“Greatest Wave of Refugees”

◆ “The greatest wave of refugees and displaced persons in modern times​—far beyond that created by the dislocations of World War II—​will grow this year by at least two million people,” reports the New York Times Magazine. That brings the total to 17 million persons. The causes of all this uprooting of people? “Sometimes, as in parts of East Africa today, it is famine that sends the ghost armies [refugees] on their way,” says the report. “More often, though, it is another of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: war. The history of recent decades demonstrates that war makes refugees.” The report added: “During the last 10 years, 90 percent of small wars have been fought in the third world. A decade ago, those parts of the world averaged a total of less than one new conflict a year . . . Now the rate is 1.6 a year. . . . Thus the third world becomes ever more unstable, generating ever more refugees.”​—November 23, 1980, pp. 136, 138.

“Greatest Wave of Refugees”

◆ “The greatest wave of refugees and displaced persons in modern times​—far beyond that created by the dislocations of World War II—​will grow this year by at least two million people,” reports the New York Times Magazine. That brings the total to 17 million persons.