On September 16th, 2016, Oxfam America—an international organization grappling with poverty, famine, and oppression in over ninety countries—exhibited their charitable expedition amongst the public in New York’s Brooklyn Bridge Park. With hundreds of radiant orange life-jackets amassed from the oceanfront of Chios, Greece, plastered across the shoreline of the East River by an assortment of volunteers, Time stood still. News sources were steadied from the evocative portrait, painted to, “—send a sobering message to those participating in next week’s United Nations Summit for Refugees and Migrants.”
With reference to the European Commission, the United Nations Summit for Refugees and Migrants can essentially be demonstrated as, “A high-level delegation of the European Union [that] will travel to New York next week to participate at the UN Global Migration Summit on 19 September, and [will] take part in this year’s UN General Assembly ministerial week starting on 20 September. The EU delegation will join a large number of world leaders participating in these events.”
Upon the unveiling of the mournful presentation, Oxfam America asserted that, “These first-of-their-kind summits need to be the beginning of an improved global response where countries do their fair share to tackle the most serious displacement crisis since records began.”
The acceleration of refugee displacement can be accredited primarily to the Syrian Civil War, which was declared on March 15th, 2011. Since, it was estimated in 2014 by the UN Refugee Agency that 42,500 individuals become refugees, pursue political asylum, or become internally displaced day-in, and day-out. This was chronicled as a four-fold inflation in merely four years.
Furthermore, amid the ruins of Syria, decades-old warfare in Afghanistan and Somalia persist, estranging its millions of civilians into a fringe of instability and adversity. Yemen and the Ukraine have additionally be newly politically destabilized.
However, notably, it has been documented that half of the accumulated refugees are children. Statistically, they will become orphaned, abandoned, exploited, or will succumb to impoverishment or disease.
In May 2016, the conflict ascended to the media upon the demise of 2,500 refugees and migrants that had attempted to sail across the Mediterranean sea to sanctuary in European countries.
Although it has dwindled from the algorithms of social websites, the refugee crisis prevails, the breaths of mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons being suspended each minute at the bloodstained hands of combat.
If you are in the financial position to contribute, donate to (or volunteer for) UNICEF’s fund for “Syrian Children Under Siege” and/or The UN Refugee Agency:
