Iraq Refugee Crisis! Urgent Priority!

“Urgent Priority”! That is indeed how our country should view the worst refugee crisis in the history of the Middle East in memory. Whatever our motives, whatever our intentions, this is a refugee crisis we are very much responsible for having created.

This foundation has raised this critical issue before. Earlier this year we featured a video of journalist Nir Rosen speaking to a small group in Washington about his personal experiences with Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan. The situation is simply terrible and the number of homeless and destitute Iraqis is still growing daily!

A few day ago another important journalist, Fareed Zakaria, Editor of Newsweek International, said the following.

Fareed Zakaria

Fareed Zakaria, Editor of Newsweek International

“There are many disputes about what is actually happening in Iraq. But on one set of facts there is almost no dispute; over 4,000,000 Iraqis have left their homes. Over 2,000,000 of them have left the country. The vast majority of these people have fled for fear of persecution and violence. Iraq’s refugees are now the largest population of displaced people in the Middle East since the Palestinian Refugee Crisis of the late 1940s. If we do not attend to it, like the Palestinian problem, it could produce long-term scars that will fester and disrupt the region for decades. Some of the refuges might go back; many will not. The settlement of these people in neighboring countries and in the West has got to be an urgent priority for the United States. After all if not for US policy these people would not be refugees.”

We urge our President and our Congress to take heed. Our country simply must act swiftly and boldly with immediate and massive humanitarian assistance for all four million Iraqi refugees — half displaced within Iraq, the other half having fled to Syria, Jordan, and in fewer numbers in other countries in the region. This should be done right now without further delay even as heightened political efforts are undertaken to solve this horrible refugee crisis just as soon as humanly possible.

Click here to go to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees newly expanded website for facts and details about this critical “Urgent Priority” Iraqi Refugee situation.