[caption id="attachment_20264" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Assistant Secretary Richard meets with Syrian refugees[/caption]Marsha Hunt---As the Syrian conflict has recently been in the news, along the borders one sees new waves of people fleeing war-torn areas to join the many who wait and worry to return to their homes, a wait that can last for years.
The recent conflict in Syria has forced many people to flee to Turkey. Turkey struggles to provide help, as other countries do with immigrants on the borders.
The World Migration Report is an attempt to examine how many refugees there might be and how they are faring. The report looks at quality of life issues as well as the numbers and does this every year. The information is presently being assembled for distribution so that people can understand what changes may have occurred since last year and previous years.
Refugees International is the organization that reports the status of refugees on an ongoing basis, with its website The organization's aim is to report the plight of these people and help shine a light on their needs.
Where do refugees go when they flee their countries? In the case of the war-torn areas of the Middle East and Asia, New Science reports two-thirds reside with families, rent rooms or reside in vacant buildings. The other live in camps. The displacement of refugees from Syria is considered to be the largest of all time.
And one of the largest problems in the camps is humiliation, having to live where there is disease, lack of sanitation, struggles to find food, water and the basic necessities of living, and the lack of privacy. The longer a person stays in the camp, the worse that humiliation becomes. It fuels tensions as well.
So as the world waits and wonders what the major leaders of the world might do to end the Syrian conflict, the countries housing the refugees, and those who wait to return home, wonder how long it will be before they have the basic necessities at the very least and quality of life, which is the most important area of neglect for those who are the “collateral” damage of war.