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Coming!An End to the
While you read this,
millions
of men, women and children- homeless, torn from their
/and as a result of wars of "/iberation, ,, or religious persecution and economic
chaos- wait for a better world.
by
Michael A. Snyder
W
HY SHOULO IT
be that in this
enlightened 20th century Aood
des of human beings flee their
melands to escape oppressive
governments, religious persecution ora host of
adverse economic condítíons? What has gone
wrong? Why have humaníty's problems esca–
lated so d ramatically over the past few
years?
A Cau se f o r Every Effect
It's hard for the Western or industrialized
nations to picture the vast numbers of people
fleeing for their Iives around the globe. What
makes an individual willing to face great
a personal risk and loss? What so overwhelms a
-ª
family to cause its members to abandon long
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e -----------------------------------
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A HOPELESS SITUATION? More than a mil/ion refu·
~
gees exist inside o( the borders of Somalia-human
~
debris from the struggle over a section of Ethiopía.
years of residence for a glimmer of hope
elsewhere?
Many of our readers in Africa understand
the causes of the problem, for nearly half of
the world's 1O mi Ilion refugees are on this vast
continent. Take, for example, the horn of East
Africa. A Somalian official has been making
the rounds in the United Nat ions to drum up
aid and support for thousands of refugees daíly
pouring across his border from Ethiopia.
Despite U.S. contributions amounting to
59,000
tons
of food, the specter of mass death
by slow starvation hovers over the refugee
·camps in his land. Couple this with t he
inescapable stench and squalor that accompan-
ies more than a million d isplaced ill-housed
people and you begin to get an idea what it's
like to be a refugee.
Somalia's situation is only a small part of the
overall problem in Africa. Virtually every part
of the continen t (with few exceptions) is
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