The Iraq Refugee Crisis
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By Alice Seeley
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Published On May 21, 2020
Iraq has suffered from decades of conflict with other nations and internal strife. However, the current Iraqi refugee crisis began when militants attacked Christians and ethnic minorities.
In 2014, ISIS, the militant group known for its brutality, started to seize territory in western and northern Iraq. Children and families, primarily Christians, were victims of targeted violence as well as being caught in the crossfire. The communities they built and enjoyed were destroyed. Many were forced to flee with only the clothes on their backs.
The ongoing violence in Iraq has created a distressing humanitarian crisis in the Middle East, leaving millions of Iraqis displaced in and outside of their country. The current Iraqi refugee crisis is the largest displacement of people in the Middle East since 1948. Since 2015, 4.2 million Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes, with over 2 million of them seeking asylum in neighboring countries such as Jordan and Syria.
There are few places on earth where Christianity is as old as it is in Iraq. Iraqi Christian communities can trace their founding back to the first century A.D. In the early 2000s, there were 1.2 million Christians living in Iraq. Today, due to persecution by ISIS, that number is less than 250,000 — an eighty percent drop in less than two decades.
The American Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East assists displaced Christians in Iraq and Jordan by providing food, shelter, medical care, and help with relocation. The Foundation’s operations in Baghdad, Northern Iraq, and Amman Jordan have helped thousands to recover from the shock and trauma of sectarian violence and start a new life. Please consider donating to help us keep providing these services.
American FRRME is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that promotes reconciliation, provides relief efforts, advances human rights, and seeks an end to sectarian violence in the Middle East.
To make a donation to American FRRME, please visit
https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/frrmeamerica?code=WebsiteGeneral
The Refugee Crisis and Education
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By Alice Seeley
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Published On May 15, 2020
In most of the western world, the vast majority of children attend school from kindergarten through 12th grade. But not everyone in the world is this privileged. Many First world children view school as a chore and complain about it, children in refugee camps would be overjoyed. Out of the 7.1 million refugee children of school age, 3.7 million — more than half– do not have the opportunity to attend school. Only 63 percent of refugee children go to primary school, compared to 91 percent of non-refugee children.
The lack of schools is keenly felt by refugees, who often come from cultures that prize education. Pre-civil war, for example, the Syrian government worked hard to ensure free, public education for all and subsidized post-secondary education. The Syrian culture, as a whole, had a great appreciation for the arts. And in general, education is becoming much more available throughout the Middle East, with the number of college graduates increasing dramatically in the past decade. But where conflict erupts, the effects on countries with established educational systems can be devastating.
The situation is even bleaker as refugee children get older. Around the world, 84 percent of adolescents go to secondary school, while only 24 percent of refugee teens have this opportunity. As these young people get older, the barriers that prevent them from accessing learning become harder to overcome.
Refugees, like all people around the world, deserve an opportunity to be educated. Going to school gives refugee children a routine and a place of security despite the chaos around them. More importantly, it is the surest road to success after being displaced. An education gives refugees the chance to move on, rise above their circumstances, and rebuild their lives.
The American Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East gives refugees this life-changing gift. In 2015, the foundation initiated an afternoon school for Christian refugees in the suburbs of Amman, Jordan, which has gone on to be recognized as a model school in the region. Since then, they have underwritten tuition for refugees attending private schools, provided books and other materials to schools in settlement camps, funded construction and provisioning of an all-girls school in a settlement camp, funded Kindergarten and university expenses for refugee youth in Kurdistan, and taught English classes to both children and adults. Your generous donation will help them continue this work.
American FRRME is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that promotes reconciliation, provides relief efforts, advances human rights, and seeks an end to sectarian violence in the Middle East.
To make a donation to American FRRME, please visit https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/frrmeamerica?code=WebsiteGeneral
