In a recent report issued by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the number of refugees and internationally displaced people (IDPs) has reached an all time high since the time of the Second World War. The numbers have risen to an astonishing 60 million refugees and IDPs around the world. To put that number into perspective, that would make one in every 122 people worldwide a displaced person.
While every refugee and IDP is suffering, children in particular are suffering the most in this global catastrophe. In recent news, the image of a five-year-old boy being dragged from the rubble in Aleppo, Syria, has sparked international news coverage of the conflicts in the region. While this international news coverage is crucial to ending these volatile situations, it is all talk and no action; no one has offered any solutions to fix these problems. Countries want to give these refugees and IDPs aid, but they are too afraid to grant them citizenship due to all of the recent terrorist attacks from IS and IS sympathizers. However, supplies and financial assistance in these areas only stretch so far when countries with adequate financial means refuse to give military resources to aid in the ending of these conflicts out of fear of being involved in more wars.
In the upcoming United States Presidential Election, refugee and IDPs have become a huge debate and will be one of the biggest influences when Americans vote for the next President of the United States. Illegal immigration, even refugees seeking legal citizenship, have sprung up in multiple conversations for both Presidential Nominees and their parties. The outcome of the 2016 Presidential Election will have unknown impacts on international relations and national and private level responses to this global issue.
If children are our future, why do we continue to let them suffer in refugee camps and live in the middle of conflicts? If children are our future, don't you think that they're showing us what our future holds? Hesitant governments, militants, rebel forces, air strikes, and more capsized vessels in the Mediterranean killing more and more desperate people? On February 9, 2016, Republican Nominee Donald Trump said that he is willing to look Syrian children in the face and tell them that they can't come to America. Do we really want a president who is so unsympathetic that he will leave thousands of children to die because he's afraid every potential immigrant that wants to live in the US is a terrorist?
