The Global Pulse Blog!

Today is World Refugee Day - but I’ll bet anything that it was barely, if at all, announced in the mainstream media. Many countries have had their own “Refugee Days”, and one of the most widespread is Africa Refugee Day, celebrated on June 20 on most countries:

As an expression of solidarity with Africa, which hosts the most refugees, and which traditionally has shown them great generosity, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 55/76 on 4 December 2000. In this resolution, the General Assembly noted that 2001 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and that the Organization of African Unity (OAU) had agreed to have International Refugee Day coincide with Africa Refugee Day on 20 June. The Assembly therefore decided that, from 2001, 20 June would be celebrated as World Refugee Day.

Indeed, though celebrated worldwide there is one country that needs obvious mention, and that is Iraq. The Iraqi refugee crisis is untenable, with an increasing number of young refugees left without a future, and adding insult to injury, oftentimes thrust into the world of child trafficking and prostitution.

According to Human Rights First, almost five million Iraqis have been displaced by war - more than 2 million refugees have fled the country, and 2.77 million are internally displaced inside Iraq. There are more than 750,000 fleeing towards Jordan, and more than 2 million settled in Syria. Want to guess how many of those Iraqi refugees were accepted by the United States in 2007? 190 people. Unbe-freaking-lieveable.

There are fantastic organizations working with refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) in Iraq, like the Iraqi Red Crescent, but with a global food crisis, and the rising price of oil, the cost of a meal has doubled in Syria and Jordan, pushing Iraqi refugees even further into poverty.

The U.S. has a particular moral obligation to help the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees, and given that this is Refugee Day, the least we can do is urge the current administration to substantially increase the number of Iraqi refugees into the U.S. Visit the “Lifeline for Iraqi Refugees” of Human Rights Watch and send a message to president Bush to increase the number of Iraqi refugees to safety in the U.S.

Now, about that war…