CONFLICT AT THE ROOT
According to the latest report released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), over 50 percent of refugees worldwide come from Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia.
The report said that armed conflicts and threat of violence were important factors that caused a massive exodus of refugees.
In countries like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya, interventions by the United States and other Western countries led to political chaos and forced residents there to flee.
Patrick Cockburn, a senior writer of British newspaper The Independent, believed domestic factors plus regional and global confrontations generated such compound explosives as the Syria crisis and the refugee crisis which were hard to tame.
Western countries' invention and the rise of the Islamic State destroyed these countries which had already been torn by war, he noted.
Zeyad Juburi, professor of economics at Baghdad University, said that U.S. invasion in 2003 overthrew the Saddam Hussein regime, but also thoroughly destroyed Iraq's social system, throwing the whole country into turmoil and conflict and creating conditions for the spread of terrorism.
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
The bell of refugee crisis tolls not only for refugees. As British poet John Donne wrote centuries ago: "No man is an island"; the current suffering of refugees mirrors the suffering of humanity.
Saving refugees from the crisis should be the common responsibility of the international community.
Officials at UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)'s office in Jordan said that refugees need large quantities of food, clean drinking water, healthcare services, etc., and lack of funds currently is the top problem.
Lasting crises and conflicts have also brought new burdens to humanitarian aid organizations, they said, calling on the international community to provide material and spiritual support to help improve the living environment for refugees.
David Khoudour, an OECD expert on refugees, told Xinhua that most refugee receiving countries lack long-term programs in providing humanitarian aid.
Inside refugee camps in Jordan and Turkey, Syrian children cannot go to school and would become "a generation of sacrifice", which will bring about long-term problems, Khoudour said.
"Because we don't know when these refugees could return to Syria. It's possible that they can never go back, and they must integrate themselves into the host societies," Khoudour added.
