Can You Imagine?

A few articles this week tried to put the Syrian refugee crisis in perspective by drawing population ratio comparisons with the U.S. Here’s an example from an article about the “virtual” presence of the Syrian conflict at Davos:

More than 130,000 people have died so far. More than a million children are refugees, most of them under the age of 11. Neighboring countries are are trying to absorb enormous numbers of people made homeless by the war. “I am very pessimistic,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres told me. And with reason. If the United States had to absorb as many refugees as Lebanon had, it would have to take in 66 million people.

In another article this week, the Prime Minister of Lebanon wrote that the comparative ratio would be like 100 million Syrian refugees coming to America.

Even though Lebanon is one of the smallest countries in the region, it has absorbed approximately one million refugees–the highest number of any nation. Estimates of how many Syrian children will be enrolled next year in Lebanon hover around 100,000. Syrian refugees now make up almost a quarter of Lebanon’s pre-crisis population.

Because the Syrian crisis has had a direct cost of $7.5 billion to the Lebanese economy, many here are hoping that the softening of sanctions with Iran will have a trickle down effect on the Lebanese economy. But in the face of so much suffering, it’s hard to know what to do…