The fastest growing population in the world seems to be the refugee population. Just knowing that has dashed my hopes for the unknown ahead; truly, I find my hope vanished and my energy so low.
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), in the past decade, millions of those the UN has described as the “most persecuted people in the world” have been added to this population. Reading these six words, I feel great anguish. I wonder, after nearly half a century of volunteer work to help those in need and try to prevent families and individuals from becoming refugees… WHERE AM I? How did we get here? Will the human population of the world be able to resolve this unimaginable horror that the fastest-growing population lives each day? Will we ever recognize the pain, the terror, the suffering these people are going through? Can we even imagine how much need there is? Do we truly think building a wall around us will resolve it all… or do we not even care, so long as we do not have to see it? The universal tragedy of becoming and being a refugee is so immense—and unfathomable to us—that we become numb to the statistics and, more importantly, to the lives and stories that the statistics represent.
Among the many related tragedies that are unfolding around the globe, this past year we have witnessed the harsh and cruel situation at our own border that continues to escalate and then the newly added Kurdish refugee population along the borders of Turkey and Syria. If the best we can do is to be silent when our leaders support human cruelty, we are being contemptuous to humanity and ourselves. We need to ask ourselves, what is our role in the creation of this massive population that has no place to go, and no one to care for them?
It is reasonable to recognize that we have differences, but it is not acceptable to exploit our differences to justify inflicting the cruelty we are witnessing all around us today, and often in our names. It is not acceptable for us to sit and watch other human beings suffer such as the refugee population around the globe is. It is not acceptable to force parents to leave their children in the name of humanity. It is not acceptable to move thousands of people, who by the way have sacrificed their lives to help our foreign policy, to winter cold prairies in the high mountains knowing that many will not survive. IT IS NOT OK FOR US TO KNOW HUNGER IS THE #1 KILLER OF CHILDREN AND YET STILL BE INDIFFERENT ABOUT IT!
We ourselves have permitted the situation of poverty and hunger to expand as vastly as it has. We, as citizens of nations, have permitted our leaders to forget what humanity means. How did we get here? Not long ago we were the leading nation in concern and care for those in need and our leadership was a great example for others to follow.
This earth that was entrusted to us is now in utter disarray. Every aspect of it is chaotic and, quite frankly, frightening. How do we explain how terribly we have let things get out of control and answer for ourselves to the generations that follow? The only answer that I can find to explain this is silence… good people remaining silent in the face of extreme cruelty. We have put the power of destruction in the hands of a few and sit quietly and watch them destroy all that is meaningful to ordinary people like us. Will we ever wake up?
