Most probably you’re all familiar with the term “Refugees” , but this is your guide to have a deeper insight into the accurate definition of this term and more details about this topic and the difficulties that the refugees suffer from !
Although there are various definitions for the term refugees , I guess the one that accurately and best describes it is that they are ordinary people suffering from extraordinary conditions in their home countries , so they are forced to leave their home countries and go to other countries to have better standards of living and to avoid being persecuted on the basis of religion , ethnicity or beliefs.
The vast majority of refugees insist on leaving their home countries due to wars and international conflicts , and the most recent example on this is Russia – Ukraine war where almost 5 million Ukrainian citizens , according to BBC news , have fled their homes since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and left for neighboring countries like Poland.
Although you may consider Ukraine as the country with the largest number of refugees , there are other countries that have large numbers of its local citizens as well leaving to other countries as refugees , and maybe even greater than Ukraine , and here is a list of the top countries of international refugees :
- Palestine – over 7 million refugees worldwide
- Syria — 6,761,560
- Venezuela — 3,944,279
- Afghanistan — 2,610,067
- South Sudan — 2,277,919
- Myanmar — 1,127,588
- Democratic Republic of the Congo — 864,510
- Sudan — 805,874
- Somalia — 790,022
- Central African Republic — 713,262
And here are few examples of the difficulties they suffer from and have explicit adverse impacts on them :
- Loss of sense of belonging : since they leave left their home countries , and will live as refugees in the host countries , they will never feel trusted and respected as a valued part of the society and this may cause a myriad of psychological problems for them especially the young children
- They usually suffer from very poor living conditions and live in very overcrowded camps with very low levels of hygiene which usually lead to serious health problems and may even lead to death
- According to UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency ) , 24% of refugees are enrolled in secondary school , compared to 84% of secondary –age children worldwide which is an indicator that a great proportion of the refugees are not given the opportunity to complete their education , and have the chance to pursue their chosen careers in the future
Finally , we all hope that in the upcoming years peoples’ awareness of the refugees and how to help them will be raised and more donations will be available to help them afford their basic needs to have higher standards of living !