1.
The Syrian
Refugee
Catastrophe
April 2, 2016 sarabiany.com

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2
“death is a risk I was willing to take
so I could live.”
Photo: Yannis Behrakis/ReutersCover Photo: sarabiany.com

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3
of Syria’s population has been
displaced since 2011
1/2

4.
4
As if
160 million
Americans
had to flee their homes past 5 years

5.
5
160
Katrinas
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0912/p01s01-ussc.html

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6
4,812,851
UNHCR registered refugees
As of March 16 2016: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php

7.
7
6+ million
Internally Displaced
March 2016: http://www.unocha.org/syria Photo: sarabiany.com

8.
8
6+ million
Internally Displaced
Photo: sarabiany.comMarch 2016: http://www.unocha.org/syria

9.
9
“Syria has become
a country of poor people,
with an estimated 4 in every 5
Syrians now living in poverty.”
UN Report 2015
http://bit.ly/1RVGaNU

10.
10
“life expectancy has shrunk from
76to 56
years old”
UN Report 2015 http://bit.ly/1RVGaNU

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11
"has become the biggest humanitarian
emergency of our era, yet the world is
failing to meet the needs of refugees
and the countries hosting them.”
- António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
August 2014 http://www.unhcr.org/53ff76c99.html

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12
This is not a natural disaster.
This catastrophe is
manmade.

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45+ years of Assad family rule

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14
45+years ofAssad
family rule
• absolute power
• sectarian, regional &
business networks
• police state
• utter brutality, exemplified by
Hama ’82 massacre
• no independent civil society
• hand-off from father to son
in 2000

15.
15
March 2011: “The people want…”
Photo: Daraa March 2011

16.
16Photo: Homs,April 18, 2011
“The people want…”

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17
“The people want…”
Photo: Homs,April 24 2011

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18
Photo: Baniyas, May, 2011 http://bit.ly/230vWr8
“The people want…”

19.
19Photo: Hama, July 22, 2011.AP
“The people want…”

20.
20Photo: Damascus, 2012
“The people want…”

21.
21Photo: Damascus, 2012
“The people want…”

22.
22Photo: Jobar, Damascus, 2012
“The people want…”

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23
“We will sit here. We call it
a fight until the end…They
should know when we
suffer, we will not suffer
alone.” - Rami Makhlouf, May 2011 NY Times

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24
“Assad or we burn the country”
The war in Syria was started to crush dissent.

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Mass detention &
'industrial scale'
killing of detainees
A painting for Abdulla Omari called “ Detainee”

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27
In 2012-13, the fear of rape was the #1
reason Syrians fled the country.
http://thebea.st/1Tsj4Ur

28.
28http://sn4hr.org/blog/2015/06/16/8049/

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Daily bombardment

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Broken “red lines”, chemical weapons attacks
https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/09/10/attacks-ghouta/analysis-alleged-use-chemical-weapons-syria

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“Starve
until
Submission”
Photo: Reuters,Yarmouk, 2014

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Rebels & revolutionaries
Assad regime & allies
Kurdish groups
Jabhat-Nusra (AQ)
ISIS
1
2
3
4
5
5 Key Groupings

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470,000killed in 5+ Years
February 2016: Syrian Centre for Policy Research

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The ISIS advance in
late 2014 added
to an already
desperate situationPhoto Reuters: http://bit.ly/1TukFcB

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Russian
intervention in the
fall resulted in
another spike of
displaced Syrians
Photograph: Ghaith Omran/AFP/Getty Images

42.
42

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43
Systematic sectarian massacres + rape campaigns
Air bombardment
ISIS advance
Russian intervention
European exodus

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The catastrophe didn’t make international
headlines…

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45
Until…

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46
image of refugees in europe

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Worst catastrophe since WW2

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48
Migrant is not a Refugee

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49
935,008asylum seekers in Europe
http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php

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What has been the response
in North America?

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"… accepting 25,000 Syrian refugees
does right by both the safety of
Canadians and by the values that define
us as a nation."
http://bit.ly/1ZV3kdj

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52
Syrian refugees
admitted to the US
since 2011
3,054
military aged males who
are unattached to
families
2%
Source: U.S. State Department Refugee Processing Center Custom Report: http://bit.ly/1LoVa3p http://bzfd.it/1ZV15qv
However, in the US…

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Last September, due to public pressure Obama
increased the quota to 10k Syrians in 2016 (out of 85k)
Photo: sarabiany.com

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“Ten thousand is not even close to
being commensurate with the massive
scale of the Syrian refugee crisis, nor in
line with this country’s historic global
leadership in refugee resettlement"
David Miliband, president and CEO

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55
Islamophobia
Election Season Refugees

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One of the goals of the ISIS Paris
attacks was to provide cover for a
bigoted response in Europe & the
US towards vulnerable
populations fleeing both the
regime & ISIS.
A fake Syrian passport was found
lying nearby, left by the attackers.

57.
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Bush suggested a religious test for Syrian
refugees to ensure that Muslims are kept out

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Carson compared refugees to 'rabid' dogs

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Cruz supported Governor ‘rebellion’ to allow
states to ban refugees

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Trump said he would deport the refugees
already here & ban Muslims

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Rubio said ‘we can’t accept’ them and adjusted
based on political rhetoric

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Christie insisted that the U.S. not even accept
5-year-old orphans

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Even when arriving in the US, life is difficult.
resettlement support
assimilation
language
commuting
schools
work
daily supplies
social network

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Where are
we today?

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Where are we today?
"We will not allow our
assistance to be
instrumentalized for a mass
expulsion operation, and we
refuse to be part of a system
that has no regard for the
humanitarian or protection
needs of asylum seekers and
migrants”
MSF on EU Plan
Photo by Alexander Koerner/Getty Images

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71
Where are we today?
The US is lagging well behind the goal to
accept 10,000 Syrian refugees by end of
fiscal year October, and has only
accepted ~1,200 in the past 6 months
Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reutershttp://bit.ly/1SvAef5

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“a whole generation is growing up in the
camps of exile – these children who’ve lost a
father to shelling, a friend’s brother to bullets,
a sister’s husband to torture. When they grow
up and realize that life is more than a
refugee camp, that it isn’t natural to lose
everything to tyranny … this generation will
bear a culture of revenge and anger, and a
permanent sense of injustice.”
- Activist Aziz Asaad, Guardian

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