Page 90 - A Helping Hand for Refugees

According to the United Nations, there are some 50 million refugees
in the world. Muslims constitute a large portion of these refugees; a
full one-third of the Palestinian people are refugees. There are large
numbers of Iraqis following the American intervention, Muslims from
Rakhine who had to abandon their homes due to oppression in Burma,

some two million Afghans, Kashmiris, Somalis, in short there are mil-
lions of refugees and Syrians have been added to these in recent years.

The civil war in Syria has entered its fourth year. The number of
people forced to migrate because of the ongoing civil war has reached
into the millions. According to the United Nations High Commission
for Refugees (UNHCR), the migration in Syria is the largest observed
since the foundation of the organization. Half of the Syrian population,
which stood at 22 million before the civil war, has had to migrate to
other countries. Seventy-five percent of those Syrians living as
refugees are women and children. The great majority of Syrians are

88 A Helping Hand for Refugees