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ISIS so adept in its use of social media for propaganda and recruitment, that most cases of domestic terrorism can now be traced to social media platforms.

"We've got to get the message out: Terrorists are using social media to target young kids," said John Carlin, assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice.

Those comments came in an on-stage interview with CNBC's Andrew Ross-Sorkin at the Cambridge Cyber Summit at MIT on Wednesday.

Internet terrorists are deliberately using social media to target tens of thousands, he said.

ISIS and others are using platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to reach isolated teens here in the United States, and they know how to get their attention with social media posts, Carlin said.

"They have a terrorist with a kitten in one hand an AK-47 in the other hand," he said.

Terror suspects and their families are at times actually thanking the FBI for arresting terror suspects and intervening before those young people lose their lives to terror networks, he said.

The conference is sponsored by CNBC, MIT and The Aspen Institute.

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Most young terrorist recruitment is linked to social media, DOJ official says

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ISIS so adept in its use of social media for propaganda and recruitment, that most cases of domestic terrorism can now be traced to social media platforms. "We've got to get the message out: Terrorists are using social media to target young kids," said John Carlin, assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice.

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https://www.mercycorps.org/articles/iraq-jordan-lebanon-syria-turkey/quick-facts-what-you-need-know-about-syria-crisishttps://www.mercycorps.org/articles/iraq-jordan-lebanon-syria-turkey/quick-facts-what-you-need-know-about-syria-crisis

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Morgen Dempsey

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How should the world respond to the Syrian refugee crisis?

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Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese refugee students are now eating a healthy lunch at Rawdat Al Toufoula School in south Beirut. "For some of them, this is their main meal for the day," the...

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Why Canada should keep taking in more refugees

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As the crisis in Syria continues, a devastating human disaster is unfolding right in front of our eyes. One can't watch or read the news without seeing images of women, children and men fleeing unspeakable violence in the most desperate ways possible (including this gripping image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi).

The crisis calls upon great nations like Canada to help alleviate the devastation. Our willingness as a country to step up and demonstrate kindness and compassion in the face of grave human tragedy is rightfully a point of pride for Canadians.

The issue of Canada accepting 25,000 Syrian refugees by January 1 has been dominated by questions of security and logistics. Particularly since Friday's gruesome attacks in Paris, and especially since news broke that a Syrian passport ( since proven to be fake) was found near the body of one of the suicide bombers, people have expressed understandable concern about how Canada will be able to bring tens of thousands of people from a war zone into the country safely and securely.

I acknowledge that good, well-meaning people who genuinely care about Syrian refugees can have perfectly valid concerns about the security risk of bringing in tens of thousands of people from a war zone. It is as large an undertaking as it sounds.

So, in light of Canadian political leaders (like Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and others on the right) playing on Canadians' concerns to spread fear and disinformation, I decided to research how Canada screens, accepts and settles Syrian refugees. It is my hope we can dispel fear and confusion with facts, reason and compassion.
1. Refugees coming to Canada will undergo three separate screening processes.
First, they are selected from those screened by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. The UNHCR uses sophisticated anti-fraud tools like biometrics. They also use a rigorous five-step process.

Second, they are interviewed before coming to Canada.

Third, once in Canada, they are screened by Canada's security services.

Thanks to these precautions, security experts say the chances of an ISIS terrorist getting through are infinitesimal.
2. Canada is prioritizing families (particularly female-headed households), unaccompanied minors and the sick, not single individuals.
These groups were selected because they pose the least risk of radicalization.
3. Not accepting refugees is an even greater threat to national security.
According to leading experts in national security, terrorism, radicalization and intelligence -- like Munk School of Public Affairs Prof. Wesley Wark and Georgetown University Prof. Anne Speckhard -- filthy and unsafe refugee camps are hotbeds for extremism.

Perhaps not surprisingly, terrorists find it remarkably easy to recruit fighters in squalid and hopeless camps teeming with desperate and disenfranchised people.

According to Prof. Speckhard, "Experience from many conflict zones teaches us that the longer these refugees are left to languish in despair in camps the more prone they become to radicalization."
4. Accepting refugees strikes a blow at ISIS.
ISIS relies on extortion and the taxes they collect from the vast swaths of territory they control. The New York Times reports that extortion and taxation, as well as kidnapping ransoms, accounted for $620 million in 2014. That's more than the $600 million they made by stealing from state-owned banks in Iraq and from oil sales.

"They want to stop the refugee process because one of their main sources of income in the ISIS-controlled territory is taxation of the people there, extortion of the people there," according to University of Ottawa law professor Errol Mendes.
5. ISIS is relying on the West to refuse Syrian refugees and increased Islamophobia in the West to aid their recruitment efforts.
ISIS has released a video telling fleeing Syrian refugees that the "infidel" West will never accept them, and that even if we do, we'd make them give up Islam.

Nearly all of the terrorists in the Paris attacks were raised in France or Belgium. This shows that, while ISIS is a threat, its greatest threat lies in its ability convince alienated Muslim youth in North America and Europe that they belong not in the West, but in ISIS' so-called caliphate.

The sheer scale of Syrian refugees' suffering compels us to act. To turn a blind eye to appalling human rights atrocities when it is in our capacity to help would be an abdication of Canadians' values, principles and sense of right and wrong.

Compassion calls on us to act. In this case, so too does our strategic interest.

By responding compassionately rather than reacting hysterically, and by demonstrating the eternal Canadian values of acceptance and pluralism, we will defeat ISIS.
MORE ON HUFFPOST:

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5 Reasons Why Canada Shouldn't Fear Accepting Syrian Refugees

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As the crisis in Syria continues, a devastating human disaster is unfolding right in front of our eyes. One can't watch or read the news without seeing images of women, children and men fleeing unspeakable violence in the most desperate ways possible (including this gripping image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi).

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Refugee crisis

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The facts: What you need to know about the Syria crisis

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More than nine years in, Syria’s civil war has fueled a massive exodus. See the staggering statistics and learn the facts behind the figures.

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http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/syrian-refugees/salopek-texthttp://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/syrian-refugees/salopek-text

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Refugees of the Syrian Civil War - Wikipedia

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By May 2011, already thousands of people fled from the war to neighbouring countries, with even larger numbers displaced within Syria itself. As armies assaulted various locations and battled, entire villages were trying to escape, with thousands of refugees a day crossing borders.

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Immigration to the United States

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The top destination for Syrian refugees arriving in the U.S. is the state of Michigan.

More than a 10th of the 10,000 Syrians admitted this fiscal year at the urging of the Obama administration are headed there, according to State Department figures.

Most of the 1,036 new arrivals are likely to settle in and around Detroit, which has long been a magnet for Arab immigrants.

Related: 10,000th Syrian Refugee Will Arrive in the U.S. Today

This despite the fact that Michigan's Republican Gov. Rick Snyder suspended efforts last November to bring more long-suffering Syrians to his state after the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris.

Snyder spokeswoman Anna Heaton told NBC News the governor "never suspended refugee resettlement" and is not opposed to more Syrian refugees settling in Michigan.

"The governor suspended efforts to bring in additional refugees above and beyond the amount Michigan normally receives," Heaton said in an email. "This increase in Syrian refugee resettlement is not surprising as our state continues to be a welcoming home for refugees who go on to contribute to our economic comeback and Michigan's overall quality of life."

Close on Michigan's heels is California, which has taken in 1,030 Syrians between Oct. 1 of last year and Aug. 29, the federal figures show.

Arizona and Texas, two red states led by Republican governors who have flat-out said they don't want Syrian refugees because they supposedly pose a security risk, are next on the list having taken in 766 and 735 people, respectively, the figures show.

Those states were followed by Pennsylvania (600), Illinois (569), Florida (542) and New York (538), the figures show.

Several states have not taken any. Those include Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Mississippi, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.

West Virginia was on that list until Monday, when five Syrians were resettled there, according to the State Department.

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Here's where Syrian refugees are settling in the U.S.

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The top destination for Syrian refugees arriving in the U.S. is the state of Michigan. More than a 10th of the 10,000 Syrians admitted this fiscal year at the urging of the Obama administration are headed there, according to State Department figures.

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Credit: Zoltan Major / Shutterstock.com

The European Union - and to a lesser extent, the United States - is struggling to come to an agreement about how to cope with tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Syria and other war-torn areas, mostly in the Middle East.

Various countries have opened their "gates" to specific numbers of these refugees. But what determines how wide a country will swing open their borders in a resource-limited world? Turns out, there's some science and a lot of politics involved. [ How Many People Can Earth Support?]

Europe's borders

The challenge is exacerbated by debate over how many of the displaced are refugees, fleeing conflict and persecution, and how many are migrants, a term encompassing those who freely choose to leave their home countries. Technically, "refugee" is an official designation, and it's one that a person can lose if they leave a refugee camp in Lebanon, for example, seeking a way into Europe. The lack of official status doesn't mean a person isn't fleeing conflict. It can also be difficult to differentiate between leaving by choice and being coerced. An analysis by the news magazine The Economist found, however, that more than 90 percent of Syrians who applied to the European Union for asylum in the first quarter of 2015 were recognized as legitimate refugees, as were 90 percent of Eritreans and nearly 90 percent of Iraqis.

Immigration isn't a new issue for Europe; after the devastation of World War II, many European countries had generous immigration policies, said Mabel Berezin, a sociologist at Cornell University.

Indeed, the EU even has the diplomatic equivalent of a big, red "emergency" button ready for the kind of situation it is facing now. Article 78 (3) of the EU's Lisbon Treaty grants that the European Council may adopt measures in the face of an emergency situation "characterized by the sudden inflow of nationals of third countries." However, any agreement on what those measures should be is currently stalled.

Some nations support a quota system, which would relocate asylum-seekers based on a formula taking into account a country's GDP, unemployment, population and previous acceptance of migrants. The idea might seem fair, even scientific, on its face. But it seems to have little influence on what's happening in the messy political sphere.

"The allocation numbers don't necessarily speak to the realities on the ground of this really horrific crisis," Berezin told Live Science.

On Sept. 14, the leaders of the EU agreed to voluntary resettlements of some 40,000 migrants, but left another 120,000 in Hungary, Italy and Greece in limbo. Meanwhile, Hungary has started a border crackdown, trying to keep new migrants out. It's a process of abandonment, said Alessandra Von Burg, a citizenship researcher at Wake Forest University. Migrants and refugees alike become "noncitizens," whose own states have evaporated or failed to provide for them, and there is nowhere they can go to regain the rights and protections normally provided to citizens.

"What we're seeing right now on the borders, what we're seeing right now in refugee camps, we're seeing all these instances where noncitizens are really left to cope on their own," Von Burg told Live Science.

Many Europeans have welcomed migrants with open arms; more than 10,000 Icelandic citizens, for example, signed a petition urging their government to accept more refugees than the 50 each year that it accepts now. This open streak, however, is accompanied by a rise in right-wing nationalism, said Berezin, who studies the emergence of these anti-immigration parties.

"If you look at vote shares of nationalist parties going back to the 1970s, you can see a very sharp increase in their political share of votes," Berezin said. The increase took off especially quickly in 2010, she said, after the 2008 economic downturn.

That downturn "created an immediate feeling of scarcity on a continent that had really had the perception of plenty," she said. Combined with the uncertainty of the Greek financial crisis, the influx of refugees is "almost like a perfect scenario for right-nationalist parties to really gain ground," Berezin said.

U.S. refugee admissions

In this political climate, it's easy to see why there's no scientific way to determine how countries should divide up refugees: Though there are real resource issues in processing tens of thousands of foreign nationals, the question of relocation is mostly political.

Refugee resettlement is a question of politics in the United States, as well. The United States has capped refugee admissions at 70,000 per year since 2013, 70 percent of all refugees resettled worldwide. There is no magic formula for determining these numbers, according to the State Department, and they fluctuate based on current conflicts. [ Why Peace Is So Tricky for Humans]

The actual number admitted varies each year. The U.S. filled nearly all of those slots in 2014, for example, but accepted only 58,238 applications in 2013, according to State Department data.

Each year, the State Department determines not only the overall number of allowed refugees, but the proportion of refugees allowed in from each region, based on the current situation in each area. According to a Sept. 9 State Department briefing, Secretary of State John Kerry has suggested raising the admissions' cap for 2016. President Barack Obama, in turn, has called for the resettlement of at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States next year.

Whatever the 2016 number, the change won't put much of a dent in the ongoing refugee crisis: According to a State Department official, it takes 18 months to two years to vet an asylum-seeker's claim. And as migrants continue to crowd into tiny boats for the dangerous trip across the Mediterranean, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has already registered more than 4 million Syrian refugees in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and North Africa alone.

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Politics of Refugee Crisis: Why There's No Science to Resettlement

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The European Union - and to a lesser extent, the United States - is struggling to come to an agreement about how to cope with tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Syria and other war-torn areas, mostly in the Middle East. Various countries have opened their "gates" to specific numbers of these refugees.

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Reasons why people leave there country for another

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People have moved from their home countries for centuries, for all sorts of reasons. Some are drawn to new places by ʻpull ʻ factors, others find it difficult to remain where they are and migrate because of ʻpushʼ factors. These have contributed to the recent inward movement of people to here but are also the reason why people from here have emigrated to other countries.

Over 80 million people in the world have Irish blood; 36.5 million US residents claimed Irish ancestry in 2007. Historically some were transported or sold into slavery or left because of poverty, hunger, persecution, discrimination, civil war, unemployment and, more recently, simply for education and better jobs. Worldwide numbers of migrants have risen rapidly in the last decade. The International Organization for Migration estimates that there were around 244 million international migrants in 2015.
Pull Factors
Migrants are drawn to countries such as the UK and Ireland for the following factors:

* Developed countries, or industrialised city areas within countries, draw labour from countries or regions where incomes are lower.

* International transport has never been easier and is cheaper than ever, relative to incomes.

* The telephone and internet make it easier to access information.

* Falling birth rates in developed countries contribute to labour shortages and skills gaps.

* Extra people are required when there is rapid economic expansion.

* People are drawn to stable democracies where human rights and religious freedoms are more likely to be respected.

* Many people in other parts of the world speak English or want to learn English.

* Young people move in order to get better jobs or improve their qualifications, including their language skills.
Push Factors
Negative factors at home add to the reasons why people feel compelled to move.

* Lack of prospects for career advancement

* Poverty and low incomes

* High unemployment rates

* Persecution and poor human rights

* Internal conflict and war

* Climate change, natural disasters and famine

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People have moved from their home countries for centuries, for all sorts of reasons. Some are drawn to new places by ʻpull ʻ factors, others find it difficult to remain where they are and migrate because of ʻpushʼ factors.

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More than 8 million Syrian children are in immediate need of aid - including more than 2 million child refugees
"Let's be clear, as long as the violence continues, children in Syria will suffer," said UNICEF Syria Representative Hanaa Singer from Aleppo, "But we are determined to do what we can to reach out to children. It's why we have more than 200 staff who risk their lives every day across the country to support Syria's children."
2016 was the worst year yet for Syria's children as violence ripped apart places that should be safe, schools, hospitals, playgrounds, parks and children's own homes. 8.4 million Syrian children, inside and outside the country, are in need of humanitarian aid, and millions have borne witness to unrelenting violence from the brutal conflict that began more than six years ago.

Across the country, 1.75 million children are no longer in school and some 2.5 million are living as refugees or on the run in search of safety, helping to fuel a global migrant crisis. Syria is now the world's biggest producer of both internally displaced people and refugees. Many children have spend several bitter winters living in makeshift shelters.

For these children, what's at stake isn't politics. It's their future. Having already lost their homes, schools and communities, their chances of building a future may also soon be lost.

UNICEF has been on the ground since the conflict began, helping to mobilize the largest humanitarian operation in history and working closely with partners to provide education, water, health care and immunizations, physical protection, psychological support and clothing to children in Syria and Syrian refugee children in Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and Europe. Children are Syria's future. We must support each and every child.
100% of your gift is tax deductible.

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"Let's be clear, as long as the violence continues, children in Syria will suffer," said UNICEF Syria Representative Hanaa Singer from Aleppo, "But we are determined to do what we can to reach out to children. It's why we have more than 200 staff who risk their lives every day across the country to support Syria's children."

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Ken Pham

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More than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in four-and-a-half years of armed conflict, which began with anti-government protests before escalating into a full-scale civil war. More than 11 million others have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other - as well as jihadist militants from so-called Islamic State. This is the story of the civil war so far, in eight short chapters.

1. Uprising turns violent

Pro-democracy protests erupted in March 2011 in the southern city of Deraa after the arrest and torture of some teenagers who painted revolutionary slogans on a school wall. After security forces opened fire on demonstrators, killing several, more took to the streets.

The unrest triggered nationwide protests demanding President Assad's resignation. The government's use of force to crush the dissent merely hardened the protesters' resolve. By July 2011, hundreds of thousands were taking to the streets across the country.

Opposition supporters eventually began to take up arms, first to defend themselves and later to expel security forces from their local areas.

2. Descent into civil war

Violence escalated and the country descended into civil war as rebel brigades were formed to battle government forces for control of cities, towns and the countryside. Fighting reached the capital Damascus and second city of Aleppo in 2012.

By June 2013, the UN said 90,000 people had been killed in the conflict. By August 2015, that figure had climbed to 250,000, according to activists and the UN.

The conflict is now more than just a battle between those for or against Mr Assad. It has acquired sectarian overtones, pitching the country's Sunni majority against the president's Shia Alawite sect, and drawn in regional and world powers. The rise of the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) has added a further dimension.

3. War crimes

A UN commission of inquiry has evidence that all parties to the conflict have committed war crimes - including murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearances. They have also been accused of using civilian suffering - such as blocking access to food, water and health services through sieges - as a method of war.

The UN Security Council has demanded all parties end the indiscriminate use of weapons in populated areas, but civilians continue to die in their thousands. Many have been killed by barrel bombs dropped by government aircraft on gatherings in rebel-held areas - attacks which the UN says may constitute massacres.

IS has also been accused by the UN of waging a campaign of terror. It has inflicted severe punishments on those who transgress or refuse to accept its rules, including hundreds of public executions and amputations. Its fighters have also carried out mass killings of rival armed groups, members of the security forces and religious minorities, and beheaded hostages, including several Westerners.

4. Chemical weapons

Hundreds of people were killed in August 2013 after rockets filled with the nerve agent sarin were fired at several suburbs of Damascus. Western powers said it could only have been carried out by Syria's government, but the government blamed rebel forces.

Facing the prospect of US military intervention, President Assad agreed to the complete removal and destruction of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal.

The operation was completed the following year, but the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has continued to document the use of toxic chemicals in the conflict. Investigators found chlorine was used "systematically and repeatedly" in deadly attacks on rebel-held areas between April and July 2014.

IS has also been accused of using homemade chemical weapons, including sulphur mustard. The OPCW said the blister agent was used in an attack on the northern town of Marea in August 2015 that killed a baby.

5. Humanitarian crisis

More than 4.5 million people have fled Syria since the start of the conflict, most of them women and children. Neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey have struggled to cope with one of the largest refugee exoduses in recent history. About 10% of Syrian refugees have sought safety in Europe, sowing political divisions as countries argue over sharing the burden.

A further 6.5 million people are internally displaced inside Syria, 1.2 million were driven from their homes in 2015 alone.

The UN says it will need $3.2bn to help the 13.5 million people, including 6 million children, who will require some form of humanitarian assistance inside Syria in 2016. About 70% of the population is without access to adequate drinking water, one in three people are unable to meet their basic food needs, and more than 2 million children are out of school, and four out of five people live in poverty.

The warring parties have compounded the problems by refusing humanitarian agencies access to civilians in need. Up to 4.5 million people in Syria live in hard-to-reach areas, including nearly 400,000 people in 15 besieged locations who do not have access to life-saving aid.

6. Rebels and the rise of the jihadists

The armed rebellion has evolved significantly since its inception. Secular moderates are now outnumbered by Islamists and jihadists, whose brutal tactics have caused global outrage.

So-called Islamic State has capitalised on the chaos and taken control of large swathes of Syria and Iraq, where it proclaimed the creation of a "caliphate" in June 2014. Its many foreign fighters are involved in a "war within a war" in Syria, battling rebels and rival jihadists from the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, as well as government and Kurdish forces.

In September 2014, a US-led coalition launched air strikes inside Syria in an effort to "degrade and ultimately destroy" IS. But the coalition has avoided attacks that might benefit Mr Assad's forces. Russia began an air campaign targeting "terrorists" in Syria a year later, but opposition activists say its strikes have mostly killed Western-backed rebels and civilians.

In the political arena, opposition groups are also deeply divided, with rival alliances battling for supremacy. The most prominent is the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, backed by several Western and Gulf Arab states. However, the exile group has little influence on the ground in Syria and its primacy is rejected by many opponents of Mr Assad.

7. Peace efforts

With neither side able to inflict a decisive defeat on the other, the international community long ago concluded that only a political solution could end the conflict in Syria. The UN Security Council has called for the implementation of the 2012 Geneva Communique, which envisages a transitional governing body with full executive powers "formed on the basis of mutual consent".

Talks in early 2014, known as Geneva II, broke down after only two rounds, with then-UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi blaming the Syrian government's refusal to discuss opposition demands.

Mr Brahimi's successor, Staffan de Mistura, focused on establishing a series of local ceasefires. His plan for a "freeze zone" in Aleppo was rejected, but a three-year siege of the Homs suburb of al-Wair was successfully brought to an end in December 2015.

At the same time, the conflict with IS lent fresh impetus to the search for a political solution in Syria. The US and Russia led efforts to get representatives of the government and the opposition to attend "proximity talks" in Geneva in January 2016 to discuss a Security Council-endorsed road map for peace, including a ceasefire and a transitional period ending with elections.

8. Proxy war

What began as another Arab Spring uprising against an autocratic ruler has mushroomed into a brutal proxy war that has drawn in regional and world powers.

Iran and Russia have propped up the Alawite-led government of President Assad and gradually increased their support. Tehran is believed to be spending billions of dollars a year to bolster Mr Assad, providing military advisers and subsidised weapons, as well as lines of credit and oil transfers. Russia has meanwhile launched an air campaign against Mr Assad's opponents.

The Syrian government has also enjoyed the support of Lebanon's Shia Islamist Hezbollah movement, whose fighters have provided important battlefield support since 2013.

The Sunni-dominated opposition has, meanwhile, attracted varying degrees of support from its international backers - Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan, along with the US, UK and France.

Until late 2015, rebel appeals for anti-aircraft weapons to stop devastating government air strikes were rejected by the US and its allies, amid concern that they might end up in the hands of jihadist militants. A US programme to train and arm 5,000 rebels to take the fight to IS on the ground also suffered a series of setbacks before being abandoned.
Produced by Lucy Rodgers, David Gritten, James Offer and Patrick Asare

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More than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in four-and-a-half years of armed conflict, which began with anti-government protests before escalating into a full-scale civil war. More than 11 million others have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other - as well as jihadist militants from so-called Islamic State.

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Morgen Dempsey

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LIVED is a non-profit registered Scottish charity that seeks to shed light, create awareness and mobilise support for the lived experiences of displaced youth populations around the world through the making and dissemination of documentary films.

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I personally witnessed this shift in public consciousness at a film screening in Edinburgh on the civil war in Syria, where attendees discussed how this photograph changed their perceptions of refugees and how it encouraged them to learn more about the situation in Syria and elsewhere. It seemed that for the first time, a certain closeness and identification with refugees was achieved, and this popular consciousness had the result of influencing certain state policies. For example, in the immediate aftermath of the release of this photograph, the UK government announced that it would welcome thousands of refugees on UK soil.

Despite the reluctance of certain European states to admit refugees, the public became sympathetic to the turmoil experienced by displaced individuals, and local initiatives started to provide aid and support to refugees. For a few months, personal stories of displacement were shared on social and print media, and public and political narratives emphasized the rights of refugees.

As a student involved with a charity aimed at shedding light on the experiences of displaced children, I was very hopeful for the changes I observed in my social networks. But more recently, the events in Paris brought violence and terror on European soil. At that moment, the violence that was still distant and disembodied became tangible. The 130 individuals who died during these attacks became victims of the same violence and terror from which some refugees were also fleeing.

However, instead of a growing sense of unity with refugees, based on a shared identification as 'victims', I was surprised to observe that these events have, in some cases, led to discrimination against refugees. This was most immediately evidenced by exclusionary discourses wishing to restrain their access to safety in Europe. For example, some individuals are pushing their governments to close borders to refugees, with countries like Sweden introducing border controls. In my social networks, those same individuals who, a few months ago, were discussing how they could assist refugees in Europe, are now supporting further border controls and restrictions.

These discourses of exclusion are justified by the need for security and are grounded in policies of territorial control and boundaries. However, it seems that at the core of these narratives is an understanding shared by many that these displaced men, women, and children from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc., are excluded from their moral concerns.

Indeed, all communities share a set of moral values and social norms that help delimit who is included or excluded from the group. In order to be included in this moral community, individuals need to either engage in behaviours or possess characteristics that are deemed moral and acceptable. Access to the community involves access to the benefits and resources of that group, and those excluded from the boundaries of the community are therefore also excluded from the benefits available to the in-group.

Opotow, Gerson and Woodside (2005) have also suggested that those inside of boundaries for fairness 'are morally included and seen as deserving fair treatment. Those outside are morally excluded, beyond our moral concerns, and eligible for deprivation, exploitation and other harms that might be ignored or condoned as normal, inevitable and deserved'.

Observing the recent narratives about refugees, I started to wonder if, despite the refugee crisis being 'humanised', it seems that the cultural, political, and social distance between 'Us' (Westerners) and 'Them' (refugees, 'migrants') has not sufficiently eroded to foster unity. Now that the experiences of displacement have reached our doorstep, many would prefer limiting the access of refugees to the resources and security available to the in-group. This may be a reflection of these moral boundaries where, for many Westerners, refugees are not only perceived as part of the out-group, but also as outside their moral community. For some, this cultural, social, and political distance renders refugees ineligible to receive the benefits of the host community, and therefore beyond their moral concerns.

I believe this to be extremely problematic. If Western states and their populations do not feel morally compelled to act, if they choose to ignore the harms committed to refugees, and if they choose to deny them opportunities for safety, they risk being confronted by the historical memory that in the face of the biggest refugee crisis since WWII, they chose to reinforce group boundaries instead of discovering unity on the basis of our shared humanity.

I suggest that we should challenge the negative assumptions associated with the label 'refugee', such as that refugees necessarily burden social systems or threaten the internal security of European countries. We should challenge this homogenisation process, in which the individuality of the displaced individuals is lost in favour of broader cultural assumptions. Most immediately, including refugees in our group boundaries will offer them protection, safety, and opportunities, and in return their integration will lead to social and economic contribution to the host country.

It is therefore crucial that we challenge these discourses and re-establish the dignity and safety of those individuals who forcibly fled their country. It is, I believe, our moral duty to assist those men, women, and children who constantly fight for their survival in a situation that was imposed upon them. We should encourage a movement of solidarity and unity with refugees, and continuously share the human stories of displacement so that displaced individuals can finally be perceived as members of our moral community.

With the arrival of Syrian refugees in Scotland, there is also the opportunity to provide practical support, such as teaching English, offering accommodation and translation services, but also friendship and companionship. For more information on how you can offer your support, please visit this website: http://www.scotlandwelcomesrefugees.scot/how-you-can-help/offer-practical-support/

BBC News. 'David Cameron: UK to accept 'thousands' more Syrian refugees', 4 September 2015. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34148913

Lerner, M.J. (1980). The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion. New York: Plenum Press, p. 91.

Tugendhat, E. (1993). 'The Role of Identity in the Constitution of Morality', in Noam, G.G. and Wren, T.E. (Eds.). The Moral Self (pp. 3-15). London: The MIT Press.

Opotow, S., Gerson, J. and Woodside, S. (2005). 'From Moral Exclusion to Moral Inclusion: Theory for Teaching Peace', Theory Into Practice, 44(4): 305.

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Over the past few years, the world has witnessed the biggest refugee crisis since WWII. While some European countries initially accommodated this mass flow of refugees, it took a photograph of the body of a small child on a beach to finally humanise these stories and bring public attention to

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This is explaining what the struggle is for refugee in the past five years.

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By making a gift today, you will be helping the IRC respond to the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe on all fronts:

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John Josul

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Syrians cry and hug each other as they say their farewells in northern Jordan. Children help their parents bundle small bags of luggage onto a waiting bus.

These refugees either cannot afford to go to Europe or do not want to. Instead, they are going on a different dangerous journey: returning home to a war zone.

"I've no relatives left here and no money," says a mother of three from Deraa, in southern Syria. "Everybody started going back. We're so tired."

"In Syria, I'll find people I know," she goes on. "I'll be among my own people. It will be OK. Whatever happens, happens."

One-way ticket

In recent months, the United Nations says it has seen a worrying rise in returnees.

In July, the average was 66 a day but in August the figure nearly doubled to 129. It has since remained over 100.

There are some 600,000 registered Syrian refugees in Jordan, mostly living in urban areas. Four years into a bloody civil war, they are dispossessed and increasingly desperate.

Those who want to leave Jordan for Syria must register for the bus at a departure area at the Zaatari refugee camp. Many first get counselling from the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR.

"The first thing we tell them is that there's no safe place in Syria from a UNHCR perspective," says Omar, one of the protection officers. "The second is that you can't return back to Jordan at all. It's a one-way ticket."

Increasingly, Syrian refugees in Jordan are in dire financial straits. The UN says 86% now live below the Jordanian poverty line of 68 Jordanian dinars ($96; £63) a month.

The government does not allow most to work legally and no longer provides free medical care.

At the beginning of last month, 229,000 living outside refugee camps had their aid from the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) totally cut due to a lack of international donations.

Families have had to make terrible choices.

'No choice'

One man from Homs has decided to stay with his ageing mother in Jordan while his wife will take their two small daughters - one a newborn - to join her parents in regime-held Damascus.

"It's a hard life here. My baby daughter is really sick and I can't afford her treatment. In Syria, it will be available," says Abu Ahmed.

"We are splitting up because we have no choice. Some situations are stronger than we are, and my daughter is the priority. In the night she wakes up choking and I have no car to take her to hospital and no money for medicine."

His wife remembers the journey out of Syria as "torture". She follows news of the continuing fighting and is aware of the risks of going back.

"We're not happy to go but the situation here is very bad. It's very expensive. We get no food vouchers. We even have to buy our water," she says.

"[My husband] could work illegally for a few days a month but not the whole time."

'More dangerous'

Another Syrian family living in Irbid is also planning to divide up temporarily.

The father, Khaled will take his 19-year-old daughter, Ayat, back home to Deraa so she can finish secondary school and get to university. His wife is staying behind with their other children for a few months.

Khaled was well-off in Syria but now his savings have run out. He has relied on relatives to pay for his rent, food and transport costing about 600 Jordanian dinars (£552; $847) a month.

He shows me a photograph of his large house in Deraa. His parents are there and have told him the situation is calm now.

"It has been terrible: shelling and barrel bombs almost every day. People dying," he says. "For the last 20 days there's been talk of a truce."

I ask if he is worried the situation could become more violent again. "Yes," he replies. "I can't deny I'm scared, but you only die when your time is up. We don't have a life here."

Videos from southern Syria show barrel bombs dropped by regime aircraft.

The opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA) says it does not have the weapons it needs to protect people and that the recently-arrived Russian air power will only increase the bloodshed.

"We are expecting that the situation will be more complicated. The air strikes will be heavier, stronger, more accurate and will attack and kill lots of civilians," says Major Issam al-Reis, spokesman for the FSA Southern Front.

"We advise our refugees not to go back to Syria now because [it] will be more dangerous."

And yet more and more families are opting to go back to a conflict that shows no sign of ending, instead of facing hunger and hardship in Jordan.

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Desperate Syrian refugees return to war zone - BBC News

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Syrians cry and hug each other as they say their farewells in northern Jordan. Children help their parents bundle small bags of luggage onto a waiting bus. These refugees either cannot afford to go to Europe or do not want to. Instead, they are going on a different dangerous journey: returning home to a war zone.

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https://apps.bostonglobe.com/graphics/2015/09/refugees/

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Umm Majed (a pseudonym) came with her two sons from Syria to Germany a year and a half ago. Her journey was fraught with danger, as is the case for many Syrians. She now lives in a refugee center in Berlin, while her husband still lives in the Syrian capital Damascus.

"I decided to leave Syria because of the war, which brings with it a lack of stability, as well as a constant fear of death. My husband refused to leave, despite the difficulties that he faces there," she told DW.

Now Umm Majed is looking in another direction, as she wishes to return to Damascus.

When asked by DW about her reasons why she wanted to return to Syria she replied "I came here to Germany not wanting to return to Syria. But now I have made the decision to return home to be reunited with my husband. I am in constant contact with him. The living conditions at the refugee center are tough."

Umm Majed's oldest son has turned 14 years old and lives in Germany with her. He is often on the streets with older peers, and has become rebellious towards her.

"I've decided to to return to Syria without my oldest son. The conditions in Germany are much better than Syria and he could be drafted into the military back home. It's better for him to stay here so he can get the most out of the education provided in Germany," she said.

Umm Majed went to the German youth office regarding the possibility of leaving her older son in Berlin and also received legal guidance there. She is making her last arrangements to go to Damacus - informing the German police and buying her plane tickets. She will fly to Beirut along with her younger son, and then they will proceed to Damascus.

When she is asked about leaving her older son here in Berlin, she replies, "The decision to leave my oldest son here is not an easy one. I'm heartbroken, but his place is here."

With tears streaming down her eyes she says: "This is the destiny we face as Syrians. This crazy war has torn apart families and displaced people all over the globe."
Ibrahim Family
The Ibrahim family, another Syrian family in Germany, is in a similar situation. They also live in a refugee center in Berlin but they are dissatisfied by the lack of improvement in their lives there. They have three children. "There is no private life here," said Mr. Ibrahim "We are in a narrow space with dozen of strangers."

Syrians in an accomodation center

The family shares one room but then there are other community rooms, which are are often dirty. The management of the center often changes, which makes it difficult to address problems. These issues make Ibrahim think of moving back to Syria with his family.

Mr. Ibrahim worked as a trader of autoparts in Syria. The deteriorating economic situation in Syria pushed him and his family to move from Syria to Berlin. His older brother, who took over the management of his auto shop back home in Damascus, tells him nowadays that "the economic and security situation there is improving."

Mr. Ibrahim thinks it's important that his children grow up in the family atmosphere back in Syria. He also alluded to the fears he has of his kids growing up in the West away from Arab and Islamic traditions. Like Umm Majed, he has begun arranging a journey back to Syria through Lebanon.
Youth services

Uwe Bock Leskin, who works for a child protection service in Berlin

"We have to impose the law immediately if a family decides to give up a child for any reason " said Uke Bock Leskin, deputy director of a youth protection foundation in Berlin. He emphasized that minors are protected under existing social law. He also mentioned that giving up a child to youth services is a very limited phenomenon.

"We have to act swiftly in this case to provide a suitable living accomodation for a child or young person," he told DW.

Murat Arslan, who works for a refugee council foundation in Berlin, told DW that the phenomenon of Syrians returning home from Germany is not new. This has been happening more and more over the past couple of months, as it has been with the Iraqis in Germany over the last year.

He advises Syrians returning home that "the situation in Syria is still dangerous."

"As an NGO we can't prevent people from traveling, all we can do is warn them of the dangers they could face back home," he added. "There is also not any organization here in Germany that will bear the costs of them choosing to return to their home countries," he concluded.

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Syrian refugees in Germany contemplate return home | Germany | DW.COM | 27.01.2017

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Umm Majed (a pseudonym) came with her two sons from Syria to Germany a year and a half ago. Her journey was fraught with danger, as is the case for many Syrians. She now lives in a refugee center in Berlin, while her husband still lives in the Syrian capital Damascus.

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Here in the US, there's been a lot of talk recently on immigration. The debate is raging over President Obama's new series of executive actions that will grant up to 5 million undocumented immigrants protection from deportation. Naturally, this kind of boldness has created quite the ruckus, as his opponents insist he has gone too far. And outside of Washington DC, discussions over immigration are just as heated.

Freedom of speech is one of the most important aspects of our constitution, and lively discourse is the only way to arrive at a thoughtful conclusion. But, how can we talk about these types of issues if we don't have the facts? For this reason, let's take a look at some of the reasons why different groups of people choose to immigrate.
1. To escape past or future persecution based on race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or political opinion
Za'atari refugee camp, Jordan | UNHCR/ Brian Sokol
2. To escape conflict or violence 3. To find refuge after being displaced due to environmental factors
In most countries, and in the United States, families and individuals who meet this criteria may obtain refugee status or asylum. Now, here's the difference: refugees must secure their status prior to entering the country of choice, where as asylum seekers seek status upon arrival. A complex differentiation that causes a lot of confusion in the process to get people to safety.
4. To seek superior healthcare
In many countries, but not the United States, families and individuals who immigrate to escape conflicts like war and violence can be considered for refugee status or asylum.

Natural disasters, erosion, and other environmental factors caused by climate change are real threats that disproportionately affect people living in poverty. In fact, Christian Aid reports that 1 billion people could be displaced in the next 50 years as the effects of climate change worsen.

People who fit this description are dubbed climate "refugees," but the name does not necessarily imply they have, or can receive, refugee status. As this is a newer phenomenon, many countries are still trying to determine how to respond to this growing issue.
6. To offer more opportunities to children 7. Family reunification 8. For educational purposes
Imagine living in a country with limited access to healthcare when you're suffering from serious health problems. Not fun.
9. For jobs and business opportunities
Agriculture worker in Argentina picking strawberries | Nahuel Berger/ World Bank

Perhaps the most commonly assumed reason for immigration.

Parents sometimes make the difficult decision to migrate so their children can benefit from things like superior education, and plentiful job opportunities.

Self explanatory, I think? Mom and Dad, I miss you!!

Students from Merrimack College studying abroad in China | Merrimack College

Shout out to all of the adventurous students. Some study abroad to seek out better educational opportunities than are available in their own countries, while others simply want the thrill of living in an exciting, new place.

In some cases, people migrate with the knowledge or hope that more opportunities will be available to them in their particular field than at home. Others migrate after employment has already been offered to them.

In today's globalized world, long-distance dating is all the rage. But, for couples ready to take the next step down the aisle, migrating to be together is the obvious choice (and a lot easier on the wallet.)

At Global Citizen, our office is full of Aussies and people from far more interesting places than the US (it's just my opinion.) Why they would abandon gorgeous beaches and cute little kangaroos is beyond me, but I'm sure they have their reasons.

As we think about immigration, and how best to approach it, let's try and remember that we're talking about real people. People who made a major decision to uproot their lives and start from scratch in a scary, new place. After all, isn't making that human connection what being a Global Citizen is all about?

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Why people migrate: 11 surprising reasons

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Here in the US, there's been a lot of talk recently on immigration. The debate is raging over President Obama's new series of executive actions that will grant up to 5 million undocumented immigrants protection from deportation. Naturally, this kind of boldness has created quite the ruckus, as his opponents insist he has gone too far.

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Refugee camps

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For the children living in the dusty refugee camps near the Jordanian-Syrian border, the tiniest things spark joy. They fill their long days by playing with skipping ropes, buckets and stones, their imaginations working overtime to recapture some of the childhood they lost to war. Most fled the Syrian civil war with their families, seeking safety across the border in Mafraq, northeast Jordan. But with the conflict still raging after four years, many children have never known a life outside the camps. It is where they were born.

Every day, thousands of Syrians flee their homes. The once-stable country is experiencing an exodus on a scale that the world has not seen since the Rwandan genocide more than two decades ago. More than four million Syrians are now hosted by neighboring countries while an additional 7.6 million people have been displaced within Syria. The Syrian revolt, which began in March 2011 in the southern city of Dara'a - just north of the Jordanian border - propelled hundreds of families to cross the frontier on foot at night. Jordan now provides shelter for some 630,000 registered refugees.

More than 150,000 of them live in the north-eastern Mafraq region, where Associated Press Chief photographer Muhammed Muheisen spent several days in July documenting the lives of Syrian refugee children and their families. Although the area is best known for Za'atari, the huge refugee camp that opened in July 2012, most Syrian refugees live in unofficial tented settlements on the outskirts of the city. This is true of the country as a whole: the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 84% of Jordan's refugee population live outside the official camps.

Many people told Muheisen that while the official UNHCR-run camps have better facilities and support, they would feel trapped and crowded there. They seek a greater sense of community and independence, preferring to move around and find work outside to provide for their families.

A Syrian refugee girl fills water from a tanker to her tent on the outskirts of Mafraq, on July 25, 2015. Muhammed Muheisen-AP

Yet the conditions are undeniably harsh in these unofficial desert camps, with high temperatures during the day and extreme cold at night. Muheisen says he was especially aware of the lack of sanitation and medical care in the camps. Barefoot and malnourished, many of the children bore the additional mental scars of the war they had fled - Muheisen described young boys speaking and acting like men. Although some of the settlements have makeshift schools donated by UNICEF, classes are taught by other Syrian refugees and are not regular. Instead, many children work with their parents in nearby farms run by local Jordanians. With some 86% of refugees in Jordan living below the poverty line, refugee children are frequently the main breadwinners for their families and UNHCR worries that a generation of youth are forfeiting their future by missing out on an education.

"What hit me the most is that the children are the ones comforting their families," Muheisen tells TIME, saying that many spoke of a strong desire to work in order to help their families. The children's lives may have been turned upside down, but the photographer says he struck by their resilience and optimism.

The parents, meanwhile, merely dreamed of a better life for their kids than what they had experienced themselves. But with the Syrian crisis showing no signs of abating and refugees continuing to flee the war-torn country, it's unclear if that better life will be within reach any time soon.

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Inside the Syrian Refugee Camps Where Childhood Doesn't Exist

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For the children living in the dusty refugee camps near the Jordanian-Syrian border, the tiniest things spark joy. They fill their long days by playing with skipping ropes, buckets and stones, their imaginations working overtime to recapture some of the childhood they lost to war.

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https://nowtoronto.com/movies/my-first-150-days-how-to-immigrate-to-canada/https://nowtoronto.com/movies/my-first-150-days-how-to-immigrate-to-canada/

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Syrians Struggling in the 13th Month in Canada

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Syrian refugees are struggling with mixed results as they transition through what many call "Month 13" in Canada.

Immigration Department evaluations of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's effort to welcome 26,000 refugees from war-torn Syria reveal high rates of unemployment, costly barriers to rental housing and difficulties shifting from Arabic to French or English.

Although many refugee families are doing relatively well after their first 12 months in Canada, when they're supported mostly by the federal government, others are facing a range of trials as they transfer in "Month 13" to provincial welfare and other programs.

One category of refugees is doing better than others.

Just over half of the adults among the 9,000 Syrian refugees who have been privately sponsored in Canada, largely by churches and other religious organizations, have jobs, Immigration official Chantal Goyette said in a talk delivered at the March Metropolis conference in Montreal.

But only 10 per cent of the adults among the 15,000 refugees who are categorized as "government-assisted," and who are typically less educated, have jobs in Canada, said Goyette.

British Columbia accepted about 2,500 Syrian refugees in all categories, or nine per cent of the national total, with most of the rest going to Ontario, Quebec and Alberta.

Vancouver's Maggie Hosgood, who has helped coordinate more than 100 B.C. United Church congregations in welcoming refugees, said Friday that privately-sponsored refugees may do better for a range of reasons.

One advantage of private programs, Hosgood said, is the many volunteers who have been introducing Syrian refugees to local communities, potluck dinners, rental-housing options, informal language-learning opportunities, government services and job possibilities.

A wide range of Canadian Christian organizations, particularly the Catholic, United Church and Anglican denominations, have been at the forefront of privately sponsoring thousands of Syrian refugees, most of whom are Sunni Muslims. Mosques and synagogues have also been sponsors.

Immigration department official Nancy Chan said in an email this week that, after the first 12 months on federal programs, Syrian refugee families end up benefiting not only from provincially-funded public-school and welfare programs, but also from the federal government's disability and new Canada Child Benefit.

Syrian families with four or more children - which make up the majority of Syrian families that have come to Canada - can get about $50,000 a year in various taxpayer-funded social-service benefits.

In addition to receiving $7,000 to $11,000 a year per adult under provincial welfare programs, the Canada Child Benefit credit provides $6,400 for each child under six and $5,400 a year for each child between six and 17. The families are also eligible for GST and other tax rebates.

"The Canada Child Benefit has especially made a terrific difference in many families' ability to survive Month 13," Hosgood said.

In many cases Hosgood has found struggling refugee adults in B.C. have had to make a choice between working at minimum-wage jobs or staying on provincial welfare so they can go to school to learn English or study other subjects.

The immigration department says 62 per cent of the 26,000 Syrians who have come to Canada speak neither French nor English, which is a lower rate of fluency than among previous refugees to Canada.

Learning English, Hosgood adds, is especially difficult for the significant number of Syrian refugee adults who are not able to read or write in their native Arabic.

Although Trudeau and federal cabinet ministers have frequently posed for photo opportunities with Syrian refugees who are doctors or other professionals, the Immigration Department report makes clear that most jobs so far obtained by Syrian refugees are typically in the low-paying service and restaurant sector, or in construction.

The Angus Reid Institute reported in February that Canadians generally support the way the federal Liberals welcomed Syrian and other refugees in 2016. Almost half of Canadians said Ottawa is taking in the right number of refugees, while 41 per cent said the number is too high.
dtodd@postmedia.com Twitter.com/douglastodd CLICK HERE to report a typo. Is there more to this story? We'd like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. Email vantips@postmedia.com.

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Douglas Todd: Many Syrian refugees struggling after 12 months in Canada

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Syrian refugees are struggling with mixed results as they transition through what many call "Month 13" in Canada. Immigration Department evaluations of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's effort to welcome 26,000 refugees from war-torn Syria reveal high rates of unemployment, costly barriers to rental housing and difficulties shifting from Arabic to French or English.

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Promoting legal awareness for Syrian refugees in Turkey 

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Promoting legal awareness for Syrian refugees in Turkey 

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http://www.americanbar.org/advocacy/rule_of_law/where_we_work/middle_east/turkey/news/news-turkey-legal-awareness-for-syrian-refugees-1116.htmlhttp://www.americanbar.org/advocacy/rule_of_law/where_we_work/middle_east/turkey/news/news-turkey-legal-awareness-for-syrian-refugees-1116.html

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What it's like living in one of the largest Syrian refugee camps in the world. (Joseph Rosambert)

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What it's like living in one of the largest Syrian refugee camps in the world. (Joseph Rosambert)

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http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/what-its-like-living-in-one-of-the-largest-syrian-refugee-camps-in-the-world-a6998576.htmlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/what-its-like-living-in-one-of-the-largest-syrian-refugee-camps-in-the-world-a6998576.html

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 Inside the Syrian Refugee Camps Where Childhood Doesn't Exist ( Lami Amin)

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 Inside the Syrian Refugee Camps Where Childhood Doesn't Exist ( Lami Amin)

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http://time.com/3987244/syrian-refugees-mafraq-jordan/http://time.com/3987244/syrian-refugees-mafraq-jordan/

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http://www.wired.co.uk/article/europe-syria-refugee-crisis-maps

Interactive link: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32057601

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The Refugee Journey

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THE dire prospects for young Syrians in their war-wracked country and as refugees in neighbouring countries explains why many risk everything to get to Europe. On August 16th siblings Rasha and Moaz al-Rez, both university graduates from a middle-class family, left Damascus to embark on a treacherous journey to reach Italy, with the aim of getting to Sweden. The well-trodden path is harder than many realise. "We knew there were dangers involved," says Ms Rez, who is now in Italy. "But had we known the extent of the problems we faced, we would have stayed.

The journey, with six Syrian friends, started in Beirut where they caught a flight to Algiers to meet a smuggler. Syrians don't need a visa to get into Algeria but each adult has to carry a minimum of $4,000 cash. "We were at risk because the smugglers in Algeria and Libya know that we are carrying a lot of money, sometimes a lifetimes' worth of savings," says Mr Rez. From Algiers the group took a bus for 13 hours through the desert to Hassi Messaoud in the eastern province where they were passed to another group of Algerian smugglers, who demanded another $800 per person. By the time they reached Dubdab on the Libyan boarder, after a 10-hour bus journey, they were exhausted. "We had not eaten or drunk anything for days, our clothes stank and there was no bathroom in sight," says Ms Rez.

Night had fallen by the time they crossed the border into Libya on foot. There they were transferred to armed Libyan rebels and remained in squalid conditions in the outskirts of Ghadames, a town on the Algerian-Libyan border south-west of Tripoli, for four days awaiting the smugglers' next move-and their fate. "We were terrified. If anyone annoyed them they just started shooting into the air with their Kalashnikovs," says Mr Rez, who suffered from the hot sun and dust of the desert.

On the fourth day the group was crammed into open-air lorries and taken on a 16-hour journey across the Libyan desert to the coastal city of Zwara where they would sail for Italy. They had been promised lifejackets and that the boat would take no more than 200 passengers. Instead they found themselves crammed in with 500 other immigrants. The boat was split into three levels, the lower one for African immigrants, who paid $200, and the upper levels made up of mostly Syrians, who paid $1,000 each. "All the women and children were crying and many were reading the Koran in loud voices," says Ms Rez.

After 15 hours, at around 7.30pm on August 24th, the journey took its worse turn yet when the boat began to sink. The Rez siblings were on the upper deck at the time. "Rasha can't swim but I pushed her into the water and dragged her away from the boat," says Mr Rez. "All who stayed on the boat were drowned." After four hours in the water the Italian authorities arrived to rescue the survivors. They were taken to a camp in Sicily to rest and identify some of the 200 dead, among them two of their friends, Kinan Hijrazi and Khaled Aweiti from Damascus.

"We thought we would be so happy to be in Europe but we feel numb," says Ms Rez. Now in Milan, the siblings are quickly running out of money and have yet to pay a smuggler to drive them to Sweden through Switzerland and Germany. Ms Rez has lost her passport, shoes, glasses and money in the sea. She hopes she can prove her identity when she finally arrives and asks for asylum in Sweden.

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Syrian refugees: A harrowing journey | The Economist

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THE dire prospects for young Syrians in their war-wracked country and as refugees in neighbouring countries explains why many risk everything to get to Europe. On August 16th siblings Rasha and Moaz al-Rez, both university graduates from a middle-class family, left Damascus to embark on a treacherous journey to reach Italy, with the aim of getting to Sweden.

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http://time.com/3987244/syrian-refugees-mafraq-jordan/http://time.com/3987244/syrian-refugees-mafraq-jordan/

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https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/01/09/syrian-refugee-crisis-challenges-international-aid-organizationshttps://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/01/09/syrian-refugee-crisis-challenges-international-aid-organizations

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(Jasmine Ngene)

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UN agencies say the number of children forced to flee Syria has reached one million, describing the figure as "a shameful milestone".

Overall, more than 1.7 million people have registered as refugees since the uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011, with many more believed to be unregistered.

Although Syrian refugees have fled to numerous countries, the vast majority have ended up in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

Lebanon - the smallest of the three, with a population of four million - has more than 700,000 registered refugees. Jordan and Turkey are hosts to more than 960,000 others.

Three experts discuss the how the countries are dealing with the influx.

Lebanon

Patricia Mouamar, advocacy and communications officer, World Vision Lebanon

If you talk to Lebanese, many say they've lost their jobs because Syrians are willing to work for less

At the beginning of the war in Syria, Lebanese willingly received Syrian refugees into their own houses, their spare rooms, even their education system. They were sharing everything with them, sharing their whole communities.

But as the war in Syria has become more protracted, there has been increasing tension between the communities.

In some towns, the population has doubled. This has been putting a lot of pressure on health services, educational services. Waste management is not enough to cope.

If you talk to Lebanese, many say they have lost their jobs because Syrians are willing to work for less. Or that they have been evicted because Syrians share housing with many people, and so can afford rents that Lebanese cannot.

If you talk to Syrians, they say that some Lebanese have started to say that they deserve what has been happening to them.

It is a result of the frustration, and the international community really needs to give aid and assistance to both sides.

Patricia Mouamar

Lebanese communications officer for children's charity World Vision

Has spent the last few years travelling all over Lebanon, recording the stories of some of Lebanon's most vulnerable

It has been even clearer in schools.

One of the main problems comes from the different levels of ability. Many Syrian children have missed out on school for a long time and are struggling to catch up. But the Lebanese children feel left out because of the attention teachers give to the Syrian children. One said to me: "I feel like I'm in a Syrian school."

There are space issues too, and there are not enough teachers. Some schools send Lebanese children home after half a day and then teach Syrians in the second half.

Wherever you go, in every single corner of Lebanon there are refugees. They are scattered all over, not in one place - this crisis is affecting all of Lebanon. It is a population of four million and you are adding more than a million. That means one in five people are refugees.

The government should take a leadership role to find a solution, but they have mainly left the Lebanese communities to deal with the situation.

It is having a negative impact on local economies. Sure, when an employer is firing Lebanese to hire Syrians they are saving money, but many Syrians are getting into debt on so many levels - medication, shelter, transport.

And some of the small Lebanese shops go into debt because they are surrounded by refugees. The refugees ask for things like rice, bread or beans but they are not able to pay. What are the shop owners supposed to do?

"I can't say no," said one woman to me, and she showed me the account book containing her debts.

I'm not very optimistic [for the future] because of the tension. The security situation will deteriorate, as poverty leads to more tension.

Jordan

[There's] resentment that maybe Syrian women are getting the [Jordanian women's] men

Laura Sheahen, senior communications officer, CARE International

For years and years, Jordanians and Syrians have mixed and they have relatives in common, so it is not an extremely stark contrast [socially] but there are still differences in customs and traditions.

One thing I heard yesterday near the Syrian border was that because Syrian refugee men are willing to work for less money - and often they are being exploited when they do so - Jordanian men are not being able to earn enough to provide a dowry - basically a nice home or an apartment for a Jordanian woman they would like to marry. And so they have had to delay marriage.

Another impact on marriage is that Syrian women are sometimes seen as being willing to accept a smaller dowry in order to marry a Jordanian man who maybe cannot provide quite as much in terms of a place to live. So there is this little bit of resentment that maybe Syrian women are getting the men.

These are generalisations and stereotypes that highlight some of the social dimensions of what is happening.

There are tensions in some areas of Jordan, although it certainly does not apply to all areas, for example [the capital] Amman.

Laura Sheahen

In Jordan to cover the Syrian refugee crisis for CARE, the global poverty-fighting organisation

Has six years of experience working in natural disaster or conflict zones for aid agencies

When based in Cairo from 2008-2009, she researched the ongoing Iraqi refugee crisis in Jordan and Lebanon

But when we were up north in a smaller village, one of the older Jordanian men said: "Syrian men come here and Syrian men wear shorts. We don't do that here."

And he said: "Syrian women ride on a motorcycle behind their husbands. That's not done here."

Of course, the subtext is that there have not been a lot of motorcycles in that region at all until recently, and so the appearance of them is quite new.

Overall, the longer the refugee families stay, the harder it has been on the host community.

The issue is basically water. Jordan is very "water poor". Every drop of water is precious and some Jordanians have this perception - whether it is true or not - that Syrians maybe do not conserve water as best they could, in terms of daily habits.

So there is resentment about a lot of things.

There is a perception that Syrians are willing to be paid less and still do a very good job. And some Jordanians feel priced out of the job market.

The other thing is that landlords are raising prices on apartments, so again that affects society. You cannot send your kids to school if you cannot pay the rent, and again Jordanian men who want to get married cannot afford these rents, so they cannot get married and bring a wife to a new apartment.

It is sort of snowballing, and it is a really painful situation.

The Turkish government has been really praiseworthy in the way that they've approached the refugee crisis... They've created refugee camps that you can really say are 'five-star'

Turkey

Dawn Chatty, director, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford

Turkey is really quite different [to Lebanon and Jordan]. Most of the refugees until the last couple of weeks were going into Hatay province, which was the former governorate of Alexandretta - so it was part of Syria until just before the beginning of World War II.

And so the population of Hatay is very closely tied with the population across the border. In a way the population of Hatay really mirrors the very complicated ethno-religious make-up of the provinces surrounding [the Syrian cities of] Idlib and Aleppo. There are lots of kinship ties, lots of social networks, lots of social capital between these areas.

You've got Armenians, you have got Alawites, you have got Sunni Muslims - all these groups have their own kin that they are either near or have contact with. So socially it is still kind of like "we're brothers, we realise these problems", and everybody is waiting for the fighting to die down and the opportunity to go back.

So that was always bound to be a smoother process [than in Lebanon and Jordan].

Also, the Turkish government has been really praiseworthy in the way that they have approached the refugee crisis. They have created refugee camps that you can really say are "five-star" - where people really do have the ability to come in and out, and there is very little to complain about.

Dawn Chatty

Professor of anthropology and forced migration

Director of the Refugee Studies Centre at the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford

Author of Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East

In general, there is a lot of politics now in terms of numbers and what it means.

I think Jordan is probably going to get a lot of aid to help with the Syrian numbers. Lebanon should do too, although that does not seem to be as forthcoming, partially because Lebanon, for many reasons, has not wished to work with UN agencies to create camps - preferring to do a lot of local hosting.

Turkey has not worked with the UNHCR - it has decided to do it by itself. Turkey has a long history of working with refugee integration without assimilation, and their model has always been local hosting.

What they have done now is created camps, but these camps are not marked out physically as places that you cannot leave without local sponsorship. And it has been near totally coming out of the Turkish budget.

Whenever you have camps that receive a lot of assistance you create a negative environment in the local community - which is happening in some of the camps in Jordan. The Lebanese are desperately trying to make sure that does not happen. They have had a very bad experience with camps in which you take a minority community, and isolate and separate them out.

We know from years and years of working with refugees that local hosting, local accommodation, is far superior to encamping people, where you really strip them of their agency but also strip them of their dignity.

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Viewpoints: Impact of Syrian refugees on host countries - BBC News

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UN agencies say the number of children forced to flee Syria has reached one million, describing the figure as "a shameful milestone". Overall, more than 1.7 million people have registered as refugees since the uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011, with many more believed to be unregistered.

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Henniina Aaltonen

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Some 1.2 million asylum applications were made in Europe in 2015. To put that figure into context, this summer more than 300,000 applications were made.That's only around 600 applications for every million Europeans.

Asylum rules in Europe can cause confusion about the economic impact because it is often difficult to distinguish between genuine refugees and economic migrants, so here is a crash course.

Crash course
When asylum seekers first arrive, a host country pays to process applicants, as well as food, housing, health and education.

In the short term, the extra spending increases the country's aggregate demand or fiscal expansion. That means more goods and services are produced, resulting in more disposable income for native workers.

That makes up for downward pressures on wages and inflation when the asylum seekers finally enter the job market. The process can take up to two years depending on different rules of countries.

When they can start looking for a job, newcomers tend to fall behind native workers.

To narrow the gap - it is important to quickly increase employability.

That means providing housing closer to work, and flexible labour markets, as well as providing language skills and education.

Successful economic integration can help fiscal sustainability for the host country while potentially addressing demographic challenges.

Sixty percent of asylum seekers this summer came from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

With many of them staying in, or travelling through Greece, Hungary,Italy, France, and six out of ten heading to Germany where the open door policy has both its supporters and detractors.
Germany's refugee game plan
Euronews correspondent Giovanni Magi headed out to find out if the country is prepared to make this a long-term investment.

The big challenge for German companies such as technology giant SAP is transitioning refugees into the jobs market.

First steps for people such as Nasser from Afghanistan and Mohanad from Syria - who now call Germany home - include internships that re-train them for their new environment.

"The first difficult thing is German language," points out SAP intern Nasser Atif. "They have to do these courses until they are on a level to be accepted in a labour market and also the culture is different, I mean everything is different."

"I did marketing in my country, for a ceramic factory, I thought we are doing some modern business but, I mean, [here] it's light-years away from what we did over there, there's a lot to learn," says SAP intern Mohanad Alfar.

SAP's head of recruitment Uli Joos says up-skilling is not an issue.

"For us the challenge in the recruiting sector is to find the right talent, no matter where they are coming from, no matter whether they are migrants or we're going to a certain country to look for the right talent," Joos says.
Many refugees arrive with marketable skills
Germany needs that talent to fill one million vacant jobs, some 685,000 of which require skilled workers. Refugees such as Hussein Shaker from Syria fit the bill.

Hussein arrived in Berlin with a tech degree and started up online jobs portal Migrant Hire.

"At the beginning, we were working like LinkedIn, we matched the candidates that we have in our database with the vacancies," explained Shaker. "Now we're working like a job board: we contact the companies who have vacancies, the candidates can see the vacancies and they can apply directly."

Thank you AmbassadorPower</a> for the inspiring words and your ongoing mission to help refugees. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RefugeesWelcome?src=hash">#RefugeesWelcome</a> <a href="https://t.co/wBaH1v6xiX">pic.twitter.com/wBaH1v6xiX</a></p>&mdash; MigrantHire (MigrantHire) June 9, 2016

Out of more than one million refugees who arrived in Germany over the course of a year, 21,400 have found jobs, but only around 100 were hired by the 30 largest companies. A small part that does not affect the workforce aspect destined to shrink by several million units in the next few years."
Companies call for more efficient refugee policy
Refugee arrivals this year will generate costs of about 10 billion euros, rising to 20 billion in 2020 .
To pay, the government has earmarked 6 billion euros a year for the next two years. That's half of the 2015 budget surplus. As the costs mount, companies are calling for a more efficient refugee policy.

"We also need to succeed amongst the variety of programs and initiatives, to determine the most successful ones, then also to roll out, to unfold and to broaden them," says Stefan Küpper, Managing Director, Arbeitgeber.

That is key to the economic integration of refugees - who tend to be of working age - into one of the fastest aging populations in the world.

The German example raises a heck of a lot of questions about the long-term which Ian Goldin can answer. He is a world renowned expert on migration, the author of The Age of Discovery, and the founding director of the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University.
Interview with Ian Goldin (@ian_goldin)
Maithreyi Seetharaman, Euronews: "Ian when we talk about the German example and refugees, fiscal costs always come up. How do the Germans make sure that this is a long term investment rather than sunk cost?"

Ian Goldin: "It's both a short term and a long term investment. In the short term it provides stimulus to the German economy which will grow about 0.2 percent faster than it would have without the refugees.

"In the longer term - there was a situation with one of the lowest fertility rates in the world in Germany and that will be vital for the long term sustainability for the German Economy."

Euronews: "Well you always hear there is a lack of empirical evidence that is possible."

Ian Goldin: "Google would not exist without Sergey Brin, a refugee. Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian refugee. If you give people the ability to work them the education they need for the skills, the transferring - the recognizing of their previous degrees, the adaption to your own systems.

"Ensuring they have the ability to integrate into labour markets - know about jobs, can get to the places, can get housing - that is vital. we have lower dependence ratios amongst refugees than the population as a whole. Those countries that integrate them effectively do really well and those where refugees are not allowed to work, where they are put into ghettos and they are unemployed is where you have the troubles.

Euronews: "Economically what can we do to make sure native workers don't feel that their jobs are threatened their economies are threatened?"

Ian Goldin: "Yes, and we see that in the politics - this rejection because of a feeling of a threat, Germany has a labour shortage and very low levels of unemployment so if you have high unemployment one has to worry much more about this.- what Sweden's been doing is quite remarkable in relationship to its population size. And knowing that people are going to take jobs that locals wont do. Interestingly enough, even in Eastern Europe for example there is a massive labour shortage in certain skills."

Euronews: "What can refugees do then to alleviate the worries of people who are going to host them?"

Ian Goldin: "Their ability to learn the local languages, to ensure their skills are applicable, to respect the customs and laws of the country they've arrived in is absolutely vital.
Many of them work in occupations where they are over-qualified to do the jobs. But I think accepting that it takes time, accepting that it is difficult for the host societies, there is an adjustment process for both sides in this and that
over a period of four or five years one will see the real breakthroughs if the host society is prepared to make the necessary efforts and the refugees are."
https://iangoldin.org

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The economic impact of Europe's refugee crisis

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Some 1.2 million asylum applications were made in Europe in 2015. To put that figure into context, this summer more than 300,000 applications were made.That's only around 600 applications for every million Europeans. Asylum rules in Europe can cause confusion about the economic impact because it is often difficult to distinguish between genuine refugees and economic migrants, so here is a crash course.

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Brock Knowler

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Clutching Syrian drums and instruments made of spruce and walnut wood, 12 Syrian children filed nervously into a packed room in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley this week. None had been musicians before they fled Syria's war, but after months of practice they were ready for their show.

The crowd of refugees stayed quiet as an Aleppo love song filled the air. But when it slipped from its verse to the chorus, suddenly a whole audience was singing.

"That's it," cried a woman from the front row, closing her eyes and smiling as she swayed. "I'm in Syria."

None of the refugees had expected to stay away this long. As the tendrils of war crept through their homeland in 2011, the families crossing earliest into Lebanon thought they would return in weeks. Months at most. Instead the fighting swallowed everything, smashing homes, dividing communities, and turning those months from seasons into years.

As President Trump suspended the resettlement of Syrian refugees, many of the more than 1 million displaced to Lebanon have found their resources stretched to a breaking point.

"Life here is harder than we could ever have imagined," said Om Ahmed, a widow from Aleppo, grabbing her son in a bear hug as he charged out of the performance room. "If you saw our tent, you wouldn't believe we'd left Syria to give our boys a better life."

[Trump's order to ban refugees and immigrants triggers fears around the world]

According to a recent United Nations assessment, conditions for Lebanon's refugees have deteriorated for a sixth year in a row. Ninety percent of households are taking out loans to afford basics necessities, leaving the average family to survive on less than two meals a day.

"When people first fled, they may have had some resources and were able to meet their needs," said Niamh Murnaghan, Lebanon country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council. "As the crisis wore on, their money was used up."

In the Bekaa Valley, a sweeping expanse near Syria's western border, informal camps have become warrens of tents stacked on muddy ground. Many are kept neat as a pin, but no amount of care can save wooden boards from rotting or water from seeping through mattresses, blankets or anything else that touches the floor.

"Our children are starting to believe we were born like this, and this is how life is meant to be," said Mounira Mohamed, 32, standing outside her tent in a small settlement near the town of Sadnayil. "They ask us about Syria as if it's a place on the television."

With a weak economy, a prewar population of just 4.5 million, and a history of accepting displaced Palestinians who later became a permanent fixture, Lebanon is ill-equipped and reluctant to offer long-term sanctuary to a new wave of refugees.

But as neighbor to one of the deadliest wars of the 21st century, it has found itself without a choice.

[Trump signs order temporarily halting admission of refugees]

"If someone can tell me honestly that there will be security in my homeland, I would go back tomorrow," Mohamed said. "I would go back faster than that."

She left Aleppo the day a barrel bomb smashed through the family home, killing her sister outright and leaving three orphans in her care. Now 8 years old, the youngest boy recalls Syria only in the memory of his mother's body in the rubble.

With limited opportunities to work, families can be heavily dependent on monthly cash payments from the U.N. refugee agency.

For Mohamed Ahmed, a 27-year-old former real estate agent from Syria's western city of Homs, this has meant a downward spiral into debt.

"Every day I work to pay it off, but the children still need to eat. So we buy more vegetables on credit, take another loan for medical bills. And then there's another thing to pay off," he said, standing by the rack of cellphone chargers and bootleg Bruce Willis DVDs he now sells as one of two jobs.

Like many small businesses in the area, his shop allows the refugees to communicate daily with loved ones back home.

"These calls keep Syria alive for us," said Mohamed, the mother from Aleppo, admitting that sometimes she did not know whether it was better to know or hide from what was happening to her relatives. "We worry about them and they worry about us. No one has mental peace here," she said.

But everyday life also features memories of better times. In Sadnayil, a group of women stuffed pale-green zucchini with rice, bickering gently over whose recipe for the Syrian dish - known as mahshi - was the best. "This technique came from my mother," one woman said with a shrug. "How can you argue with that?"

Relief groups are also bringing traditional music to camps and urban refugee communities, hoping that those they teach can someday earn a living through their new craft.

"Until early 2015, most of the people we worked with seemed to think this was temporary, that the regime would fall one day, and then they'd go back. But that didn't happen," said Basma el-Husseiny, director of the charity responsible for the children's concert, Action for Hope.

"When they learn an instrument, they learn to stop feeling like victims. They're not waiting for help, they are contributing," she said.

As the performers darted around the organization's kitchen after their show, many were still humming the tune to their final song.

"Did we sing this in Syria?" one girl asked a woman nearby. "Yes, love," came the reply. "Yes we did."

Read more:

The first train to cross Aleppo in years traverses an urban wasteland

Syria deal draws Iran into alliance with Russia and Turkey

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

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As Trump bars Syrian refugees, life in their camps is getting harder

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Clutching Syrian drums and instruments made of spruce and walnut wood, 12 Syrian children filed nervously into a packed room in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley this week. None had been musicians before they fled Syria's war, but after months of practice they were ready for their show.

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Struggles of being a Syrian immigrant

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The figures face away from the camera, isolated and out of place. Driving rain and flat, grey skies form the backdrop to the utilitarian buildings that now serve as "home."

For Eyad Abou Kasem, the journey of the Syrian refugee is not singular. Hopelessness strikes a collective chord.

As both photographer and subject, Abou Kasem traveled as a refugee from his home in Damascus to Europe in the summer of 2015. He arrived in Germany after going overland to Turkey and crossing to Greece by boat. Once in Bavaria, in southern Germany, he was assigned to the refugee camp at the Balthasar-Neumann-Kaserne military base in Würzburg, where most of the pictures from this series were taken.

The photo diary - which he calls A Small Forest on the Other Side - helped Abou Kasem come to terms with the reality of his new life in Europe.

An estimated 11 million Syrians have fled their homes since the outbreak of civil war in March 2011. The majority have sought refuge in neighboring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, while 6.6 million are displaced within Syria itself, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Just over one million have requested asylum within Europe. Germany, with more than 300,000 cumulated applications, and Sweden, with 100,000, are the E.U.'s top receiving countries.

"When the refugees came to Germany or Europe in general we were shocked by the things we'd seen," Kasem tells TIME. "When we arrived we thought it was going to be all good and nice and fancy. But the reality was different of course. Everybody started to think, 'Maybe I want to go back, maybe it's not for me...maybe I can try to live somehow in Syria.'"

One photo of a woman in a pale blue ball gown, running down the steps of a Bavarian palace, represents the European fairytale that Kasem and his fellow refugees had dreamt of. It was taken at the Würzburg Residence palace during a Manga convention and while the scene is somewhat fictional, it is in sharp contrast to the gloomy, blurred images of the refugee camp.

Some asylum seekers returned to their home country soon after arriving in Germany, says Abou Kasem, but the majority stuck it out. While he only lived in the camp for eight months, he knows people who have been there for six years or more. "I don't know how they do that," says Abou Kasem. The camp is an "in-between" place to him; the rooms are bare concrete, divided by tarpaulin, with very few or no belongings. One photo labeled The House or Apartment in Which Someone Lives is intentionally ironic.

Following an intense and sometimes dangerous journey, the final destination for refugees often falls short. There is a sense that what is supposed to be "home" could not feel less so.

"You change your country, you go through a weird journey and then you are stuck in a weird place," says Abou Kasem. "You cannot really interact with the German people. It's not closed, you can go out, but you feel somehow that you're treated like a different thing. But after you are out of the camp, it's normal. Those feelings start to fade away."

Abou Kasem had used a film camera while working in Turkey and Greece but soon after arriving in Germany - with Syrian refugees as his focus - he switched to a small digital camera. This was to make his subjects feel more comfortable. "It is more scary to see a camera than to see a gun in Syria right now," explains Abou Kasem. "I felt like the Syrian people would not be as worried if I used a small camera."

The switch also echoed a change in direction for his work. The focus became less journalistic and more personal. Prior to this, he felt his photos looked like "any other that had been taken of a refugee in the last three years" and didn't seem "anything special," he says. "It wasn't until a few months in that we started to realize that this project was a photo diary."

His new intention was partly influenced by his mentor, Tanya Habjouqa from the Arab Documentary Photography Program, which provides support to photographers from across the Arab Region. Abou Kasem was a 2015 grantee of the program, which was established by Magnum Foundation and the Prince Claus Fund in partnership with the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture. The project really "takes care of its photographers," says Abou Kasem.

The series may be more intimate than his previous work but it still holds back from focusing on a specific story. Most of the subjects' faces are turned away from the camera and appear indistinct. "This happened in the editing process later," he says. "With the people photos I somehow felt it's not about somebody in particular. Someone could be anyone, like everyone in the picture could have been any refugee."
Eyad Abou Kasem is an independent photographer from Syria, currently living in Germany. Alice Gabriner, who edited this photo essay, is TIME's International Photo Editor. Alexandra Genova is a writer and contributor for TIME LightBox. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

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The figures face away from the camera, isolated and out of place. Driving rain and flat, grey skies form the backdrop to the utilitarian buildings that now serve as "home." For Eyad Abou Kasem, the journey of the Syrian refugee is not singular. Hopelessness strikes a collective chord.

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At dusk the passage seemed safe enough, but then came the unexpected weather.

A lifeboat carrying 70 desperate people, including war refugees and small children, had sailed into the fast-fading light. Halfway across the channel between Turkey and Greece, the engine died. On suddenly rough seas and amid a bank of light fog, mothers struggled to hold onto shrieking children. Some passengers became violently ill.

"We see our deaths," said a passenger, Mohammad, a 27-year-old refugee from Syria, who was fleeing threats from terrorists and feared for his family back home.

The fleeing migrants, with the help of fishermen, made it to this island's shores Saturday - greeted by the incongruous scene of seaside tourists sipping white wine and eating salads. But it is a measure of their desperation that refugees are still braving uncertain waters to reach Europe despite growing roadblocks along their journey and the threat of drowning that has claimed thousands of lives in the past two years.

On Sunday, 34 more refugees, half of them children, drowned off the island of Farmakonisi.

About 500,000 migrants and refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, and other lands have fled to Europe this year, and most have landed in Greece. And they are arriving in the greatest numbers on Lesbos, a picturesque island of stone streets and olive groves where many Greek-Americans in New England have roots.

But few would recognize the island now.

Thousands of discarded life jackets clutter the rocky beaches, deflated rubber rafts hug the shore, and refugees slog for miles on the winding dirt roads into town, hoping to register with Greek authorities before heading to Germany or another nation willing to accept them.

For Greeks already dealing with a economic crisis, the influx is a shock. Many volunteers from Greece, the Netherlands, and other countries are trying to help, handing out water, offering directions, or providing dry clothes.

"What you realize is you have a lot," said Andrea Sarris, a Greek-American who lives on Lesbos but grew up in Dover, Mass. "While we psychologically have gone through a lot in Greece, these people have gone through war. They have the clothes on their backs. They have babies."

Few Syrian refugees have made it to Massachusetts. The United States has accepted just 1,600 refugees from Syria since the unrest began four years ago. This month, the United States pledged to take 10,000 more over the next fiscal year. But the International Rescue Committee says 10,000 refugees arrive on Lesbos each week and Monday urged the United States to accept 10 times more by the end of 2016.

Four million refugees have fled Syria alone - a number larger than the entire population of Connecticut - since a brutal civil war broke out after peaceful prodemocracy protests in 2011. About half fled to neighboring Turkey, 6 nautical miles across the Aegean Sea from Lesbos. Other migrants come from Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and other places.

On Lesbos, 2,000 refugees arrive daily along the northeastern coast, according to the International Rescue Committee, which helps settle the newcomers. The point on Lesbos closest to Turkey is Skala Sykaminias, a fishing and farming village with a quaint marina where tourists sip strong coffee as fishing boats bob nearby.

In Skala Sykaminias, the refugee boats arrived at first light Saturday - and kept coming all day.

At 6:56 a.m., as the fishermen headed out into the Aegean, one of the first refugee boats was speeding toward shore. Everyone aboard smiled broadly.

As soon as the rubber dinghy hit land, the occupants of the overcrowded boat poured onto the beach. Passengers laughed and snapped photos with the driver. Smugglers charge refugees as much as $1,800 apiece for the one-to-two-hour journey - which can take much longer if it goes awry - but the "captains" are often other refugees who cannot sail or swim.

Now that anxiety was behind them. Hassan Al-Baghdadi, a 25-year-old lawyer from Iraq, whipped out a selfie stick to take photos. His friend, a burly gym owner, changed into a dry shirt: a Boston Celtics jersey, a gift from a friend.

They had each paid $1,300 to cross. The lawyer said it was worth every cent.

"Iraq is full of terrorists," he said.

At 10:33 a.m., high on a hill, a stout fisherman named Dimitris Karapanagiotis scanned the horizon for boats. He spends all day waving life jackets to guide the boats to shore, so he can grab their engines and then resell them for cash. Some frown on the practice, saying the authorities should confiscate them instead.

But in Greece, one in four people is unemployed. He needs the money.

"The criminals are the politicians for doing this," Karapanagiotis, 47, barked while waiting for the boats. "They call themselves peacemakers. Actually, they are causing all these problems."

Seconds later, he spotted another boat.

A rubber raft skidded to shore, and a group of Afghan students from an all-boys school in Kabul, some too young to shave, jumped out in T-shirts and jeans. They huddled to figure out what to do next.

Few Afghan migrants speak English. But Mohammad Husain, 16, had taken a class.

Afghanistan is so chaotic and poor that the life expectancy is less than 50 years. He said his family borrowed money from a rich man to send him here.

"It was so dangerous," he said in English. "The situation in Afghanistan is not good. We are compelled to come here." He wants to seek asylum - which would give him official refugee status.

At 10:54 a.m., another boat barreled toward shore, but this time nobody smiled. The passengers leaned forward, as if willing it to land. And when it did, they staggered out, speechless. A white-haired man clad in a soaked business suit under his life vest. A young Afghan interpreter who spoke English and said he used to interpret for the US Army.

Saghar Karimi, 22 and from Afghanistan, clutched her 1-year-old niece and sobbed. "The motor wasn't working," she said.

At noon, a rubber dinghy arrived with a group of men from Damascus, a city in Syria badly damaged by the civil war. The men refused to give their names, saying they feared the repressive government or the Islamic State extremists would harm their families back home.

Instead, they showed a reporter their scars.

One man lifted his shirt to reveal bullet scars in his abdomen and a long scar down his torso.

Another rolled up his shirt sleeve to reveal a round scar on his arm, from a bullet.

A man named Anwar pointed to a jagged scar on his cheek.

Omar, a gaunt man in a green jacket, was on crutches. A friend unwrapped an ACE bandage covering his disfigured right leg. Then, with no buses there to help him, Omar turned with his friends and hobbled to town on the dirt road.

By 12:14 p.m., temperatures soared to 80 degrees. When the next boat landed, everyone fled to the shade.

Except for Hiwa Amine, a 30-year-old from Syria. Thrilled to have arrived safely, he stripped to his shorts and charged back into the sea.

"Everything is OK! Everything is OK!" he shouted in English, splashing in the water. "Because Europe is life. Europe is love."

Minutes later, at 12:56 p.m., a rubber raft veered toward the rocks at the bottom of a steep hill. On land, volunteers shouted at those in the boat to aim for the beach. But then the engine stopped, too far from shore.

The two groups stared at one another, helpless.

Refugees blew emergency whistles. Volunteers strained to search for the coast guard. Finally, a refugee jumped into the water to propel the boat with his legs. With more than 40 people on board, it barely budged. More men jumped in the water. Another paddled with a single oar. Others clawed at the sea with their cupped hands.

As they struggled, a European journalist flew a buzzing camera drone over their heads.

Finally, they arrived at the rocks. A man with Parkinson's disease had been on board. Minutes later, the coast guard sped by.

"We're Syrian," a man said, to nobody in particular.

All day and night, the boats kept coming. At 4:03 p.m., an Afghan family of 10 arrived in rough seas and stood soaking wet just steps from a luxury tour bus ferrying Austrian tourists around the island.

Nobody imagined more refugees would brave the rough seas that night. But more did.

Just after 9 on Saturday night, the dinner crowd gathered at elegant outdoor cafes surrounding a tiny marina in Skala Sykaminias looked up from their meals. Four fishing boats were hauling in the lifeboat that carried the 70 refugees.

Onlookers applauded the fishermen as refugees flooded the port shrieking and sobbing and searching for their children.

A woman in an elegant white dress spotted unattended children hauled off the boat and rushed to hold them for their parents, grabbing one, then another, until she could not hold them all.

Nearby, another woman folded her arms and stared.

Many on Lesbos worry the migrants and refugees are driving away tourists, even though this island has erected statues to honor refugees. One monument, a Greek woman huddled with her children fleeing war in 1922, eerily resembles today's refugees.

But Saturday night, authorities quickly swept the newcomers to an alley out of view.

In the dark, Rima, a teacher from Damascus, huddled with her family. She tugged on a reporter's arm to display photos on her telephone from the life they once had. Her husband had worked at a fancy hotel. She wore a glittering white gown at their wedding four years ago. They have a daughter.

Then her husband's brother was killed. Shelling destroyed the city.

"This trip. It was crazy," the woman said in English, asking that the Globe not reveal their names because their parents are still in Syria. "But what do I do? Let my daughter grow up in Syria with fighting and bombs and killing? I have two choices, and both choices are ugly."

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The struggle of Syrian migrants and refugees in Greece

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The once triumphant arrival of thousands of asylum seekers into Germany is now a slow and methodical trickle, as federal officials limit arrivals to a few at a time so that they can screen newcomers more carefully and find shelters for them.

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It is so sad how the kids just go along with everything and all the bombs. Also they know how the bombs sound, if they hit anything or if they don't.