The majority of highly developed countries are doing next to nothing to help Syrian refugees, whose conditions continue to worsen as the bloody civil war enters its fifth year.
Four million have fled the country and risked their lives seeking shelter while 6 million are internally displaced. According to Amnesty International, neighboring countries have had to cope with the resettlement of the majority of the displaced Syrians. Turkey has accepted 1.8 million refugees, and Lebanon, a marginally smaller country with a population of 4 million, hosts 1.2 million refugees.
The picture of a drowned 3-year-old Syrian-Kurdish surfaced online last week, and has come to represent the suffering of Syrian refugees around the world who risk death to be smuggled by sea to Europe. According to Al Jazeera, Greece, whose islands constitute the drop off locations of most refugee boats, is " on the verge of explosion. "
We compiled data on the 49 highest developed countries in the world, their population, the number of Syrian refugees they've pledged to accept, and contrasted it to a proportional share if the 49 most developed countries agreed to resettle all of the refugees. Only Germany and Sweden have pledged to take more than they should. The interactive map below visualizes the results of our research:
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Sources: United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Reports (2013); Worldometer.info (2014); European Resettlement Network (2015).
Recently, the United Kingdom's Prime Minister pledged that the country will accept 20,000 refugees over the period of five years . Similarly, France's Hollande announced that 24,000 Syrian refugees will be welcome to the country. Germany, on the other hand, has opened its arms to 35,000 Syrian refugees, but plans on welcoming 800,000 this year alone.
Hungary, on the other hand, has increased its crackdown on refugees, doubling its security to ward the displaced off the country and into resettlement camps with reprehensible living conditions, not unlike France's Calais camp.