Oxfam is saying there is an alarmingly steep increase in the number of people feeling the civil war in Syria and moving to camps across the border. The estimate does not include the thousands that are arriving at border communities which are finding it hard to cope. It is estimated that as many as 4 million people have been displaced within the country and Oxfam says this is a huge long term crisis.
Oxfam has raised the Syria Crisis to a Category 1 emergency which is not meant to be merely a media sound bite. Instead it means that Oxfam’s humanitarian teams who have decades of experience between them dealing with all kinds of complex emergencies has put the scale of human suffering in Syria at the very highest level.
Oxfam does not escalate crisis response lightly and to get a sense of just what a Category 1 crisis means, the Asian Tsunami which occurred in December 2004 was one of the few other crisis this decade that was a Category 1 emergency.
Other Category 1 crisis are just as important but many tend to be easily overlooked because their causes are complex and their consequences take place over a long period of time making it almost impossible to capture at a single moment.
In the absence of iconic images which define the plight of refugees in the Middle East, UN data goes a long way to illustrating the gravity of the situation in around Syria.
At Oxfam its all hands on deck over the coming months and if you can help, please donate to the Syria Crisis Appeal
