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IN THEIR OWN WORDS Antonio Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees While every refugee’s story is different and their anguish personal, they all share a common thread  of uncommon courage— the courage not only to survive, but to persevere and  rebuild their shattered lives. — Speaking to the UNHCR staff in 2005 as he officially assumed his duties.

The civil war in Syria is a case in point. The tiny neigh- boring country of Lebanon has struggled to keep up with refugees from the conflict. As of the end of 2015, there were close to 1.1 million UN-registered refugees from the Syrian civil war in Lebanon, according to the United

Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); Lebanon’s own population was only 4.4 million in 2011, when the Syrian conflict began. Among other pressures, including infrastructure and sanitation issues, Lebanese efforts to educate school- age refugees have hit obstacles. Despite limitations to its educational system, in September 2015, Lebanon put forth a program to enroll 100,000 children in school. An equal number, however, will not be enrolled, according the country’s education minister Elias Bou Saab, who announced the plan. The number of Syrians in public school may soon be greater than that of Lebanese children. The migrants and refugees themselves often face a backlash from the local popu- lation. The newcomers look different, and speak and act differently, from everyone else. These and other reasons conspire to fuel hatred among many natives, making immigrant assimilation difficult. Consequently, immigrants are discriminated against and often are victims of bias-related crime. At the same time, refugees and migrants can sometimes have positive effects on the receiving countries. In Europe, for example, the population of many countries is aging and shrinking. Overall, this impacts the number of people entering the work- force. Economists say refugees increase a country’s labor force, which can jumpstart a flagging economy. Refugees also bring new skills to a community, such as new farm- ing techniques and technical training lacking in many native populations. Refugees also invigorate a community’s culture with new ways of life.

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MIGRATION AND REFUGEES