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Description
Survival is the highest priority for the nearly 10 million refugees in the world (21 million if you include internally displaced persons and asylum-seekers). While international relief agencies struggle to protect people displaced by wars, drought and civil unrest, they often neglect the environmental devastation that follows in the world's overcrowded refugee camps.
In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) issued a report saying, "Many refugee camps are now surrounded by vast stretches of barren land no longer capable of supporting life."
UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer says that relief agencies need to focus on this problem. "While urgent human needs must take precedence over environmental concerns in times of crisis," he says,... |
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