Refugee Matters: The World’s Largest Refugee Crisis
The latest refugee news from Canada and the field
We need to tell the world of the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis”
By Jean-Nicolas Beuze, UNHCR Representative in Yemen
I am the new UNHCR Representative in Yemen, writing this from our base in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital city at the foot of Mount Nuqum in the western part of the country.
I was last here in 2013 during what became a very short-lived peace and reconciliation process. Since then, followed by the renewed fighting in 2015, the country has spiraled into what the UN has called “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” By the numbers it translates into a country where 80 per cent of the population (28 million) is in need of humanitarian assistance.
UNHCR and its partners are working around the clock to provide water, food, shelter, medicine and protection for vulnerable, often traumatized people. We need your commitment and voice more than ever to inform and educate more Canadians about the humanitarian emergency in Yemen.
“I want to inspire refugees”: Olympian and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Yusra Mardini on resiliency, Tokyo 2020, and how the Olympics bring people together
Syrian refugee and swimmer Yusra Mardini was appointed the youngest ever UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador in April 2017 after she was selected to compete at Rio 2016 as part of the first Refugee Olympic Team. Yusra advocates for refugees globally through sharing her own inspiring story.
When you fled Syria, you were just 17. Like thousands of refugees, you ended up making a dangerous trip across the Mediterranean. Can you tell us a bit about what that experience was like?
My sister and I nearly didn’t survive our Mediterranean crossing. Like most of the boats that make that journey, ours was dangerously overcrowded, and the engine stopped working in the middle of the Aegean Sea. The choice was simple: we could either panic and give up, or we could do something about it. My sister and I jumped into the water and pushed until we could push no more. After swimming for more than three and a half hours, we finally arrived in Greece.
If you want to make this a more equal world, I ask you to help give refugees the opportunities to not just survive, but to thrive.
Is there anything you’d like to share with Canadians about the refugee experience, or that you think they perhaps don’t know?
People don’t realize that for a refugee, the moment when you stop running can be just as hard as the moment when you started. It was only when I had crossed the last border and reached safety that I realized I’d lost more than my home. I’d lost my nationality and my identity. Those around me had lost their sense of purpose and their means of self-respect. They were once doctors, engineers, teachers, and students. Now they were suddenly refugees, reduced to a label. People need to look beyond the label and see the amazing contributions that refugees can make.
The survivors: Snapshots of desperate journeys out of Libya to safety
In the face of ongoing and intensifying conflict in Libya, UNHCR continues to work with its partners on organizing humanitarian evacuations out of the country. Since the start of the evacuation operation in 2017, more than 4,100 individuals have been brought to safety — including more than 1,500 last year. Now, their journeys begin anew.
Young Somali refugee couple Abdulbasit and Zainab and their two-month-old daughter Hadia are seen on their first day at the Gashora Emergency Transit Centre in Rwanda. They were among 66 highly vulnerable refugees — including 22 children separated from their parents and wider family — as part of a UNHCR program to relocate and support the most vulnerable.
Delmar fled Somalia in 2015 after witnessing the death of his father and older brother at the hands of Al Shabab. To reach Libya, he travelled through war-torn Yemen, then Sudan. Kidnappers demanded money and threatened him with torture, beatings and starvation. With the help of friends and family back home, he managed to buy back his freedom.
9 Years in Crisis: The ongoing humanitarian emergency in Syria
As the crisis in Syria enters its ninth year, the need for life-saving support in the conflict-ravaged country remains immense — and urgent.
An estimated 13.5 million people need humanitarian assistance — including 6.6 million that are internally displaced.
No other country on Earth has more individuals forcibly displaced from their homes than Syria. It remains the main country of origin of refugees, comprising 25 per cent of all refugees worldwide.
Syrians have found safe refuge in countries all over the world — including Canada. But neighbouring countries in the Middle East and North Africa including Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon have welcomed and hosted the overwhelming majority of Syrians forced to flee their homeland. Yet this generosity has also presented a fresh set of financial challenges for some host communities. Compounding the crisis was the escalation of hostilities in northern Syria in late 2019 which saw the sudden exodus of tens of thousands of children, women and men to northern Iraq.
Within Syria, shifting from an emergency response to longer- term durable solutions remains a key priority for UNHCR. Syrians are returning to the country despite the ongoing challenges, and UNHCR seeks to work with its partners to provide support to returnees with community-based protection, shelter repair, legal aid and documentation, primary health care and education.
The humanitarian needs of the Syrian people are vast in scale, scope and magnitude. But the strength and determination of the Syrian people seeking better lives within and beyond their homeland remains ever-present. Learn more about a few of these incredible individuals and how UNHCR is continuing to support them in their time of need.
Faces of Syria
The look in my children’s eyes was killing me, I saw they were expecting something and I couldn’t give them what they wanted.
Elham, a 30-year-old mother whose family is internally displaced in Katrji, Syria, is fighting for her four children to receive an education. She wasn’t able to receive a full education — Elham was married at the age of 13 and was only able to study until the sixth grade. As her children grew, the crisis in Syria began and she wasn’t able to send her children to school for six years. “The look in my children’s eyes was killing me, I saw they were expecting something and I couldn’t give them what they wanted.” Then, Elham took matters into her own hands. She signed up to attend a local literacy class in Aleppo and is now teaching her own children.
A new school, and new opportunities.
We used to study here a few years ago, but it got destroyed. Now, it’s a beautiful place again.
Displaced Syrian Amouna smiles as she attends class for the first time in three years. Amouna says that, “We used to study here a few years ago, but it got destroyed. Now, it’s a beautiful place again.”
After hundreds of schools were destroyed across Syria, thousands of children could not access a proper education. To help, UNHCR and its partners have worked to rehabilitate schools, including Amouna’s in Tal Estabel, so that children can have a safe place to learn.
To help more Syrian Refugee families visit unhcr.ca/syria
Climate change and displacement
Twenty years ago, Kutubdia in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district was a fertile land where farmers could grow rice. Now, because of the effects of climate change, the only crop that can grow there is salt.
Though climate change is a threat that will impact people all over the world — including Canada — it cannot be ignored that refugees and displaced persons are particularly vulnerable to its effects, says Andrew Harper, UNHCR’s Special Advisor on Climate Action.
Climate change is yet another threat to people who have already been forced to flee from conflict, poverty and persecution. More than six million refugees are located in some of the world’s least developed countries — nations which are also highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
2019–2024 Global Strategy for Sustainable Energy’s Four Areas of Focus
With your help, UNHCR is working to help stop this global crisis:
- Addressing refugee households’ energy needs from the onset of an emergency
- Improving access to sustainable and affordable household cooking energy
- Expanding sustainable household electrification
- Expanding sustainable electrification of community facilities
How the growing global crisis is forcing millions from their homes
Cash assistance offers a lifeline for Syrian refugee family in Jordan
Mohammad’s family was forced to flee their hometown of Aleppo in Syria when it came under heavy, life-threatening siege in 2012.
Ongoing violence and airstrikes destroyed his neighbourhood — and left Mohammad paralyzed from the waist down.
Today he lives in a small apartment in the city of Irbid, in northern Jordan, with his mother Mariam, and his siblings, including eldest sister, Zakeyeh, who acts as his caregiver.
The family depends on monthly cash assistance from UNHCR to meet their basic needs including food and health care.
Approximately 70 per cent of Syrian refugees across the Middle East and North Africa region live below the poverty line. Paying for basic essentials is often a struggle. Thanks to donors like you, UNHCR is able to give essential cash support to refugees like Mohammed and his family.
To read the full UNHCR Canada Spring 2020 magazine, please visit our website. Want to support refugees? Donate to UNHCR Canada here.
