Refugees of the Syrian civil war or Syrian refugees are Syrian nationals, who have fled Syria with the escalation of the Syrian civil war.
To escape the violence, more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees have fled the country to neighboring Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, while thousands also ended up in more distant countries of the Caucasus, the Persian Gulf and North Africa.
In August 2012, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that the number of registered Syrian refugees had reached over 200,000, exceeding the UNHCR estimate of 185,000 for the entire year. Also according to the United Nations, 6 million people inside Syria needed help and about 4 million Syrians were internally displaced because of the Syrian civil war.
By the early months of 2013 the UNHCR announced that the number of refugees had topped 1 million, and by March 2013 had risen to 1,204,707 people. A spokeswoman for UNHCR, Sybilla Wilkes, also reported that the rate of flight from Syria was increasing. "In March an average of 10,000 people crossing per day. In February it was 8,000. In January it was 5,000. The numbers keep going up and up."
Read more about Syrian Refugees: History, Reactions, See Also, External Links
Famous quotes containing the words syrian and/or refugees:
“If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,
You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,
Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright
Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night
The hate you died to quench and could but fan,
Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)
“The exile is a singular, whereas refugees tend to be thought of in the mass. Armenian refugees, Jewish refugees, refugees from Franco Spain. But a political leader or artistic figure is an exile. Thomas Mann yesterday, Theodorakis today. Exile is the noble and dignified term, while a refugee is more hapless.... What is implied in these nuances of social standing is the respect we pay to choice. The exile appears to have made a decision, while the refugee is the very image of helplessness.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)