Kiwi reports on growing refugee crisis

Tomorrow, June 20, is World Refugee Day, and New Zealand journalist and aid worker, Tennille Bergin is right in the middle of the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world, the exodus of two million refugees from Iraq.

"Despite Iraq being on the news every night, very few people are hearing about this," she reports from Jordan.

'It's a unique refugee crisis, because so many are living in limbo; they are not officially being recognised as refugees, so they are unable to work, have limited access to healthcare, the children are unable to go to school, they find it near to impossible to leave Jordan. They have little hope for the future. And it's getting worse."

Ms Bergin says she's met a number of refugee families over the past few weeks. "They all have a story to make you weep; unimaginable violence and discrimination, a day-to-day existence that offers little meaning. Wasted lives. There are children who haven't been in school for years - "an entire generation of uneducated children are waiting in the wings", I was told by an aid worker in Amman yesterday.

"What strikes you about these Iraqi refugees is the dramatic change in so many of their fortunes - these are families who, for the most part, had fairly stable lives before this war. Now, having been forced to flee violence in their homelands, their futures appear to hold very little. Children are illegally working to support their families, because parents have no other options. Fear of deportation keeps many inside, all day, every day, with nothing to do and nowhere to go."

A recent World Vision survey found more than a third of Iraqi refugee children say they have no hope for the future.

World Vision is working in Jordan to feed, educate, provide medicine and psychosocial support to Iraqi refugees. But, Ms Bergin says, the problem is a huge one that needs international action and support.

ENDS

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