The UN High Commission for Refugees was concerned about 13 million refugees in mid-2014; the number is rising. At the end of 2014, the refugee agency was also trying to care for about 38 million internally displaced people. It is also worried about 10 million stateless people around the world.
Given those vast numbers, the 25,000 Syrian refugees the Canadian government has promised to accept are a minuscule drop in a very large bucket, and the few families coming to Victoria are a microscopic proportion. Why even try? What difference will it make?
It makes a huge difference to those people who are given an opportunity to build a new life in sa国际传媒, who have traded despair for hope.
And it should make a difference to those of us who take comfort, security and freedom for granted, opening our eyes to the riches that lie all about us, reminding us that we can 鈥� and should 鈥� do more to help human beings who live in misery.
In Victoria, a weekend fundraising dinner focused on helping Syrian refugees attracted hundreds of people, indicating high support for refugees here. Across sa国际传媒, the support doesn鈥檛 seem to be as high, but it鈥檚 rising.
In November, polls by Forum Research and Angus Reid showed 41 per cent of poll respondents supporting the government鈥檚 plan, with 54 per cent opposed. A Forum poll conducted in December found 48 per cent supporting the government鈥檚 plan to resettle 25,000 refugees in sa国际传媒, with 44 per cent opposed.
The November Forum poll suggested that nearly 60 per cent of Canadians believe there is a security risk in admitting refugees. That attitude has likely been strengthened by hundreds of sexual assaults and robberies on women in Cologne, Germany, on New Year鈥檚 Eve by young men of mainly Arab and North African origin.
The German attacks, as well as the Islamic-extremist terrorist attacks in Paris in November, show that opening a country鈥檚 doors to migrants and refugees does indeed entail risks.
But life involves risks 鈥� traffic deaths in France, for example, total more than 3,000 people a year. Risk should be measured and suitable precautions taken, but it should not paralyze us into inaction.
Consider the risks faced by the millions of people on the UNHCR鈥檚 radar screens. Refugees are those who have fled, or are trying to flee, their homelands to escape persecution or death. Many live in crowded camps where they are provided with a scant living, but little in the way of hope.
Consider stateless people who, through no fault of their own, have been deprived of nationality by border shifts or changes in laws. They cannot obtain passports or other documents necessary for immigration; they have no government to turn to for aid.
Internally displaced people have had to flee their homes to other regions of their countries because of ethnic violence or political persecution. Life for most of them is precarious at best.
Messages get wafted about on social media lambasting the federal government for spending billions on foreign aid while neglecting people in sa国际传媒. Certainly, more can be done to improve the lot of disadvantaged Canadians, but sa国际传媒 ranks in the lower half of developed countries for foreign-aid spending. We have responsibilities both at home and abroad.
If compassion does not compel us to help people in troubled parts of the world, pragmatism should. Misery is not bound by borders; it tends to spread if unalleviated. Sooner or later, we all share its costs.
Just because we cannot solve all the problems doesn鈥檛 mean we should stop trying. We have an abundant life in sa国际传媒; we are much diminished if we don鈥檛 share it.
