaller countries. Both Jordan and Lebanon combined are still smaller than the American state of Louisiana but have accepted over a million Iraqis.
“They’re living in great poverty, basically in slums,” Laura Sheahan, Catholic Relief Services representative, said. “You go into their apartments and there’s just a few mattresses on the floor and maybe a small little table or a box they use to put things on.”
When an Iraqi chooses to remain in their country, they are constantly targeted by kidnappers and militias, held captive, tortured and sometimes killed. “Everyone’s being threatened for various different reasons but it’s individual to each particular person,” Kurtzer said.
The remaining refugees remain scattered globally. Most leave with absolutely nothing and arrive to their destination with nothing to gain. “A lot of them are really in a holding pattern,” Sheahan said, “just hoping that they can be resettled to other countries like Canada or Australia.
They’re hoping to move but there are so few slots available in those countries that it is likely that a lot of those Iraqi refugees will just be hanging around with no money, no options and a really bleak future ahead of them.” So the bottom line is that they prefer to flee to safer, more developed regions but the reality of the situation is that they can’t afford to do so.
Organizations such as Catholic Relief Services, Refugee International and UN High Commission for Refugees are aiding the Iraqi refugee situation.
There are a variety of ways for students to get involved but the most impacting action right now is to lobby to congress, pressuring to follow through on the U.S. promised resettlement of 12,000 Iraqi refugees. To date, the United States has taken in 2,527 and the fiscal year ends in October 2008. Cabrini students have participated in a letter-writing campaign to senators.
“They are so desperate for you to help,” Flaherty said.
