For many years the US has been the champion of human rights…we have tried to help when there has been a refugee crisis…that is until about 25 years ago when we started pulling away from any responsibility for we were helping create the problem.
Misery has become a weapon of war these days……
From Syria to Yemen, from South Sudan to Venezuela, war and political crisis are causing human anguish on a scale unseen in a generation.
That conflict and crisis take a high human toll is hardly new, of course. Yet the scope of suffering today is striking. The number of people displaced globally by conflict and persecution stood at 65.6 million at the end of 2016, the greatest number since World War II. Figures released earlier this month show that there were 11.8 million new internal displacements in 2017, nearly double the 6.9 million in 2016. The number of people facing acute hunger globally due largely to conflict and instability reached almost 74 million across eighteen countries in 2017. The trend is clear: war and crisis are destroying more lives and livelihoods, pushing more people toward starvation and driving more people from their homes.
https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/misery-strategy-human-cost-conflict
In the last 10 years we, the US, has contributed to the Middle East refugee crisis…..and now that we have officially pulled out of the UN humanitarian efforts we can NO longer claim any moral high ground and need to keep our mouths shut.
The crisis in the Syrian desert is just such an example……there is lots of finger pointing and little effort to solve the problem…..
Looking at a map, nothing would seem easier than to drive a convoy of food and medical supplies to Rukban, a camp for refugees and displaced civilians on the Syrian–Jordanian border some 260 kilometers east of Damascus. Though the terrain is rough, the camp is located in an area of relative calm and stability, and it could be reached from Amman, Damascus, or both. But Syria’s seven-year civil war says otherwise.
All sides now blame each other for preventing aid deliveries to the tens of thousands of Syrians trapped in this desolate desert region, and Rukban has emerged as a cruel illustration of how civilians are snared in the tangled threads of sovereignty and proxy control that constitute current-day Syria.
https://tcf.org/content/report/blame-game-syrians-stranded-desert/
Many countries contributed to the creation of this problem, including the US, and few want to help solve the very problems they have created.
Personally, my thoughts are if you had a hand in creating the problem then it is on your shoulders to solve it…..but instead we are asking those countries least able to weather the refugee crisis to do the heavy lifting.
I say that every defense contract has a provision in it that “X” amount of the profits go to a fund to help refugees…administered by Switzerland through the UN.
It is time for Americans to re-claim the moral high ground in war…but that will not happen in this writers lifetime….sad but there is hope, a small glimmer but hope nonetheless.